Ken Baker: Wisdom Christian College Student Forum

Here are a couple of Word documents covering the background to the module   session-1.doc   and   session-2.doc  The caravaggio-paul.ppt is a short study on Caravaggio’s famous picture of Paul on the Damascus Road, as a teaser to today’s discussion Paul: Converted or Commissioned? The two powerpoints provide further background  investigating-paul_s-life.ppt   paul-life-2.ppt    and our over-all schedule is here: pauline-studies-maf.doc   

Further to today’s discussion in the Hebrew 2 Class: Here’s a few of the priceless gems that adorn my library:

Beall, T.S., W.A. Banks & C. Smith. Old Testament Parsing Guide. Nashville: B&H Publ. 2000

Cohn-Sherbok, Dan. Biblical Hebrew for Beginners. London: SPCK, 1996

Elliger, K & W. Rudolph, eds., Biblica Hebraica Stuttgartensia. Stuttgart: Deutsche Bibelgesellschaft, 1967

Fayerabend, Karl. Langenscheidt’s Pocket Hebrew Dictionary to the Old Testament. Berlin: Langenscheidt, 1990.

Gesenius, F.R. & S.P. Tegelles. Gesenius’s Hebrew & Chaldee Lexicon. London: Samual Bagster & Sons, 1846

Kelley, Page H. Biblical Hebrew - An Introductory Grammar. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1992.

Martin, James D. Davidson’s Introductory Hebrew Grammar. Edinburgh: T&T Clark, 1993.

Mansoor, Manahem.  Biblical Hebrew Step by Step. Vol. 1. Grand Rapids: Baker Books 1979.

Weingreen, J, A Practical Grammar for Classical Hebrew,  2^nd Edition,  Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1963

Also, as I claimed in class, I really did find forty books of 19th Century scholarship on Biblical Hebrew, Syriac, Samaritan etc.  (admittedly in poor condition) in a Liverpool skip during the summer of 1993, including an 1846 Gesenius and 7 dated 1817. I had them rebound and  still use them all.

Here is the link to Roger Nicole’s 1958 essay on the new-testament-use-of-the-old-testament.doc which is a quite thorough and comprehensive introduction to a wide-ranging topic.

A recent photo of dr-baker-in-his-study.jpg reminded me of the usefulness of internet research.

Here’s a few pointers.

Important websites (”meta-sites”) See the relevant links for Biblical Studies on the useful links pages. A particularly useful site for New Testament work is the New Testament Gateway. For Old Testament / Hebrew Bible, the iTankakh site, Ralph Klein’s OT Studies site, and the OT Gateway are particularly useful. Also helpful is The Text This Week (especially its Scripture Index). New Testament: Barry Smith’s textbook-like course pages You may find Barry Smith’s introductory course pages helpful; they are almost at a point where they would qualify as a substitute for an introductory textbook for NT studies. Old Testament / Hebrew Bible: Barry Bandstra’s textbook As pointed out in the module syllabus booklet, you may find Bandstra’s introductory textbook helpful: Bandstra’s website, which reproduces this book (Bandstra, B 1999. Reading the Old Testament. Rev. ed. Belmont: Wadsworth) is freely available at: http://www.hope.edu/academic/religion/bandstra/RTOT/RTOT.HTM Old Testament / Hebrew Bible Introduction There is a useful online ‘Introdution to the Old Testament course up with text / video / audio at the ‘Open Yale Courses’ website: http://open.yale.edu/courses/religious_studies/introduction-to-the-old-testament-hebrew-bible/home.html. It’s designed for a US-American college audience, so it’s pretty simple. Worthwhile listening to. You can get the 24 classes as text (transcript), audio (MP3), or various video file types. They are all free to download. Theology Today (journal) It is worth noting that this journal is accessible online; all but the most recent issues may be viewed at http://theologytoday.ptsem.edu. Relevant to OT studies are, for example:

• Bird, P 1993. ‘Bone of my Bone and Flesh of my Flesh’. Theology Today 50:521-534. Online version at http://theologytoday.ptsem.edu/jan1994/v50-4-article2.htm (accessed Feb. 20, 2002). - An article on the problem of reading creation ‘models’ in Gen 1 and Ps 8.
• Fredriksen, P 1995. What You See Is What You Get: Context and Content in Current Research on the Historical Jesus. Theology Today 52(1), 75-97. http://theologytoday.ptsem.edu/apr1995/v52-1-article6.htm
• Welker, M 1991. What is Creation? Re-reading Genesis 1 & 2. Theology Today 48:56-71. Online version at http://theologytoday.ptsem.edu/apr1991/v48-1-article1.htm (accessed Feb. 20, 2002). - A theological appropriation of the classical creation texts.

Biblica (journal) Similarly, the journal Biblica is available online, though limited to issues from the past five or six years. Of interest may be an essay like:

• Bennema, C 2005. The Sword of the Messiah and the Concept of Liberation in the Fourth Gospel. Biblica 86(1), 35-58. www.bsw.org/?l=7186
• Spieckermann, H 2000. God’s Steadfast Love: Towards a New Conception of Old Testament Theology. Biblica 81:305-327. Online version at http://www.bsw.org/project/biblica/bibl81/Comm06m.html (accessed Feb. 2, 2002).

Bulletin for Biblical Research Now online apart from the most recent volumes, at www.ibr-bbr.org/IBRBulletin/IBR_BBR_ByYearList.aspx. The server is often a little slow, but it’s worth persevering with.Religion Online See also many useful texts at this large site offering online versions of high-quality texts. For example:

• Knight, D A 1982. Old Testament Ethics. Christian Century Jan. 20, 55. Online version at www.religion-online.org (accessed July 27, 2002).
• Waetjen, H C 1998. The Origin of Jesus Christ: Matthew 1:1-25. Christian Century (May 20-27, 1998), 524-531. www.religion-online.org

philippians-intro.ppt Here is the Introduction lecture from the Greek Texts (Philippians) class.

This week we are going to sketch a few of the major themes in the Epistle. Here is the lecture: themes-in-philippians.ppt

Your homework from last week’s session was the preparation of the first seven verses in Greek. Hope you’re ready… it makes for a nice easy beginning.

Philippians 1

Welcome to the Wisdom group. Here is a link to the schedule, (subject to approval) wisdom-maf.doc so that you can check the session titles. Today we looked at the powerpoint introduction-to-the-course.ppt and checked out the coursebook. Follow the hyperlinks to ourchase your copy from http://abebooks.co.uk or http://amazon.co.uk as you wish. Jean-Baptiste’s copy arrived the day after ordering, so I expect everyone kitted out by the next session.

As mentioned in class, the first task is to post on your blog TWENTY books on the Wisdom Tradition that you have discovered on the net. Free (funsize) Mars Bar to the first post.

Here’s some material to whet your appetite for remainder of the course:lecture-1-sermon.doc is a slightly devotional  approach to the subject; 1-what-is-wisdom.ppt is slightly more explanatory;  and, finally, an introduction to Proverbslecture-2-prov-intro.doc . Please read this material and post it on your own blogs under a Wisdom category if you wish

Welcome to the Hermeneutics class.

Here the overall plan, subject to approval  maf-hermeneutics.doc. Check out the textbook ASAP. Some initial discussion points are contained in hermeneutics-1.doc   and  hermeneutics-2.doc   with some more recent  issues-in-hermeneutics.doc and a few miscellaeneous articles-on-hermeneutics.doc too. Get reading!

First homework is to set up your own blog and post a Hermeneutics book list of your own discovery plus the feedback from tomorrow’s lecture.