BIBLE STUDY METHODS AND CURRICULUM DEVELOPMENT
Take-Dorm Examinations
Due on or before Friday, August 1, 2008, 7 a.m.
You can put your papers in our boxes, email to rvelunta@utsem.net and liztapiaraquel@utsem.net, or post to our class blog at http://utsbibleandcurrdev.blogspot.com/.
Please answer the following questions as extensively as possible.
1. If parables are subversive speech then offer brief interpretations of the following parables of Jesus:
1.1 Tenants in the Vineyard (Matthew 21. 33-45, Mark 12. 1-12, and Luke 20. 9-19). What is the message/challenge of this parable for you and the communities you serve? What is the message/challenge of this parable to peasant farmers who have been dispossessed of their lands and have to work under unjust tenant systems?
1.2 Workers in the Vineyard (Matthew 20. 1-16). What is the message/challenge of this parable for you and the communities you serve? What is the message/challenge of this parable to daily-wage earners who have no security of tenure and whose families have to face the threat of starvation each day?
2. If biblical narratives talk about redeemers and or God’s champions, identify the redeemers/champions in the following stories and explain why in each case. Assume that you are leading a Bible study among women.
2.1 “The Fall” (Genesis 3)
2.2 Ruth, Naomi, and Orpah (Ruth 1)
3. Which character in the Bible do you best identify with? Why? How would this help explain your sense of calling or vocation?
4. Theological Education in many South East Asian countries is grounded on the Critical Asian Principle. How do you understand this fundamental cornerstone? What are its strengths and its weaknesses?
5. What is your understanding of the Church’s ministry to the present Philippine context and what is its implications in your task as cultural transformers?
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Vision Mission Statements and Needs Analysis are due Thursday, 31 July 2008. Please put in Prof. Lizette’s box.
Monday, July 28, 2008
Tuesday, July 8, 2008
The Parables of Jesus
How does one get crucified for telling Parables?
Introduction
Two very important reminders: First, If there is one fact we are perfectly sure about Jesus of Nazareth, it is that he was crucified by order of the Roman Prefect, Pontius Pilate, in the mid-30's CE for allegedly being "King of the Jews." And we don't need the Bible to confirm this. Two historians, the Jewish Josephus and the Roman Tacitus, attest to the “pernicious” superstition called Christianity and its crucified and supposedly risen leader.
Second, if there is one thing most scholars agree about Jesus is that he was a storyteller; that he taught in parables (like the many rabbis of his time). And his followers remembered and we have many of his stories in the gospels we now call Mark, Matthew and Luke.
The key question we hope to answer this term is one which has bothered many for centuries: If Jesus were a teacher of heavenly, spiritual truths then why was he executed as a political subversive between two social bandits or freedom fighters (lestes in Greek)? It appears that Jerusalem elites collaborated with their Roman overlords to get rid of Jesus because he was a threat to their political and economic Interests? How do we reconcile the teacher with the subversive? How does one get crucified for telling stories?
To answer this question, we need to try to construct the context of those so-called stories that may have gotten Jesus killed. If parables offer glimpses of everyday life in first-century Palestine, they also infer the larger whole of which those glimpses are part. We cannot understand the parables without first attending to the social reality they imply. For this task, we have Josephus, rabbinic and Roman sources. We also have anthropologists who do peasant studies. Then we have macro-sociologists' work on agrarian societies and aristocratic and bureaucratic empires.
The World of Jesus’ Parables
Social scientists map the contours of antiquity. These maps (like the maps we have in our cars) are but representations of reality. They help us understand the world of Jesus’ parables. Many of these scientists agree that the introduction of the plow (yes, the lowly “araro”) ushered the dawn of the domestication of animals for agricultural use, the eventual settlement of cultivators in villages, and the rise of an exploiter class. Agrarian societies dominated human life from about 3000 BCE to the advent of the industrial revolution in 1800 CE. One consequence of this social evolution was institutionalized bureaucracy. In the beginning there were cultivators and armed nomads who preyed on the cultivators by destroying their settlements and plundering their goods. Eventually, in order to save their settlements, the cultivators—instead of fighting—offered a portion of their produce to the nomads as bribe. The bribe eventually became tribute. The nomads soon discover they could live off the produce of villages. Warfare and plunder became their way of life and bureaucracy is its legitimization. Financial bureaucrats made sure that wealth remained in the hands of the few and the military made sure more not less came in. The elite had to legitimize exploitation through education, record-keeping (of debts particularly) and religion. The economy was based on redistribution of wealth through tribute and other forms of enforced obligations whose effect was to leave peasants at subsistence levels while urban elites lived in luxury. Sociologists also have remarked that agrarian societies have no history. Trans-historically or cross-culturally, if you see one, you've seen them all.
The world of ancient Palestine may be represented by the following levels (and one can argue that these tiers are as true today as they were then).
High-level elite, power players-1-2%
Retainers (agents of control), 5-7%
Merchants, peddlers, barter, 5%
Artisans, manual-skilled laborers, 3-7%
Peasants, 70-80%
Unclean, despised trade, nothing to sell but bodies,5%
Expendables, excess children of peasant farmers sent away as
Day laborers and beggars, 10-15%
This is the world of Jesus' parables. Jesus’ parables were not earthly stories about heavenly things; rather, they were earthy stories about heavy things: the reality of empire, of colonial rule, the violence of poverty and oppression, and the dispossessed’s collective longing for God’s intervention.
Jesus’ parables—stories that disclosed the structures of empire, evil and greed during his time and offered glimpses of God’s reign breaking through via the struggles of the dispossessed—were, most probably, the reason he got executed. Yes, telling parables can get one killed.
------------------------------------------------
From the works of William Herzog and the collective wisdom of Carlos Abesamis, Elizabeth Gravador-Dominguez, Benito Dominguez, John Dominic Crossan, Paulo Freire, and and Gerhard Lenski.
Introduction
Two very important reminders: First, If there is one fact we are perfectly sure about Jesus of Nazareth, it is that he was crucified by order of the Roman Prefect, Pontius Pilate, in the mid-30's CE for allegedly being "King of the Jews." And we don't need the Bible to confirm this. Two historians, the Jewish Josephus and the Roman Tacitus, attest to the “pernicious” superstition called Christianity and its crucified and supposedly risen leader.
Second, if there is one thing most scholars agree about Jesus is that he was a storyteller; that he taught in parables (like the many rabbis of his time). And his followers remembered and we have many of his stories in the gospels we now call Mark, Matthew and Luke.
The key question we hope to answer this term is one which has bothered many for centuries: If Jesus were a teacher of heavenly, spiritual truths then why was he executed as a political subversive between two social bandits or freedom fighters (lestes in Greek)? It appears that Jerusalem elites collaborated with their Roman overlords to get rid of Jesus because he was a threat to their political and economic Interests? How do we reconcile the teacher with the subversive? How does one get crucified for telling stories?
To answer this question, we need to try to construct the context of those so-called stories that may have gotten Jesus killed. If parables offer glimpses of everyday life in first-century Palestine, they also infer the larger whole of which those glimpses are part. We cannot understand the parables without first attending to the social reality they imply. For this task, we have Josephus, rabbinic and Roman sources. We also have anthropologists who do peasant studies. Then we have macro-sociologists' work on agrarian societies and aristocratic and bureaucratic empires.
The World of Jesus’ Parables
Social scientists map the contours of antiquity. These maps (like the maps we have in our cars) are but representations of reality. They help us understand the world of Jesus’ parables. Many of these scientists agree that the introduction of the plow (yes, the lowly “araro”) ushered the dawn of the domestication of animals for agricultural use, the eventual settlement of cultivators in villages, and the rise of an exploiter class. Agrarian societies dominated human life from about 3000 BCE to the advent of the industrial revolution in 1800 CE. One consequence of this social evolution was institutionalized bureaucracy. In the beginning there were cultivators and armed nomads who preyed on the cultivators by destroying their settlements and plundering their goods. Eventually, in order to save their settlements, the cultivators—instead of fighting—offered a portion of their produce to the nomads as bribe. The bribe eventually became tribute. The nomads soon discover they could live off the produce of villages. Warfare and plunder became their way of life and bureaucracy is its legitimization. Financial bureaucrats made sure that wealth remained in the hands of the few and the military made sure more not less came in. The elite had to legitimize exploitation through education, record-keeping (of debts particularly) and religion. The economy was based on redistribution of wealth through tribute and other forms of enforced obligations whose effect was to leave peasants at subsistence levels while urban elites lived in luxury. Sociologists also have remarked that agrarian societies have no history. Trans-historically or cross-culturally, if you see one, you've seen them all.
The world of ancient Palestine may be represented by the following levels (and one can argue that these tiers are as true today as they were then).
High-level elite, power players-1-2%
Retainers (agents of control), 5-7%
Merchants, peddlers, barter, 5%
Artisans, manual-skilled laborers, 3-7%
Peasants, 70-80%
Unclean, despised trade, nothing to sell but bodies,5%
Expendables, excess children of peasant farmers sent away as
Day laborers and beggars, 10-15%
This is the world of Jesus' parables. Jesus’ parables were not earthly stories about heavenly things; rather, they were earthy stories about heavy things: the reality of empire, of colonial rule, the violence of poverty and oppression, and the dispossessed’s collective longing for God’s intervention.
Jesus’ parables—stories that disclosed the structures of empire, evil and greed during his time and offered glimpses of God’s reign breaking through via the struggles of the dispossessed—were, most probably, the reason he got executed. Yes, telling parables can get one killed.
------------------------------------------------
From the works of William Herzog and the collective wisdom of Carlos Abesamis, Elizabeth Gravador-Dominguez, Benito Dominguez, John Dominic Crossan, Paulo Freire, and and Gerhard Lenski.
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