New Classes

So it's Friday... time for one of those blog things. I just completed my paper for my January term course: Music of Spiritual and Religious Formation. The class was very enjoyable; the paper, significantly less so. Still, it's done, and that is a relief.

I also just finished my first two days of classes, so today seemed like a good day to let you in on my spring class schedule. This semester had room for a few electives, which I'm really looking forward to. First, the required courses: I'm taking a history class on Luther and the Reformations, focusing mostly on Luther but also on Zwingli and Calvin as well as the Catholic and English Reformations. I'm also continuing with Church's Worship and Integrative Seminar from last semester. The last required class is Witness of the Gospels, the introductory New Testament class on (believe it or not) the Gospels. It involves a lot of work with Greek, not translation but exegesis based on the original text. Getting back into Greek after three years' absence will be quite painful.

I'm taking two electives, both on the Old Testament. The first is on Exodus, taught by the professor I had last semester for Intro to the Old Testament and for Hebrew. It's going to have a heavy translation component, with passages to translate each week from either the Hebrew or Greek (using the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Old Testament), depending on which language the student knows. (Hebrew is not required for students here, so they give the Septuagint option for those who have only studied Greek). The class should be really interesting, considering that Exodus is the central story of the people of Israel. I'm also excited to keep using my Hebrew from last semester. The other is titled Daniel and Apocalyptic; it's primarily about the book of Daniel, but it's also covering apocalyptic literature in general.

So all in all, a lot of Biblical classes this semester. I'm basically getting all of my Old Testament electives out of the way at once. Still, I have to say the electives sound much more interesting than the required classes. Once the learning starts up again, you can look forward to blog posts that are actually about something.