Last month, I finished a Seminary 101 series that was about going to seminary. We talked about choosing a seminary, what to do if you decide not to go, and how seminary is essentially a part-time job reading. But in considering this work for Thursdays, I wanted to take a different route to talk about seminary. I want to use this series to take things I’m learning in class and share them with you. Then you can use them. Win/win for everyone.1
Right now I’m taking “Women in the Old Testament: Text and Context.” We are looking at different ways of analyzing texts and one of the first things we talked about was dialogue. Who is talking in the text and to whom? This question will typically highlight the main characters. It will also frequently reveal attitudes of different characters. Reading the Old Testament can seem tricky, but often our first step should be to slow down. The second step is to read it again. The stories in the Hebrew Scriptures are shaped specifically; their design is foreign to us, but that should be expected given the distance between our context and theirs.
Story 1:
We’re going to look at two separate stories for practice. First is the story of Hagar. Hagar is mostly found in two chapters of Genesis, 16 and 21. If you have time, pause and read both chapters and note who is talking, who they are talking to, and who never speaks to each other.
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