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Teaching Hebrew Bible

Teaching the Book of Ruth

May 18th, 2012
by Christian Brady.
2 comments

In response to my earlier post on Campbell‘s comments about characters in the Bible John asked for a little guidance.

I have just started teaching Ruth on Wednesday nights. If you will, give me a little insight that would improve my job as teacher. We are going through the OT/HB and are beginning Ruth. Thanks.

I started to write a reply and it got a bit long and I realized that organizing my thoughts this way was useful to me and perhaps to others. So John, thank you for the request and I hope it is helpful to you and others. And here, ladies and gentlemen, is a brief introductory study guide for the Book of Ruth.

 I love really do love this book and I hope others enjoy studying it. I have posted a few things I have been working/thinking on over the last two years with regards to Ruth. I would suspect you are more than fully qualified yourself at teaching Ruth, but here are a few things I often pull out of the text in a lay context.

I should first point out that I do not say a lot about the dating of Ruth to a church or synagogue group because it is rarely fruitful. (However, I will dip into the question of Ezra’s divorce decree [Ezra 9-10] with reference to Ruth as a Moabite, as you will see.)
  • The book is only 4 chapters. How would you characterize each chapter?
  • What might this reveal about the structure of the book, its message, and its characters?
  • Consider the fact that the book is titled, in our canon, “Ruth.”1
    • Who is the “real” hero in this story? There is no “right” answer to this if scholarly consensus (or lack thereof) is anything to go by. (But see my next article!)
  • In what ways do the women in this book behave as we might expect a woman in the biblical world to behave? How do they differ? (And then perhaps also help your group to understand what we do/do not know about social norms and contexts of ancient Israel.)
    • How do these women breakdown the social expectations?
  • What role does Ruth’s foreignness play in the story?
    • Now read Deut. 23:3 and see if your thoughts about Ruth’s Moabite identity change how you view the story.
    • Now consider Ezra 9-10. In light of Ruth, is Ezra right in requiring the men divorce their “foreign” wives?
  • Is Ruth just an entertaining if thought provoking story or is there something deeper, more theological?
    • If there is a theological “point,” what is it?
    • How is that message conveyed through the characters, plot, and narrative?

    A few final suggestions for topics to noodle over:

    • Gender roles – How definite are they, are boundaries crossed, etc.
    • Power – Who is in a position of power in this story and how do they use that power. As important, who is not in a position of power and does that change or how do they cope with that?
    • Culture and Tradition – What roles do these play in Ruth? How are the challenged and manipulated?

    As you can see, in none of this do I get into issues of date, historicity, and so on. They are important and interesting questions but usually beyond what is appropriate for a church or synagogue study group. As I have said often, I think the best approach is to take the text seriously, that is to accept it on its terms and begin there. It is a “theological” text because the author assumes God exists and is at work with his people. Begin there and then conversation can move on from that point.

     
    1. Of course it is one of only two books in the Bible named after a woman. Once you have completed the study of Ruth, Esther is a nice counterpoint. [↩]

    “God is not in this classroom”

    Jan 6th, 2012
    by Christian Brady.
    2 comments

    This is a paper presented at the 2006 SBL. I am negligent in preparing it for a volume on teaching the Bible in a secular context. I thought I would repost it here now in hopes that a few more folks might offer their thoughts and comments that I may incorporate into the final product. There is a wide range of experience out there and I think this would be a much stronger work with your contributions.

    “God is Not in this Classroom” or Reading the Bible in a Secular Context

    Sight

    Description: Teaching biblical literature in a secular Liberal Arts environment requires allowing the texts to speak for themselves, so that students might hear what the texts have to say (which may not necessarily be what we want to hear). This is easier said than done since we must attempt to leave religious convictions, traditions, and specific agendas behind. At the same time, we must also recognize that we will not always be able to avoid our own historical context and bias. In light of these challenges and through my eight years experience as a Christian teaching courses in a Jewish Studies program at a secular university I have developed methods (and discarded others) for teaching the Hebrew Bible that include reading the texts critically as literary and historical sources while salting the course with Jewish, Christian, Islamic, and other interpretations. The goal is to use the potential handicaps of preconceived ideas and convictions as gateways into the material. God may well be in the classroom and miracles may well occur, but the students know that they have to determine that for themselves.

    When I originally proposed this paper, as you can see from the description I intended to share with you how I sprinkled my courses on the Hebrew Bible with readings of various readings of the text. Next semester I will be teaching Genesis, for example, and in that course we will being by reading the biblical text itself and then read Bonhoeffer’s little work on creation. When we get to Noah we will read the Genesis Apocryphon and when we get to the story of Tamar we will look at a feminist reading of the text (and make oblique references to The Red Tent). But I think this approach is fairly self-evident, that by showing students multiple readings of the same or similar text they will begin to see the challenges and promise of reading a text that is so ancient and yet still so relevant to so many. I also realized, as I surveyed the field and looked at the other proposals for today, that this is an approach that many have found useful and I did not want to burden you with my rendition of this theme.

    It seems that the sort of strategies most often employed in teaching the Bible in a secular liberal arts context involve teaching the Bible as something, e.g., “The Bible as Literature,” “The Bible as History.” Or we might provide “readings” of the Bible, such as a feminist, liberationist, modern, etc. Please note, this is not a criticism per se, these are legitimate and useful strategies and that I regularly employ, yet each of these methods is an attempt to read the biblical text as something other than it is.

    (more…)

     

    Which Hebrew Bible textbook? (Or none?)

    Jan 14th, 2009
    by Christian Brady.
    8 comments

    https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/I/51YdNyMZZeL._SL160_.jpgBecause of my administrative schedule I do not teach often, usually once a year and for various other reasons this is the first time I have taught Intro to Hebrew Bible in four years. In the past I have used Barry Bandstra’s Reading the Old Testament: Introduction to the Hebrew Bible. But this year I found out the list price was a whopping $121.95! The discounted Amazon price is only $109.75. That is just too much to ask of students. I considered many and then, since another section was being offered by a colleague I decided to follow their lead and use Michael Coogan’s The Old Testament: A Historical and Literary Introduction to the Hebrew Scriptures.This is still a bit pricey at just under $70.1

    So I thought I would reach out to this community and ask those of you who teach such a course what you use as a textbook. Or do you? I know many who feel that a textbook is in some way “cheating” and simply have their own lectures with extensive articles and secondary literature readings for the students. Please do give me your thoughts in the comments and I will post a summary of opinions and views once we have a critical mass.

     
    1. I also considered and will likely next time use John Collin’s Introduction to the Hebrew Bible. This looks to be very good and under $50, used for a little over $30. [↩]