Family Man

There's not much to report this time, and frankly I'm starting to get annoyed. Apparently, a student approached the professor after the last class and said that she doesn't care what scholars say, she only cares about her relationship with Christ. That led to another disclaimer, blah, blah, blah, blah. I'm beginning to wonder if we'll ever get to the meat of the course.

I don't think it's even necessary. The class is well attended and the slew of questions that followed were quite friendly and sympathetic to her point of view, and the discussion ranged from the importance of critical thinking to Jack Van Impe's hairdo (don't ask). The odd thing is that she mentioned Paul's execution being in 56 again, which is odd. I don't want to waste class time asking a question on such a trivial matter during class, but I'll try to see if I can get her out of class for a clarification.

What was discussed (briefly) was the timeline of the canon and a bit about what their orientation. For instance, Matthew is considered to have a Judaic orientation, with Matthew bending over backwards to show that Jesus met the requirements for Messiahship. Luke, on the other hand, was written for a Greek audience, while it has been argued that Mark was for a Latin audience, though she was rather dubious about that.

There was a little tidbit about the dating of John. It seems that Jews had certain exemptions from certain practices the Romans required: particularly, certain taxes and the requirement to worship the Emperor. Christians, as well as other groups, claimed to be Jews and, therefore, also exempt. The Romans asked the Jewish Rabbinic leaders to clarify who was, and wasn't, Jewish. This was circa 90.

They not only came back with the statement that Christians weren't Jews, but it was a requirement that Christians be denounced in the synagogues. The significance of this for John? It is the only gospel that tells Christians what to do when they are denounced in the synagogues. From that (among other reasons) scholars deduce that John must have been written after this event, in the last decade of the first century.

That's about it for this installment. I hope to have more to report next time. Disclaimer: I am flying without notes, so errors in the above may be my own.

pug846

It might be easier if you just e-mail your prof your questions or go during her office hours.

Kosh

Then what is she doing in the class? She
(and all the other Xians) have no right
imposing their selfish agenda on the rest
of the world.

Perhaps you should print this out and
hand it around, asking the girl to pay
attention to Article II...
http://www.locksley.com/6696/norights.htm

Thanks for pointing out the denunciation
bit. It makes the dating obvious and is
much easier to follow than the volumes of
BS usually spilled out by others on this
board.