First Day of Teaching . . . . Tomorrow!
Tomorrow I will begin teaching my first class for which I am officially the teacher of record. I am looking forward to it. I have the syllabus all figured out (and revised, and revised again, and then revised again), as well as their writing assignments. I may post both up in the next day or two if time permits.
Day one of the class will be pretty basic. First I have what I hope will be a clever and funny little presentation about me, with the hope of bringing a bit of levity to the freshmen on their first day of classes. We’ll then go over the syllabus, and I’ll field questions. Then, on Wednesday, we’re talking about canonization.
It will be a great learning experience. Surprisingly, I have already had a few emails from students, one of which was kind enough to thank me for posting the syllabus and letting me know of this student’s interest and excitement for the class. Good, that makes two of us at least!
I hope this finds you all well also, as your semesters have or will be getting underway.
Viel Gluck, mein Freund! I’m sure everything will go great.
August 23, 2009 at 3:37 pm
good luck!
August 23, 2009 at 11:05 pm
Sounds exciting! I am sure all will go well!
August 23, 2009 at 11:09 pm
I hope you’re having fun! (whenever the class is). Will those bunnies make the presentation?
August 24, 2009 at 10:49 am
Good Luck, John. If you haven’t already, I’d encourage you to read Seitz’s short book on canon formation before your class on canon. He makes a convincing argument that there is no rival canon to the MT and also that canon is not a list, but always there as the texts began to form canonical associations. Concerning the variant orders, e.g. lxx, sinaiticus, modern english bibles, etc., they are a result of the nature of the Writings and are fine as they are, but it would be faulty to read theological intention into it. The theological intended canon, I might go as far as saying the most important canon, is the canon of the Hebrew Bible.
August 24, 2009 at 7:09 pm