New Testament Course: Part 3

After much reflection and concern that I would never be able to pass a course in which I disagreed so fundamentally with the instructor (and finding the class highly illogical) I decided to drop the course. It wouldn't have transferred anywhere anyway, so ultimately it was more stress than it was really worth.

In leiu of dropping this course, I thought I might take my mother-in-laws advice and actually go take a class from a local church. I went to Christ the Redeemer Monday night and I found it -- well, far and above the course I was taking. Unfortunately, my understading of Catholicism was a little too weak to completely follow along, so I think I need a more intro level course that explains some of the theology so I can merge that with what little I know of history. We'll see.

New Testament Course, Part 2

So, after talking with the dean and the dean visiting our class, it appears that the instructor has moderated his tone a bit -- at least now he's not blatantly telling me I'm wrong,  he just alludes to it.

Other than having the joy of being able to call up Bobby after class to gleefully state that "it's demons," this took on a very different tone compared to last week's. Most notably after the dean left the class, we watched a short on the Spiritual Freedom Church, and their exorcism's of demons (hence the demons comment). Now, I don't believe in demons, so my disparaging remarks - yes I made them in class - is not surprising. So, while I knew that everyone else in the class believed in demons, because I was the lone desenter when the question was posed, I felt obligated to to provide an  alternative view otherwise the class comments would have sounded as though they were taken from some political party convention - it's no fun if everyone is in agreement. Here's my take on the Spiritual Freedom Church:

You need to consider the purpose of this individual. He's a Televangelist. That means he's in the business of selling God. He's about hype and encouraging people to not accept responsibility for their choices in life. This guy [the one that had the demon in him] clearly is torn between fulfilling his mother's desires to go into ministry and his own wishes to do something else.

I know it's not a popular view, but there it is. I think this one girl in the class attempted to make a point so as to prove demons existed by quoting something from 1 Peter 5 -- I'm not sure how this was really supposed to relate, because I didn't see any reference to demons. If anyone knows, please let me know. I probably should have asked her after class, but the only reason she mentioned the book and verse was because she knew I'd ask -- and she said it so dismissively that I dared not actually talk to her.

So, the other exciting event that occured in the class -- at least for me, was what I will always refer to my gift from God. As I noted before, I'm not keen on the New King James Bible and have held steadfast to my Catholic New American Bible even though he requested we all use the New King James Bible. As I mentioned in my previous post, one of my biggest concerns with this course was the instructors presentation of these alternative dates of authorship of the New Testament that placed them prior to the Fall of the Second Temple in 70 CE. Well, right after the dean had questioned him on his dates of authorship he selected a parable from Matthew for us to read and try to interpret. His statement concerning the dating of texts centers around his belief that there are no references to the fall of the Second Temple in the Gospel and that this lack of information alludes to the fact that the texts must have been written prior to it. Ok, so back to Matthew -- well, of all the Gospel parables he could have selected he chose Matthew 22:1-14.

I'm going to let that sink in a minute because the significance of Matthew's The Parable of the Wedding Feast at that exact moment, I mean right after he said there was no reference to the fall of the Second Temple... it was just perfect.

So, part of the beauty of my NAB is the footnotes, so I'll include here an excerpt of the footnote for Matthew 22:1-14:

22, 1-14: This parable is from Q; see Lk 14, 15-24. It has been given many allegorical traits by Matthew, e.g., the burning of the city of the guests who refused the invitation (7), which corrsponds to the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans in A.D. 70. ....

Beautiful. Of course, he disregarded it -- but at least he didn't say I was wrong.

New Testament Course

New Testament Course
Category: Religion and Philosophy


I began taking a course on the New Testament from one of the local community colleges this past week and was horrified to discover the course was more suited for my sister's church than an institution of higher education.

While I do not have a quarrel with my sister's faith, I do with teaching a class on the basis of Biblical infallibility and speculation of dates of authorship*. Not only does this class suggest infallibility it outright rejects Biblical criticism and skips over this section in the text in an effort to present only an Evangelicals viewpoint. In an effort to minimize any attempt at noticing these chapters were skipped, the instructor has presented a second book for us to usein the course that minimizes any discussion on literary criticism. Overall, at first glance the class appears to be setup for the purpose of religious indoctrination, rather than religious scholarship instruction.

So, like any bad student, after questioning the instructor in class and being scoffed at for not knowing the Bible, I notified the dean of my concerns with the course. Noting that I had taken other courses that did not reject alternative points of view, such as my Old Testament course during the summer -- while it spent a lot of time on Biblical criticism, at the end of the day the instructor gave us literary samples that both rejected and supported literary criticism.

And, while I do have humility in my scholarship of the Bible and relish understanding alternative points of view, I am not interested in a course that presents only one -- particularly that, that one is fact.



*Note: While I do not begin to suggest that we should blindly follow Biblical scholarship on any, much less the dating of the New Testament books, I do question the agenda of an instructor that presents the more controversial view. Nor do I believe that an introductory course should dive head first into realm of religious discussion but should gain a base knowledge of the current status of scholarship -- then as they progress in their studies they should delve in discussion. While I hold this view for infallibility and the dating of the New Testament books, I do not hold this view for Biblical criticism -- as at its most fundamental level, this is what Biblical scholarship is about. And if it were the instructors opinion that this topic was just as controversial, I would hope that they would hold to teaching neither rather than selecting one as superior to the other as scholars studying the Bible are more closely split on this topic.

My problem with Buddhism

I don't really have a problem with Buddhism, or my experience at the Buddhist temple -- but after having a little black rain cloud over my head for the past 2 days, it finally occurred to me why my actual problem was --- ok, so I didn't figure it out, but when one of Bob's classmates pointed out how similar my reaction was to my reaction to the atheist discussion group I went to in Austin, well it was a moment of clarity.

Just a little background -- after Bob left Austin for grad school, I was super lonely and in desperate need to make some friends and/or join a group so I wasn't so lonely all the time. So, in my brillance, I decided to go to this Atheist meetup to talk about religion and philosophy -- two of my favorite things. Btw, I'm not an atheist, I just *thought* with my grand intelligence that this group would have just the most awesome discussions known to man. And, if I were to seek a challenge to my argument ability this group would be the place -- surely no one would choose to be an atheist without a complete and full understanding of what they were rejecting.

Obviously, I'm mocking how naive I was, because the one (and only) discussion I went to left me fuming with anger at their lack of *general* knowledge about anything religious, other than perhaps some of the unsavory bits of religious history. It was horrible. After listening to a husband/wife groan about how awful religious people were, I (and another woman) took over the conversation. Then after I couldn't take their lack of knowledge anymore, I left --- called Bob, and fussed the ENTIRE way home about how uneducated these people were. It's one thing to have a rational argument about what you believe or don't believe and another to just whine about the color blue even though you've never seen it and only heard of it.

So, what Jeff pointed out was that my problem is really when I go somewhere expecting that the people would know what they're talking about only to discover my nothingness of religious knowledge eclipses theirs. Unfortunately, this seems to be a common problem for me when I expect someone is an authority and I find out they don't know anything more than I do, or worse -- they know less. It's not that I mind people not knowing things, but if you're going to tell me you're the resident expert (or you choose to talk heavily about a particular topic), know what you're talking about or at the very least be brave enough to tell me you don't really know.

Religion

I found this survey online that predicts your religion, Belief-o-Matic

Here are my results (unfortunately, since my response was not in the choices that means I'm a Neo-Pagan, but that's ok - I've been called worse):

1. Neo-Pagan (100%)
2. Unitarian Universalism (97%)
3. Liberal Quakers (92%)
4. New Age (88%)
5. Mainline to Liberal Christian Protestants (87%)
6. Secular Humanism (85%)
7. Scientology (85%)
8. New Thought (81%)
9. Mahayana Buddhism (80%)
10. Theravada Buddhism (78%)
11. Reform Judaism (74%)
12. Christian Science (Church of Christ, Scientist) (71%)
13. Nontheist (68%)
14. Taoism (61%)
15. Bahá'í Faith (60%)
16. Jainism (53%)
17. Orthodox Quaker (53%)
18. Islam (50%)
19. Orthodox Judaism (50%)
20. Sikhism (47%)
21. Mainline to Conservative Christian/Protestant (46%)
22. Hinduism (42%)
23. Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) (35%)
24. Eastern Orthodox (35%)
25. Roman Catholic (35%)
26. Jehovah's Witness (21%)
27. Seventh Day Adventist (20%)