Recent Books in Biblical Studies

Carol R. Fontaine, Smooth Words: Women, Proverbs and Performance in Biblical Wisdom
R.S. Sugirtharajah, Postcolonial Criticism and Biblical Interpretation
Sarah Nicholson, Three Faces of Saul: An Intertextual Approach to Biblical Tragedy     

Beyond Biblical Literacy: Developing Readerly Readers in Teaching Biblical Studies

Theological education in biblical studies often has focused on information, but it needs to emphasize developing skills and sensibilities in students that will produce confident, imaginative, and attentive readers. To form readers with a disciplined imagination—what we are calling “readerly readers”—educators need to inculcate skills and sensibilities that will enable students to interact with the text as a living voice, rather than as an object to be mastered, and to allow the text to provoke difficult, profound, or long‐term questions.     

Recent Books in ≡ Biblical Studies

Books reviewed in this article:
J. P. Burgess, Why Scripture Matters: Reading the Bible in a Time of Church Conflict
T. E. Fretheim and K. Froehlich, The Bible as Word of God in a Postmodern Age
R. S. Hess and G. J. Wenham (eds), Make the Old Testament Live from Curriculum to Classroom
M. E. Mills, Images of God in the Old Testament
R. J. Clifford, The Wisdom Literature
S. L. McKenzie and M. P. Graham (eds), The Hebrew Bible Today: An Introduction to the Critical Issues
P. R. Davies, Scribes and Schools: The Canonization of the Hebrew Scriptures
F. F. Segovia and M. A. Tolbert (eds), Teaching the Bible: The Discourses and Politics of Biblical Pedagogy     

Student Learning Outcomes for Biblical Studies in the Liberal Arts

What is the role of biblical studies in a liberal arts curriculum? At the 2009 North American Society of Biblical Literature conference, a panel of seven Bible scholars provided brief analyses and arguments about the appropriate goals of teaching biblical studies in undergraduate contexts in this historical moment. They consider and critique the notion of specific Student Learning Outcomes or Objectives (SLOs) for courses about the Bible. In the process they address questions such as: what is the relative importance of “coverage” (biblical literacy, disciplinary knowledge and methods, and the historical creation of the biblical texts) versus modern and historical reception and uses of these texts? In their contributions, the authors analyze ways that a biblical studies course can develop the critical reading and writing skills that are the hallmark of undergraduate education. Some authors find these skills furthered by not bracketing from study the normative truth claims in the texts and instead strategically and critically encouraging the identity work and religious seeking associated with religious uses of these texts. Others call attention to the institutional and classroom power dynamics which inform and are constituted by the current student learning outcomes movement.     

Implementing Effective Educational Practices at Scales of Social Importance

Implementing evidence-based practices is becoming both a goal and standard across medicine, psychology, and education. Initial successes, however, are now leading to questions about how successful demonstrations may be expanded to scales of social importance. In this paper, we review lessons learned about scaling up evidence-based practices gleaned from our experience implementing school-wide positive behavioral interventions and supports (PBIS) across more than 23,000 schools in the USA. We draw heavily from the work of Flay et al. (Prev Sci 6:151–175, 2005. doi: 10.1007/s11121-005-5553-y) related to defining evidence-based practices, the significant contributions from the emerging “implementation science” movement (Fixsen et al. in Implementation research: a synthesis of the literature, University of South Florida, Louis de la Parte Florida Mental Health Institute, The National Implementation Research Network (FMHI Publication #231), Tampa 2005), and guidance we have received from teachers, family members, students, and administrators who have adopted PBIS.     

Using the Wesleyan Quadrilateral to Teach Biblical Studies in Christian Liberal Arts Colleges

Biblical studies professors in Christian liberal arts colleges typically face greater hostility from students nurtured in fundamentalist churches than they do from those who attend mainline churches. Guiding them through their first academic study of the Bible poses many challenges. To avoid the course becoming a battlefield, and to facilitate integration on a higher level, the Wesleyan Quadrilateral provides a middle way between right‐wing and left‐wing extremes. This approach gives priority to the Bible as the primary source for determining theology and practice, but relies heavily on tradition, reason, and experience as well. It also promotes interaction with the spiritual, moral, and ethical concerns expressed in the biblical texts. To adopt the Quadrilateral involves active concern for character formation, inspiring students to become better people. If we merely dispense historical‐critical or literary information without considering contemporary relevance, we bore students and fail in our duties as educators.     

Against Educational Humanism: Rethinking Spectatorship in Dewey and Freire

In this essay, I investigate the human act of spectatorship as found in the work of John Dewey and Paulo Freire. I will show that each is thoroughly anti-watching when it comes to educational practices. I then problematize their positions by looking at their spectatorial commitments in the realm of aesthetics. Both Dewey and Freire have a different opinion about spectatorship when it is a matter of watching art. I claim that this different in opinion derives from the practice of ‘educational humanism’. By educational humanism, I mean the tendency to posit stock human traits that derive from pedagogical practices. Ultimately, I will take a stand against educational humanism, against the process of back-forming, from educational circumstances, the desirability, or the undesirability, of human traits.     

Theological and Biblical Interpretations of Current Movements and Emerging Paradigms Within Bereavement Studies

Among the predominant themes in the last few years of bereavement studies have been those around disenfranchised grief, masculine grief, spirituality and grief, and the movement from medical/hierarchical models of grief work/counseling to a more non-hierarchical model that emerges internally, inherently, and intrinsically within the bereaved. In the latter model the grief counselor becomes a facilitator or, as Alan Wolfelt noted at the Chicago ADEC conference, a companioning presence. The intent of this article is to take this conversation into the realm of theology, and/or biblical theology. The following offers theological analysis of what is already good clinical theory. Integrating theories from anthropology and theology, this article will explore the concepts of voice, etic and emic theory, and incarnational theology as they relate to emerging patterns in bereavement studies. It will also relate a model of the Kingdom of God to disenfranchised grief, as well as offer support for the theory of masculine grief from biblical sources and complementary fields of study.     

After the Facts: Alternative Student Evaluation for Active Learning Pedagogies in the Undergraduate Biblical Studies Classroom

After laying a theoretical basis for an active learning orientation in the classroom, the co‐authors describe methods they developed to evaluate active learning in two different settings of introductory courses in biblical studies. They argue that honoring diverse learning and communication styles among students does not need to compromise academic rigor. The authors show how portfolio‐based assessment of student learning allows students a range of ways to demonstrate their mastery of the material. Examples are provided of components of student portfolios from their undergraduate classes.