I landed in San Diego last night. I’m excited to be here. It’s been a few years since I’ve attended the annual meeting. Since I arrived later in the evening, I didn’t do much. I met with my friend, Bill Heroman. I did a little planning for my conference schedule. And that’s it.
My employer sent me here wanting me to go to sessions focused on pedagogy so that’s what I’ll be doing today and tomorrow. This morning I’ll attend a session titled ‘Academic Teaching and Biblical Studies/Teaching Biblical Studies in an Undergraduate Liberal Arts Context’. While I teach in a college preparatory high school context, I can tell by the session titles that there’ll be useful material for me to adopt. Then I’ll go to ‘Death to the Term Paper! Building Better Assignments and Assessments’ and ‘Teaching Tips for Teaching the Hebrew Bible in Its Setting’. Both look good.
Several days ago, I wrote about how I’ve been forced to become comfortable with some sort of metanarrative being imposed on the Bible when its being introduced to younger students, especially when they may not be as ‘biblically literate’ as you’d hope. That being said, I don’t think the natural place in 2019 is the canon of a physical Bible. The digitization of the Bible makes the lines of canon fuzzy. For example, when I teach Infancy Narratives, I juxtapose Matthew’s version with Luke’s but then I like to bring in the Infancy Gospel of Thomas to show how Jesus’ ‘missing childhood’ became a later interest among Christians. Year after year I realize by the end of the semester that my students have lumped in Thomas’ child-Jesus with the ‘canonical’ birth and childhood of Jesus. They’ll talk about how Jesus does this-or-that ‘in the Bible’ and they’ll be referring to the Infancy Gospel. Their lack of familiarity with a physical canon makes it less likely that they’ll see ‘Matthew’ and ‘Luke’ over and over again and therefore as different from ‘Thomas’. For them, both were introduced digitally and therefore canonicity is something harder to grasp.
Now, I know some readers may say, ‘Well, then we need to make them use a physical Bible.’ Maybe. That’s a different discussion based on different values—values I don’t share as part of my educational philosophy (I’m not doing ‘Brevard Childs-for-teens’). I’m of the view that we turned a corner in 1994 with the emergence of the Internet and that will impact how people think of the Bible and canonicity. On this matter, I’m prepared to adapt rather than fight, especially since canon is an inherently confessional construct if you want to argue we ‘ought’ to emphasize it. It might have had a heuristic purpose but I think it’s worth having a discussion as to whether that’s still the case (for example, our school catalog still says ‘New Testament’ while I’m advocating for the name change ‘Christian Scripture and Its Influence’).
I want something to serve as an anchor for my class though. I don’t want it to be decontextualized. The canon of the Tanakh/Old Testament and that of the New Testament still provide useful organization perimeters, even if it’s not placed front-and-center as the key to what holds this collection of literature together. But I’ve chosen ‘traumatic events’ as the anchor I emphasize. As I wrote previously, the destruction of the First Temple by the Babylonians and the subsequent occupations by the Persians, Ptolemies, and the Seleucids, motivated the Judahites and their descendants to start collecting what they had written, continue editing it, continue organizing it, and to continue writing to add to those earlier writings (whether that be some form of the Book of Deuteronomy or various psalms and collections of wisdom). The New Testament, in my view, shares a similar impetus: Jesus’ execution, the persecution his followers experienced and perceived they were experiencing, and the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans all seem to shape the writings that would become known as the New Testament later.
I started teaching this way, and doing lesson plans based on this ‘metanarrative’, prior to running across a copy of David M. Carr’s Holy Resilience: The Bible’s Traumatic Origins in a Half Priced Books a few weeks ago, but when I saw the book I was thrilled because there it was in book form (published by Yale) an argument for the very approach I was taking. As I continue to read through Carr’s work I’m more convinced of my approach. What I appreciate about this approach is that it is humanistic. I teach at an Episcopal School, which while being distinctly Christian, is welcoming to students who come from a variety of religious and non-religious persuasions. I’ve had Jewish and Hindu students who bring their own spiritualities to class. I’ve had students from China who came knowing little about the Bible. But also I have Catholics, and Evangelicals, and a variety of other Protestantisms, not to forget Episcopalians. How do I teach them the Bible in a way that invites all of them? Well, the framework I’ve chosen allows my students to engage these texts from all of their perspectives in ways that are not threatening but also that allow for my students who are Christian and who come from Christian families who have sent their kids to a Christian school to know that their child is being taught their sacred texts in a respectful way. Meanwhile, my students of other religious traditions, or who come without a religious tradition, can find value in the human struggle exemplified by these texts. You don’t have to be Jewish or Christian to empathize with a people who were conquered, exiled, and occupied. You don’t have to be Jewish or Christian to empathize with people who see their world fall apart as they symbolic buildings are destroyed. You don’t have to be Christian to empathize with people who believed in and loved someone who was then killed, wrongfully. If in the process the removal of freedoms, or the destruction of temples, or the execution of a man you believe to have been the Messiah happens to resonate with you as a Jew or Christian, and empowers you to rethink your faith and appreciate it more while exploring it’s nuance, then that’s great. The goal is to make sure that what I teach has the potential to be valuable in a pluralistic classroom and in my opinion, this approach allows for that.
This is the second year I’ve done an exercise known as ‘Blackout Psalms’ and my students really enjoy it. What are ‘Blackout Psalms’. Well, it’s a form of Blackout Poetry, which has been described this way:
the poet takes a found document, traditionally a print newspaper, and crosses out a majority of the existing text, leaving visible only the words that comprise his or her poem; thereby revealing an entirely new work of literature birthed from an existing one. The striking imagery of the redacted text — eliminated via liberal use of a black marker (hence: “blackout” poetry) — and the remaining readable text work together to form a new piece of visual poetry.
Why would I do this with the Psalter? Well, first of all, I ask them to read the Psalm they’ve chosen closely. They need to get familiar with the words. This give them the opportunity to really experience to Psalm first. Then, they read through it scanning the words to see what new poem or prose can emerge from the text. The point of this part of the exercise is that they get to see how language shapes language: poems can be broken down like food that nourishes us and psalms can too. The vocabulary of the psalms become our vocabulary and then we repurpose those words to say something with our own voice.
Sometimes the product is funny. For example, I chuckled when a student turned in the single line ‘I, God, drink alone’ from Robert Alter’s translation of Psalm 4. Silly? Maybe. Theologically insightful and poetic. I think it’s that too. I mean, the first thing I thought when I read it was that the Abrahamic religions often talk about God’s ‘Otherness’ and that Otherness might be perceived as sort of lonely. God, so different, is framed as a kind of loner sitting alone at a bar having a drink knowing that God’s self struggles to relate to the humans with which God is surrounded. Overthinking it? Sure, but I enjoyed the thought experiment. In fact, for those in the Christian tradition, it forces us to ponder the doctrine of the Trinity and what this might say about God’s aloneness before creation.
Sometimes the product is serious. Sometimes the painful words of the psalms become fresh expressions for my students. Alter translates Psalm 6.3b, ‘And my life is hard stricken.’ One of my students redacted the entire psalm down to the words ‘my life is hard’. This shows me what they see and hear in the psalm.
Iconography of the Prophet Micah (via ‘The Ohio Anglican’ blog)
I have some students who have asked if they can do anything to earn some extra credit to help their grades, and of course, I have students who will do as much extra credit as possible to perfect their grades. So, I’ve created a project that answers those requests while also providing me with data I’ll find valuable. In other words, basically, I’m a modern tech company: I provide a service; you provide me information!
I’m calling the assignment the ‘Multi-Generational Reading Project’. Here’s the basic purpose and instructions I’ll be sharing with students today:
Purpose
This extra credit assignment pairs a student with an adult in their life. The adult can be a parent, a guardian, an aunt or uncle, grandparent, or any adult with whom the student has a meaningful connection. The goal (on my end) is to see what similarities and differences I can observe in how people from different generations read and interpret the Bible. The benefit for the student is the extra credit and hopefully a unique, shared experience with the aforementioned adult.
Instructions:
Below, you’ll find an excerpt from a passage from the Jewish Tanakh/Christian Old Testament. Please read the passage separately at first. Then both of you will email me at b.leport@tmi-sa.org answering the questions I’ve posted below the passage excerpt. Please do this separately as well. When you’ve both sent your email, then you can come together and discuss how you both understood the passage. Once your discussion is finished, the student should then email me again with five observations from your discussion (e.g., What did your interpretations have in common? In what way were they different? Did you share approaches to finding out more about something you don’t know offhand?)
The passage I chose (thank you Daniel A. for the recommendation) is Micah 6.1-8 (NIV). This is a short excerpt making it easier on the adult who agrees to participate. Also, it has elements that may be confusing to those who are less biblically literate (e.g., who are Balak and Balaam), elements that are more familiar (e.g, references to Moses, Aaron, and Miriam), and then what we might call ‘moralistic’ statements open to interpretation (e.g., ‘what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.’).
These are the questions I’ve asked my students to share with the adult they choose. My goal is that they would read the passage, separately, answer these questions via email, separately, and then they’d come back together to discuss. The student is required to send me a follow-up email about their discussion where they make five observations about how they read the Bible in juxtaposition with the adult with which they’ve paired. Here are my questions:
Contextual:
What do you know about the Book of Micah without researching it?
If you wanted to know more—like who Micah was, or who his audience was, or what his message was—where would you go (to what sources or people) to find that information? How would you get access to these sources/people?
Why would you choose these sources/people? Why do you find them trustworthy?
Interpretive (answer without researching):
Why do you think this author depicts God as appealing to the mountains/hills to hear his case in verses 1-2?
What’s the value of mentioning Moses, Aaron, and Miriam in verse 4?
What’s the value of mentioning Balak and Balaam in verse 5?
Rhetorically, what’s the point of questioning the sacrificial system in verses 6-7?
In your opinion, what does it mean in verse 8 to ‘act justly’? What does it mean to ‘love mercy’? What does it mean to ‘walk humbly with your God?’
My hope is that this gets students to talk with their parents, or grandparents, or someone about the Bible they’ve been studying this semester. The Thanksgiving Break is a great time for a project like this. Selfishly, I’m interested to see what similarities and differences emerge as I compare how students read the Bible with the adults in their lives.
This week I tried something new when it came time to introduce the genres of the Psalms. In the past, I would lecture and sample. This didn’t interest my students, at all. So I gamified things a bit! I divide my classes into cohorts for a variety of reasons. One of those reasons is for exercises like the one pictured here:
How does it work? Well, first, students are given a packet of psalms (Pss. 20, 22, 30, 51, 60, and 67) to read. Then I provide them with the brief descriptions of a few genres: Royal Psalms, Individual Psalms of Lament, Communal Psalms of Lament, Blessing Psalms, Thanksgiving Psalms, and Psalms of Repentance. Once everyone has had a chance to read their packet of psalms, and do some annotating, I give them the matching sheet. Now the race is on.
How do I determine the winner? Well, criteria #1 is accuracy. So, if someone goes 6/6, that’s ideal. What’s the tie breaker is more than one group is perfect? Speed. So, let’s say Cohort 3 finishes first. I check their result and see they got 4/6 but then Cohort 5 finishes a few seconds later and gets 6/6, then Cohort 5 wins. Obviously, the carrot at the end of the stick is bonus points that can be added to past assignments to boost their grades. Obviously.
Not only were students more interested in thinking about how psalms might be divided into various genres but in order to ‘check their work’ (or to challenge the results) they wanted me to explain how a psalm fits into a particular genre. Not only was it fun for them to do, and fun to watch as they scrambled, but far more effective at getting them invested than previous years’ lectures.
The AAR/SBL Annual Meeting is only a few days away. I’m excited because (1) I haven’t been in a few years and (2) it’s in San Diego. San Diego! But back to the first reason: I look forward to reunited with geeks who enjoy pondering the same types of nerdy things I enjoy pondering! Which brings me to the announcement made by the great Dr. Who-of-Religious-Studies, James McGrath (no, not Mark Goodacre…though he might be a different regeneration…but I get ahead of myself since honestly, I don’t know much about Dr. Who): What used to be a reception for ‘Bibliobloggers’ (back in my day) is now a reception for….wait for it….
Social Mediators!
According to James, it looks like Fortress Press will be welcoming us. So, if you blog, tweet, snap….ok, not snap….Facebook (?), reddit, or use other forms of social media to help promote the scholarship of religion, then I hope to see you there! Here’s that reception’s details:
When I talk about ‘generational hermeneutics’ as a potential sub-field within larger fields like Religious Studies or Biblical Studies, I imagine fruitful conversations await us both in describing how things are but also how things should be (the ‘is/ought’ division). Let me begin with the ‘is’ question. I see few scholars asking questions about how children and adolescents actually read the Bible when they read it. The only book I’ve encountered (at a library), and intend to buy and read one day, is Melody R. Briggs’ How Children Read Biblical Narrative: An Investigation of Childrens’ Readings of the Gospel of Luke. I’m sure there’s more work being done but I don’t think it’s receiving as much attention as it should.
How do children read the Bible differently from adolescents and how to adolescents read the Bible differently from adults? Or, how do children process religious instruction differently than adolescents and adolescents differently from adults? I know the latter has received some attention, for example, Soul Searching: The Religious and Spiritual Lives of Teenagers by Christian Smith and Melinda Lundquist Denton. I think more attention is deserved.
The second question is the ‘ought’ question. As a high school teacher I have to be cautious about how I teach certain parts of the Bible. For example, I don’t spend a lot of time on the Song of Songs. Likewise, it’s always a little tricky explaining the appearance of Shiva’s lingam. This task is complicated further for my colleagues who teach middle school students. Definitely skipping the Song of Songs with the seventh graders! But this raises a question: When can students read the Song? Or, as I joked in the meme above, when should we teach the story of Noah and the Ark? I mean, the Creator literally washes humanity from the earth like we’re a stain and we turn around and tell children about it because, ‘Oh, look, cute animals!’ Is this wise? Is this age-appropriate?
On a recent episode of one of my favorite podcasts—The Bible for Normal People with Pete Enns and Jared Byas—they interviewed author Cindy Wang Brandt about her book Parenting Forward: How to Raise Children with Justice, Mercy, and Kindness. She talked about growing up in a fundamentalist-type home and how certain approaches to the Bible and religion can leave adults with a lot of baggage to work through. They spoke about how parents might avoid harming their children with the Bible and religion. I think these are questions that should be asked even outside of ‘practicing’ circles. Scholars of religion can and should mix with psychologists and sociologists who study children and youth and their brain development. We should be asking questions about the ‘ethics of indoctrination’. I know some of the more established religious traditions have been thinking about this sort of thing for centuries as we see in say Catholic Confirmation or the Jewish Bar/Bat Mitzvah. But there’s more to be done. And I have a feeling some work is being done in various disciplines but we need cross-pollination.
So, when should children read the story of Noah and the Ark? When are they mature enough? Is it ok to introduce it to them as a happy story about God saving animals when they’re young and then return to it later to discuss some of the more complex, even disturbing aspects of the story later?
Apparently, Mr. West is putting on an opera titled Nebuchadnezzar. Whatever one thinks of Kanye’s Sunday Services, or his appearance with Joel Osteen, one thing is true: Kanye is making it easier for me to have a starting point with some of my students. ‘Jesus is King’ might make you wish for the days of Kirk Franklin’s Nu Nation Project but Kirk Franklin doesn’t get my students asking questions.
Now, the next time I teach the Hebrew Bible, there’s a chance my students will know who Nebuchadnezzar is from day one. And if they know who he is, they might be more interested in the Babylonian Exile. And if they’re more interested in the Babylonian Exile, then my job will be a lot easier!
This weekend I’ll be headed to San Diego, CA, for the AAR/SBL Annual Meeting. It’ll be the first time I’ve attended in a few years and I’m going with a whole new set of interests. Last time I attended I was a doctoral student struggling to write a dissertation in what we might call ‘classical’ Biblical Studies, a.k.a., Biblical Studies with an emphasis on the Historical-Critical lens. In the meantime, I did finish that dissertation (though I never found the energy to reshape it into something worth publishing) and I began teaching Religious Studies to high schoolers. The latter is where I find happiness now. While I hope that some of my work from the past can slowly be turned into a few articles and maybe a book, what interests me the most now is how adolescents read the Bible and how adolescents think about religion.
In other words, my audience is also one of my favorite topics. But this raises a question: Where does one go during AAR/SBL to find scholars looking into topics like ‘generational hermeneutics’, i.e., how younger people read the Bible different than their predecessors? Or, do many AAR sessions ponder adolescent religion outside of the rise of the Nones?
The rise of the Nones is a fascinating topic. For example, see Timothy Beal’s recent article in the WSJ titled ‘Can Religion Still Speak to Younger Americans?’ I find this subject to be very interesting. And for many scholars of religion who teach at the college-level, the future of your departments, and the future of your profession, will be shaped by how interested these ‘kids’ are in religion by the time they become college students. So, there’s practical reasons to care, but there’s also scholarly reasons to care.
Scholarship has been enriched as we’ve thought deeply about how feminism, or Black American culture, or LGBTQ+ interests shed new light on a variety of subjects. What about generational differences? Might there be a ‘generational hermeneutic’ worth discussing? If so, what would it take for future AAR or SBL sessions to be dedicated to exploring how emerging generations ‘do’ and ‘think’ religion? I feel like AAR would have an easier time incorporating something like this (and maybe I’m missing something…if so, point it out to me, please) but I believe it could make for some really interesting SBL sessions as well.
Today, my Hebrew Bible class reached the end of the third of four units we’ll cover this semester. We’ve discussed approaches to reading the Bible, the major narratives of the Tanakh, and the worldview and ideologies of the Hebrew Prophets and a couple of the political figures (the Prophet Daniel and Queen Esther). I wanted to see what resonated the most with them this far, so I asked them to make a meme of the story or concept that had stood out to them the most (some students did more than one). Here’s the topics that received meme-treatment:
The Book of Esther (Haman’s plot; Esther’s actions) = 4
Noah’s Ark = 3
Israel breaking the Deuteronomic Covenant = 3
Israel/Judah being threatened by Egypt/Assyria/Babylon/Persia/Greece = 3
The violence of the Bible = 3
Jonah being eaten by the great fish = 3
The ethics of the Book of Daniel = 3
King Ahasuerus and Queen Vashti = 3
Adam and Even’s disobedience = 2
The (legged) serpent in Eden = 1
Cain’s rejection = 1
The Tower of Babel = 1
Lot’s Wife = 2
Jacob’s marriage to both Rachel and Leah = 1
Moses and the Ten Commandments = 1
Moses’s death outside of Canaan = 1
Israel’s dysfunctional monarchy = 1
Exile to Babylon = 1
Babylon ending the Davidic Dynasty = 1
Babylon v. Persia = 1
The prophets’ complicated relationship with God = 1
Isaiah’s prophetic work = 1
Daniel in the lion’s den = 1
Jonah’s disobedience = 1
Jonah’s sadness when his plant died = 1
Esther’s ethics = 1
So far, my take is this:(1) the funnier the story, the better for meme-ing…obviously; (2) the more recent the topic, the more likely it’s remembered (most recently we discussed Isaiah, Hosea, Jonah, Daniel, and Esther); (3) the more scandalous or strange the narrative, the more likely it’s remembered (e.g., the Akedah, David and Bathsheba). This makes me realize that (A) stories that are referenced and re-referenced have more staying power (e.g., the Akedah); (B) stories that are ‘surprisingly in the Bible’ are hard to forget because many don’t expect them (e.g., David, Bathsheba, and Uriah); (C) stories with cultural weight—stories heard in Church, Synagogue, or the home—are remembered because they’ve been heard other places; (D) whatever you covered most recently is what sticks the most, so you better find a way for new content to reinforce older content.
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