We became familiar/reacquainted with the "Three Worlds" concept which comes from your Hauer/Young Textbook, see especially chapters two and three, and see class notes.
Here below is how one student summarized the worlds (she has more detail here)
Literary World--The literary world of the Bible is simply the text itself, apart from anything outside the text. We mean the world (or, better, worlds) created by the text; the words on the page, by the stories, songs, letters and the myriad other types of literature that make up the Bible. All good literature (and the Bible is, among other things, good literature) creates in readers' minds magnificent, mysterious, and often moving worlds that take on a reality of their own, whether or not they represent anything real outside the pages (Hauer and Young ch 2).
Historical World--The historical world of the Bible is the world "behind the text" or "outside the text". It is the context in which the Bible came to be written, translated, and interpreted over time, until the present. In studying the historical world of the Bible, we look for evidence outside the text that helps us answer questions such as, who wrote this text, when was it written, to whom was it written, and why was it written. We also probe the text itself for evidence that links it to historical times, places, situations, and persons (Hauer and Young 2)..
Contemporary World--The contemporary world is the "world in front of the text" or the "world of the reader." In one sense, there are as many contemporary worlds of the Bible as there are readers, for each of us brings our own particular concerns and questions to the text. They inevitably shape our reading experience. We are all interested in answering the questions of whether the Bible in general, or particular texts, have any relevance to our personal lives (Hauer and Young ch3).
-Brolin
--
We highlighted the LITERARY WORLD BY INTRODUCING CHIASM AND INCLUSIO
as "literary world" devices:
Chiasm(definition) and inclusio (definition).. once you are attuned to seeing them in Scripture (and most ancient literature) it seems they are everywhere.
Sometimes they are.
Who can argue that "the first
shall belast/the last shall be first" is a chiasm?
A-B-B-A, X pattern.
(and this one, because it's in Matthew [20:16], will be important
for our class.
But often the chiasm is wide enough to spotlight and intended embedded theme in between the endpoints.
And to really help us get what the Spirit is saying...structurally.
People remember how to perform a piece of music by using musical notations on scale. A similar solution to the problem of remembering how to perform a piece of dance has been solved with the use of Labonotation. In antiquity, it seems most written documents were intended to be read aloud, hence to be performed. The purpose of writing was to facilitate remembering how the document went when one read it aloud. But how did one make paragraphs or mark off units in a document read aloud? It seems that the main way to mark off a unit was to use repetition of words and/or phrases at the beginning and end of a unit, either alone (as in Matt 5:3, 10,"...for theirs is teh kingdom of heaven) or in parallel bracketing fashion (as John 1:18). The Greeks called such parallel brackets a chiasm, after one half of the letter "chi" (our 'X"), thus ">."-Social Science Commentary on the Gospel of John, p. 295, emphasis mine.. a free read online here.
here are some links to these literary devices we talked about:
- Chiasm and inclusio: an intro
"Chiasm led me to Christ"
(a great story from a recent FPU grad)- Detecting chiasm
- Inclusio
- Chiasm in the Bible
NTERTEXTUALITY/HYPERLINKING:
One of Chris Harrison's projects is called "Visualizing the Bible":
"Christoph Römhild sent me his interesting biblical cross-references data set. This lead to the first of three visualizations. Intrigued by the complexity of the Bible, I derived a new data set by parsing the King James Bible and extracting people and places. One of the resulting visualizations is a biblical social network. The other visualization shows how people and places are distributed throughout the text." Chris Harrison-
But why should I tell you when I can show you?:
"The bar graph that runs along the bottom represents all of the chapters in the Bible. Books alternate in color between white and light gray. The length of each bar denotes the number of verses in the chapter. Each of the 63,779 cross references found in the Bible is depicted by a single arc - the color corresponds to the distance between the two chapters, creating a rainbow-like effect."
.More info about this chart, and charts of the Bible as a social network here.
But on Social Networking..
it is amazing what we can learn about the Bible, relationships, community and God by,
for example, how many Facebook friends we have in common..
and how friends interconnect...see the following chart below of one person's facebook friends which looks astonishingly like the Bible chart above
"Intercalation" is a "sandwiching" technique. where a story/theme is told/repeated at the beginning and ened of a section, suggesting that if a different story appears in between, it too is related thematically. We'll at this outline of Mark 11:
CURSING OF FIG FREE
CLEANSING OF THE TEMPLE
CURSING OF THE FIG TREE
E MORE CLASSIC EXAMPLE OF INTERCALATION, FROM Ben Smith:
---------------the daughter of Jairus and the hemorrhaging woman.
| Matthew. | Mark. | Luke. | Events. | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A1. | 9.18-19. | 5.21-24. | 8.40-42. | Jesus is called upon to heal the daughter of Jairus, a leader in the synagogue. |
| B. | 9.20-22. | 5.25-34. | 8.43-48. | A woman with a twelve-year flow of blood touches the clothing of Jesus and is healed. |
| A2. | 9.23-26. | 5.35-43. | 8.49-56. | Jesus raises the twelve-year-old daughter of Jairus, since she has already died. |
Jesus effects two healings in these pericopes. He heals both an old woman toward the end of her womanhood (the flow of blood is probably menstrual) and a young girl at the very beginning of hers. It cannot be coincidental that the girl is twelve years old while the woman has suffered from a flow of blood for twelve years. -Ben Smith
Theme for week 1: CREATION AND COMMUNITY:
We compared the two creati8on accounts of Genesis 1 and 2, and contrasted them with another ancient account found in your student guide. What do you remember about this discussion?
It turns out the entire Rob Bell video we watched IS ONLINE, so here you go below (if you don't mind Portuguese subtitles!). OR click this to watch it all without subtitles.
Everything is Spiritual - Rob Bell - (Legendado PT-Brasil) from jairomielnik on Vimeo.
---
HOMEWORK HELP:
Remember, we downsized the homework for next week to JUST:
1)Reading:
-Bible: Matthew 5-7
_Hauer and Young, "Matthew: Higher Righteousness," ppp. 269-272 only
-Chapman, Part One: ch. 4, “Sacred Encounters, Sacred Work”
Chapman, Part One: ch. 5, “The Servant’s Heart”
Chapman, Part One: ch. 6, “The Caring Community”
2)Preparation assignments:
Do the letter, directions on student guide, page 5. (see top of page) But don't worry about the Passover reference.
Handwrittten Ok, half page to 1 page. Write about any traditions, rituals, or customs that your family (how you celebrate Christmas, getting everyone ready for school, etc), or culture (Hmong New Year parade etc), or school (how your cohort arranges diinner etc), or church (Communion , baptism etc), or work (office policy, etc) engage in. Be sure to address it to your cohortmates, and write it in letter form, loosely based on the pattern in Hauer/Young (student guide, p 5)
