Entries from November 2006

November 30, 2006

Writing the big paper on women and ministry…

My final hurrah for David Scholer’s class is a 15-20 page paper outlining my thoughts coming out of the class. I figure it’d be a good thing to do some pieces of it on this blog to get me going. It’s supposed to be a very personal wrestling match with the texts and personal experiences. [...]

November 30, 2006

Dave’s Top Ten Reasons Why Men Should Not Be Ordained

So I’m in the thick of end-of-the-quarter work and I have one more reflection on SBL in the works, but David Scholer handed out this top ten list in class yesterday and I just have to share it:
Dave’s Top Ten Reasons Why Men Should Not Be Ordained
10. A man’s place [...]

November 22, 2006

SBL 3: “Where do you want to study?”

When I told them that I am an MDiv student hoping to do a NT PhD, this was the inevitable question that arose from scholars I met at the conference. Of course, there are a bunch of schools that would be wonderful to attend and a plethora of exciting scholars under whom I’d love to [...]

November 19, 2006

SBL 2: (Un)Important Interactions?

I am generally having a good time at SBL thus far. I am certainly not one of those people who has dreams of biblical or religious academia, goes to one conference, and calls it quits because of a horrible time. Well, at least not yet. I still have a few days to go. My personal [...]

November 18, 2006

Reading justice into the Bible?

[This is an email that I sent to a friend this past week during a discussion about our congregation, Pasadena Mennonite Church. I had raised concerns about a possible overemphasis in social justice issues in the Bible reading of our church's membership. My friend (correctly) challenged me on generalizing about the congregation being too justice-oriented, [...]

November 18, 2006

First Day at SBL

What a blessed time. I got into DC last night at about 9pm and, since we had similar flight schedules, traveled with Chris Spinks to our hotel. My first steps out into the brisk, cold air were a beautiful welcome back to the East Coast, which feels so much more like home. After checking in, [...]

November 5, 2006

Fantastic resource on women and ministry

For our “Women, the Bible, and the Church” course, Dr. David Scholer has a fantastic resource in a collection of many of his essays on the issue of women and ministry. If you’re interested in the issue, I’m not sure there is a better book covering the significant biblical texts along with some of the [...]

November 2, 2006

Thinking about the "ugh" and the "mmm"

Since the annual meeting for the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) is coming up later this month, and it’s my first run-in with the bigwig conference, it may be a good time for me to think about what I am interested in pursuing as a potential scholar. What captures my attention, passions, and interests in [...]

November 2, 2006

VanderKam on Qumran and the Early Church

During my class with James VanderKam this past Summer, “Introduction to Early Judaism,” I was reading the Rule of the Community (1QS) from the Dead Sea Scrolls (DSS) and the concept of communal sharing of goods struck me. There seemed to be an interesting parallel with Qumran (if that’s truly where the DSS were written) [...]