Thomas Black left a comment on my post “Through the Bible in One Semester.” He asked whether my students were required to read the entire Bible during that one semester. Sadly, they are not. Each year I find myself trying to reduce the amount of reading that they have to do in the Bible. I currently have them reading 10–15 chapters per class, which I feel is almost manageable. Unfortunately, that means leaving out a lot of material.
I think it would be interesting sometime to pull together a comparison of different reading lists that professor have when they teach the Bible in one semester (or the OT in one semester). I try to make mine representative of the biblical text, but I am sure some people would be shocked at what I leave out (e.g., “How can you teach the Bible without covering the Psalms?!?”).
Thomas also mentioned that he plans to read the entire Bible during the month of February and blog about it. Sounds like fun. When I was in college I read through the Bible in a year and kept a journal of the experience. After seminary, I decided to move through a bit faster. I was working at the seminary while my wife finished her degree, but I had the whole week off between Christmas and New Years. During that week, I managed to get through the entire OT (in English). I thought about going on and finishing the NT in three days, but I was so exhausted by that point that I didn’t do it.
On January 24th, 2008 at 2:51 pm
Anyone wanting to “read the Bible” in a year (a bit longer than you propose) could try subscribing to the Bible in a year from Podbible http://podbible.com/bible-in-a-year that’s perhaps cheating, but in manageable daily chunks on the bus or driving to work…
For the course, I meant to comment and then got busy, my NT colleague and I have just finished planning such a course. If you email me tim at carey.ac.nz I can send you the outline. Basically for the OT part we work through (and around) Walton and Hill’s book OT Today, which seems the best I can manage in six weeks!
On April 11th, 2008 at 4:23 pm
Whoops! I didn’t start that bible in a month blog yet. That should be tops on my list when I’m back from Haiti in May.