Monday in Auckland
Monday
I’ve abandoned poor Chris and the children and survived the first half day of “Voices of Prophetic Imagination.” It is very disconcerting – Walter Bruggermann sounds in voice and cadence very much like Robert de Niro. He gave us homework!! Eek. He is very hot on this method of looking at the prophetic texts called “Rhetorical Criticism”, which seems to be a three stage process as far as I can work out. The first step is looking at who says what, the second step is identifying the “key” words which keep coming up and the third step is to figure out what the angle is i.e. why is that bit there and not somewhere else.
It all rests on the assumption that the prophets weren’t lone rangers but must have had a supportive community who at least listened to their poetry in the first instance and kept it and passed it on. Did they keep all of it? Probably not. But they had a reason for keeping the bits we’ve got.
Lots of my BCNZ studies are coming back, particularly my Old Testament lecturer (I have heard again many of the words and phrases he used to intone regularly) and even my miserable attempts at Hebrew are finally paying off. Not feeling too lost although I suspect some of the others are struggling with all the new information. Walter says a historical critical approach isn’t necessary but then keeps referring to it. Typical lecturer!
Keith Nisbet reckons one of the lecturers at SOM uses this approach so it is useful to have the chance to get some practise in now. There are lots of familiar faces in the class, some from Knox, Lower Hutt, lots of Prezzies from around the country, even someone from my old youth group and someone I used to go to Bible College lectures with.
I am staying with John and Judy Parr who have been fabulous, picked me up from the airport, fed me lunch and picked me up at the end of the day. Fantastic. Great flight too, awesome views of the Southern Alps, Aorangi, lakes galore, what a fantastic country we live in!
So I’ve done my homework and once this is posted I think I’ll head off to bed…it’s a big week.
I’ve abandoned poor Chris and the children and survived the first half day of “Voices of Prophetic Imagination.” It is very disconcerting – Walter Bruggermann sounds in voice and cadence very much like Robert de Niro. He gave us homework!! Eek. He is very hot on this method of looking at the prophetic texts called “Rhetorical Criticism”, which seems to be a three stage process as far as I can work out. The first step is looking at who says what, the second step is identifying the “key” words which keep coming up and the third step is to figure out what the angle is i.e. why is that bit there and not somewhere else.
It all rests on the assumption that the prophets weren’t lone rangers but must have had a supportive community who at least listened to their poetry in the first instance and kept it and passed it on. Did they keep all of it? Probably not. But they had a reason for keeping the bits we’ve got.
Lots of my BCNZ studies are coming back, particularly my Old Testament lecturer (I have heard again many of the words and phrases he used to intone regularly) and even my miserable attempts at Hebrew are finally paying off. Not feeling too lost although I suspect some of the others are struggling with all the new information. Walter says a historical critical approach isn’t necessary but then keeps referring to it. Typical lecturer!
Keith Nisbet reckons one of the lecturers at SOM uses this approach so it is useful to have the chance to get some practise in now. There are lots of familiar faces in the class, some from Knox, Lower Hutt, lots of Prezzies from around the country, even someone from my old youth group and someone I used to go to Bible College lectures with.
I am staying with John and Judy Parr who have been fabulous, picked me up from the airport, fed me lunch and picked me up at the end of the day. Fantastic. Great flight too, awesome views of the Southern Alps, Aorangi, lakes galore, what a fantastic country we live in!
So I’ve done my homework and once this is posted I think I’ll head off to bed…it’s a big week.
posted by Unknown at 9:00 PM
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