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12/6/99
(19:15)11/29/99Grades for weeks 1-15 have been sent out to each class member individually. NOTE: Week 9 was the fall break and Week 10 was the Mid-Term exam; thus no forum and assignment grades. The final exam will be sent out at the end of this week and will be due back via e-mail attachment on Saturday, Dec. 18.
(18:15)The assignments for forum 15 are now posted and have also been sent out via e-mail. The grades for weeks 13 and 14 will be sent out via individual e-mail in the next couple of days. The SBL and NABPR meetings in Boston before Thanksgiving were quite enjoyable and helpful. Added to this was the opportunity to visit with numerous friends and former students now professors across the US and Canada. Of course, the book and computer software displays were very interesting - as well as tempting with discounts ranging from 20% to 90% off the suggested retail price. On Tuesday after the meetings concluded Claire and I drove across to Niagra Falls and spent a couple of days there relaxing and sight-seeing.
11/16/99
(21:05)11/1/99I will be in Boston, MA, Friday through Wednesday (Nov. 19-24), attending the national meetings of the professional societies that I'm a member of, the Society of Biblical Literature (SBL) and the National Association of Baptist Professors of Religion (NABPR). The forum assignment for week 14 will be e-mailed to everyone Thursday afternoon of this week. The work schedule remains the same as usual, with the Monday deadlines. The grades for week 14 will go out around Thanksgiving.
(20:47)The forum discussion questions have now been e-mailed to each member of the class for this week's assignment. It can be accessed also through the Class Schedule page. Some refinements on the guidelines for answering the questions and the determination of the weekly forum discussion grading have been made. Some revisions of cycle of assigned questions to each class member have been made to the forum question assignments page. Still needing pictures and bio from some in the class! Mid-Term exam grades will be e-mailed individually later on this week.
10/13/99
(07:25)10/11/99David Norris' picture has now been posted in his bio profile. Check it out! Quite impressive Citadel picture. Still need one more bio and a couple of pictures.
(17:20)10/7/99Grades for weeks 5 and 6 will be sent out tonight. Be sure to check the Assignment page for revised schedule regarding mid-term exam. This will impact the cycle of forum responsibilities as well. Next week will be devoted entirely to a 'take-home' mid-term exam which will be sent out one week from today via e-mail assignment. It will be along the lines mentioned earlier in this bulletin board and will cover 1 Thessalonians. Pictures and some bio sketches still needed. Check the class roll page. Need to begin thinking about a possible time to come over to our house one evening for a cook-out. Send me an e-mail regarding the best day of the week and possible dates that are free on your calendar.
(20:41)9/29/99George Rossi's picture is now posted with his bio sketch. Check it out! Week 5 grades will be e-mailed by this week-end. The revival services I led at Fairforest Baptist Church in Spartanburg Sunday through Wednesday got me behind schedule on virtually everything.
(23:25)9/27/99Cindy's bio sketch is also now posted. We're close to getting the personal section of the web site complete. Just need some pictures to finish it out. I want to congratulate most everyone for getting the initial response to their assigned question posted much earlier this week. This should provide more time for exchange of ideas in the forum.
(16:12)George has sent me his bio sketch and its now posted. Thanks. Still need pictures from George and David. I've gotten my scanning equipment updated now where photos can be scanned in quite easily. If you don't have a digitized picture, just drop a photo print off at my GWU office and I'll scan it in, send you a copy of the digitized form and return your print, as I post it. My first encounter directly with a computer virus came this week. A e-mail was sent to the class with notification and instructions. Let me know if you found it. For nearly 15 years of running computers under IBM OS/2 WARP which was completely immune to computer viruses, this new experience with viruses targeted exclusively to Windows operating systems makes me want to shift back to OS/2 or migrate over to Linux the minute they get the client server up to par.
(18:05)9/23/99The grades for week five have gone out to each class member via e-mail The individual work on the assigned question is moving into greater depth and insight. More interaction is needed from other members of the class to the work done by the 'specialist' on each question that week. The forum discussion grades reflect this for week 5. I still need the bio information and picture for most of the class. This is separate from the survey form at the beginning of the semester. Check out what David and Tim have provided at the Class Roster page by clicking their names.
(15:40)9/14/99The grades through week four have been sent out individually to each class member. You should have received yours by now via e-mail note. The shift in structure is taking some time for everyone to adjust to, but generally the quality of work done for week 4 was good. It is especially important for everyone to follow through on his/her assigned question for the forum discussion and to post the results of the research as early in the week as possible. This will provide more time for the rest of the class to interact with observations and questions about details. The nature of the new forum structure creates greater dependency of everyone in the class on the person working with each assigned question. As I survey the pericopes for the rest of the course, only the 'Man of Lawlessness' passage in 2 Thess. should have the complexity and length to it that was true of week 4. That one was tough and long!!
(15:05)9/13/99A change in the structure of the forum has come about in response to the request this morning of several in the class. The changes should make the load of answering the questions more manageable. Click here for a link to a listing of the assignments. A link is also set up in the Assignments Schedule page.
(17:30)9/7/99
General remarks about week 3 homework:David is doing a good job of incorporating the insights of others in the forum into his summations with proper credit to others in the forum. Remember: the homework assignment should reflect thoughtful interaction with the forum discussion and commentary etc. sources, not just copy & paste directly from excerpts of the forum discussion. One aspect of the prayer nature of the proem in Paul and its connection to the berakah is the pattern of synagogue worship opening and closing with prayer. Early Christian worship modeled its practice after the synagogue pattern. Against this backdrop Paul's letters open and close with prayer (the benedictio that we'll see in the conclusio section of 1 & 2 Thessalonians). Evidently, as John L. White and others advocate -- and I concur -- Paul sets a similar tone of worship in his letters as a part of his communication strategy to add tones of persuasiveness to his letters, in light of the fact that all his letters were written with the specific purpose of being read as a part of Christian worship in the churches to whom the letters were addressed. The reference to 'chosen' in 1:4 with the causal hoti clause in 1:5 providing a basis for the reference "your election" (ten eklogen humon) underscores way the gospel was presented and received (1:6-7) in Thessalonica. One important insight here about 'election' is that it must never, ever diminish the importance of human preaching and human response to that preaching. Modern Calvinism often is guilty of this distortion. The time references in the passage raise important questions regarding how soon after the Pauline mission in Thessalonia the letter was written. Verses 8 and 9 are especially important to probe, especially considering the means and speed (or lack thereof) of communication in the mid-first century. Only two picked up on this implication. Overall the class is making real progress in getting into the words of the scripture text and reflecting on their meaning and implications for contemporary Christians. Some still need to invest in more technical commentary tools for their work. I have posted a revision of lesson 3 questions incorporating some of the above exegetical issues more prominently in the questions. The grading of the homework for week 3 is a bit more stringent as we are getting deeper into the pattern of exegesis.
(23:05)David Norris' e-mail has changed, and the change has been posted on the class roster page. You will want to note this in your e-mail address book.
(18:07)Lesson three assignments for the forum discussion have gone out. As a background reading for the analysis of the proem in 1 Thess. a copy of a PhD seminar paper done by a doctoral student in my seminar on Critical Methodology went out to each member of the class in PDF format. Members, let me know if you have any trouble viewing the document in the Adobe Acrobat Reader. The original paper format was changed in the conversion to the PDF format in order to condense the paper and present the part most relevant to our studies. Last week's homework assignments and forum participation will be graded and the grades e-mailed to each class member within the next 24 hours. Tim Spencer sent in his bio information and a picture. They're now available for viewing on the Class Roster page in the hyperlink to his name. Need the info from everyone else ASAP.
9/4/99
(6:00)The Corpus Paulinum forum web site is a helpful source of information about Pauline studies. Their URL is http://metalab.unc.edu/corpus-paul/. Especially helpful is the page on links to various URLs devoted to Pauline studies: http://metalab.unc.edu/corpus-paul/#a9. Some worthwhile information about 1/2 Thessalonians is available to supplement the commentaries etc.
9/2/99
(14:20)9/1/99From your responses to the forum 2 discussion questions, I see that you're getting the hang of an internet disucssion forum for an online course. Way to go! I will occasionally jump into the discussion, but not always. Mostly the forum is intended to be your interaction working together in answering the questions as a part of the weekly assignments and as a part of the exegetical process.
(16:00)8/30/99Terry and I spent time on the chat room Monday evening. Let's try this one for another week; Dr. C. pointed out another chat room possibility that she likes much better. We'll give it a try if needed. Also, I'm checking into setting up a private bulletin board for use in the forum discussion questions. Just as soon as I have time to check out the possibilities and test those that look promising I'll let you know with instructions. I do think that with the week three forum questions that I'll discontinue inserting the text tables in the e-mails. Some have browsers that handle them quite well, but others don't and the tables get scrambled as a result.
(21:12)8/26/99Almost all of the assignments came in by the noon deadline today. They are graded, and a grade report containing the WE1 and Forum 1 participation grades, along with averages, has been e-mailed to each student who has turned in the assigned work. This grade report will come each week after the homework assignments are graded. The grades reflect on excellent work being done in the course so far. Most everyone did some serious reflection over the nature of ancient letters and how helpful this background understanding can be for exegeting the content of 1/2 Thessalonians. Week 2 gets us into the Praescriptio of 1 Thessalonians. Each day reflects some improvements in the work being done; I think all of us are beginning to get "the hang" of how to do this more efficiently and better.
(21:25)8/25/99Most everyone is getting into the discussion questions for forum 1. At this point we should be concentrating on the last couple of questions that require more reflection. One important reminder: not everyone is clicking on Reply to All when you respond to the incoming e-mail. If you click on Reply to Sender, your response only goes out to the single individual, not to all the group. But you're getting better at this.
(19:50)8/23/99One more correction to the e-mail addresses: Tim Spencer's updated address is now Spencermail@prodigy.net. This update is made in the class roster page already. We should have the final e-mail address within the next couple of days so that the class setup will be completed.
(14:45)A correction to Terry Dugger's e-mail address needs to be inserted into your e-mail address book for this class. The correct one is terrydugger@netscape.net. The forum discussion questions for this week went out to everyone about 4:00 am this morning. Am looking forward to some feedback and talk, talk, talk. From the chat room survey responses thus far, Monday evening 10:00-11:00 looks like the time slot most convenient to everyone. Will schedule it then but it can be changed if needed. Won't try one this week unless there is urgent need. You will be receiving a reminder weekly about the homework assignment from an internet PIM service I subscribe to called AnyDay.Com. It's a neat free service with a lot of good features.