the seminar method

The seminar method is the level of teaching often found in advance/graduate programs. The teacher is proficient in his topic, but is monitoring the degree to which this is true among his students. After all, the goal is to get the student up to speed with the current research material.

This is usually done through the open-ended question method. Not just at the beginning but all through, until the student is covering all the bases as well as the instructor.

The leader of an adult bible study should try for this same level of familiarity from his students, but when they are not there, they need to be led to saturation with the passage. There is no substitute. This prevents a bible study from becoming an inventory of various human experiences, because the question needs to be--needs to keep coming back to--what the passage says and means.

In actual graduate seminar method, the student has usually been asked to write a research essay. The essay is circulated for the group and then the writer is to defend what he says. At this level, the instructor is also assessing whether the students are asking good questions of the writer.

This is a good practice, as it keeps the most stimulating and productive conversations going, and makes each student grow in proficiency and articulation.
 
Interesting, but one of the dangers of that is scripture isn't applied to everyday life of the disciple, so it just becomes a critical/analytical text study, which any student can do in a literature class. Though the thing is the authors of a lot of literature that is studied are long dead, so you can't just email them or write to them and ask them...what did this mean?

But with God you can actually ask Him questions directly via prayer.

Most of the time He doesn't need a lot of questioning when the answers are right there in scripture in front of you. The holy spirit will illuminate them..you don't really need anyone to teach you.

I recall going along to a 'Jesus seminar' and it was kind of interesting that sort of assumed people only half believed Jesus was real. It was like going to a university class in which the passage studied was the Bible but that it was all somehow made up, or possibly embellished. And then they start to question did Jesus really say all the things he is said to have said in the Bible.

Kind of does your head in for a while. Maybe good for sceptics and atheists. But unnecessary for a believer that already has a relationship with God and seeking to deepen it.
 
Interesting, but one of the dangers of that is scripture isn't applied to everyday life of the disciple, so it just becomes a critical/analytical text study, which any student can do in a literature class. Though the thing is the authors of a lot of literature that is studied are long dead, so you can't just email them or write to them and ask them...what did this mean?

But with God you can actually ask Him questions directly via prayer.

Most of the time He doesn't need a lot of questioning when the answers are right there in scripture in front of you. The holy spirit will illuminate them..you don't really need anyone to teach you.

I recall going along to a 'Jesus seminar' and it was kind of interesting that sort of assumed people only half believed Jesus was real. It was like going to a university class in which the passage studied was the Bible but that it was all somehow made up, or possibly embellished. And then they start to question did Jesus really say all the things he is said to have said in the Bible.

Kind of does your head in for a while. Maybe good for sceptics and atheists. But unnecessary for a believer that already has a relationship with God and seeking to deepen it.


Did you mean the seminar method would be impractical? Ours were not; many of the questions were practical. That would depend entirely on the leader, which is why leaders of Christian groups need to be appointed by people who know them, who know they will deliver a balanced message, Titus 1. (We are all kind of in the Titus 1 situation relative to Paul because we don't have direct contact with Paul).

Otherwise, yes, you will get Dr. Bart Ehrmann at UNC Chapel Hill who has a very blurry view of a later Jesus invented by the apostles for what they "needed" to keep going. They guy doesn't even mention the reality of the 40 days even once.
 
I think depends on the host yes.
False teachers can lead people astray and have agendas. Though I suppose the seminar method allows for different questions to arise if the questions are open ones and not leading ones.

Bart Ehrmann kind of assumed that everyone knows what the 'Q' manuscript is when there is not actually a 'Q' manuscript in existence, it's rather what scholars imagine the 'perfect' manuscript is. Like it was some document that was lost and all the gospels were based on this one vanished manuscript...which probably never existed!
 
I think depends on the host yes.
False teachers can lead people astray and have agendas. Though I suppose the seminar method allows for different questions to arise if the questions are open ones and not leading ones.

Bart Ehrmann kind of assumed that everyone knows what the 'Q' manuscript is when there is not actually a 'Q' manuscript in existence, it's rather what scholars imagine the 'perfect' manuscript is. Like it was some document that was lost and all the gospels were based on this one vanished manuscript...which probably never existed!


His mistake was to think it was a document. I think there was a Q but it was oral/verbal. We should know this because the disciple group as a whole is not really the kind to write things down, although Matthew was. In some Greek households, a slave might be hired purely because he could write, while the owner could not. He was then like the owner's computer. This may provide a line of evidence about John Mark, through him. Mark's gospel may be the nearest thing we have to the verbal.

The shortest essential declarations of the apostles were in places like Acts 2:22--24, 3:13--15, 4:10. In 10:36--43 it has become elaborate but all the first elements are there. When Paul gives an official sample sermon in Acts 13, it is added to the general history of Israel: v24--39. All the first elements are there.

IN spite of that, I have a very hard time accepting Baumann's work when he fails to address the 40 days. HOw on earth do you "invent" such a huge time period or falsify it. And then there is the question of what the apostles's taught from--their midrashes. They taught from a set of about 20 OT passages that had hardly been used. Is he reading the text so little that he doesn't know about either the 40 days or the 20 odd passages? All I heard from him was theoretics and backstory that was apparently unwilling to look at such forensics.
 
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I thought the Alpha course was actually quite a good way to introduce the Bible and Jesus to seekers.
And the free breakfast was also quite welcome. Studying with snacks always works.
 
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