"Need to Know"

Here is a short list of items seminary professors assume you know before you start your work. If you don't, you might want to learn them.

• The books of the Bible: their basic content, characters, etc.
• The historical order and approximate dates of events in the Bible (Noah, Abraham, Moses, David . . .)
• The basic genres of biblical books (poetry, history, prophecy, letter . . .)
• How to use a concordance and Bible references, maps, etc.
• The Apostle's Creed (Nicene, too)
• Basic familiarity with doctrines of the trinity, atonement, christology, etc. (at least Confirmation class level)
• The broad parameters of the history of the Christian Church, including some knowledge of the Holy Roman Empire, the Protestant Reformation, and the spread of Christianity to the Western Hemisphere, Africa and Asia.

If you need help in acquiring background in these areas, you can get help from a pastor, teacher, library reference books, and online charts, articles and vocabulary lists. Chip away . . .

Re-Centering

Every so often a person has a new experience that literally re-orients the pathways in their brain. These experiences can be disconcerting, but they provide valuable perspective and actually make the brain grow. Learning Greek felt like that to me - I swore I could feel the new crevices forming.

Last week I returned from a trip to Peru and that's how it felt: new food, cultures, schedules, languages, and the tidal wave of imagination that washed over me at Machu Picchu (and it wasn't just the abnormally heavy rains . . .). So much that was new, so much to learn, where to put it all??!!

Seminary is full of re-centering experiences. It requires a way to corral the flood of information. It requires new categories, new patterns, new ways to arrange ideas. In many ways the grid, or schema one creates for all of this is as critical as the information itself. Be careful and deliberate about the process. Use care and caution, love and wisdom as you select, integrate, and organize the new information and experiences.

Enter the Bible

Today I came across two excellent websites from Luther Seminary. The first is called Enter the Bible: http://www.enterthebible.org/ and it is essentially a free Bible encyclopedia written by the faculty at Luther. It provides summaries, outlines, maps, history, art, and much more on every book of the Bible. It is great for background information, Bible study groups, and quality entry level biblical knowledge.

The second is called Working Preacher: http://www.workingpreacher.org/ and it has a variety of ecumenical preachers and scholars giving insight on every individual lectionary text for each week. Each separate text has a different author. Many other resources are on this site as well.

Check them out!