31 January 2006
31 January 2006 Students in this class will prepare two original epistles or "creative history" papers (due dates are on the Course Schedule). These papers are exercises in "historical imagination," that is, exercises based on historical data and using the imagination to view and understand those data in a new way. To do these exercises well, you must be willing to enter fully into each historical situation--feel the dust, taste the salt, hear and smell the animals in the market, see the veiled women and bronzed men. You also must be as familiar as you can with the data themselves. This means both the message of the Biblical texts under discussion, as well as any available historical information about their audiences and socio-political environments.
To support your own viewpoint, it is helpful to do as much explicit discussion of the Biblical material as possible. To be persuasive to your reader, you must also remember to give the Scriptural references for your ideas, whether implicit to your discussion or explicitly mentioned; for full credit, use the standard form for biblical citations, in parentheses in the body of your text.
These papers will form the basis for small group discussions in the class period when they are due, so be prepared to further discuss and defend your perspective among your student colleagues. Please confine your answers to 750-1000 words.
There are six choices of topics:
to
see the Grading Protocol for these assignments