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The Portfolio Interview
March 28th was my portfolio interview. This one was via Skype (I am an off campus student). On the other side of the internet were two professors: my program coordinator and another faculty member of my choosing. I had requested one of my Greek teachers, and he was willing to participate. This ended up meaning I was being interviewed by two New Testament scholars, when I had been doing my thesis work in the Old Testament. When we logged on, they seemed happy to talk to me, and were enjoying the opportunity to have the interview.
The interview was structured around the graduation portfolio and the six learning objectives. They asked for some clarifications on my doctrinal statement (which ended up being a matter of not expressing myself clearly, rather than being a heretic- whew!). We chatted briefly about the learning objectives of being a mature disciple of Christ, and how it is difficult to answer that question (in my portfolio, I simply referred to a letter from my pastor and left it at that).
Graduates of a MABLE (Master of Arts in Biblical Languages and Exegesis) need to be able to sight read and translate Hebrew and Greek. They saw from my MABLE exam that I seemed to be stronger in Hebrew (which is understandable, since my thesis was Old Testament based, so I’ve been working with Hebrew more in the past couple of years). For an extra test in the interview, they asked me to turn to a passage in my Greek New Testament and give a sight translation of a few verses (Mark 1:1-3). I did so, and then they asked “If you were to do a serious exegesis of this passage, what lines of inquiry would you pursue?” They gave me a couple of minutes to gather my thoughts, and I came up with an acceptable answer.
The final MABLE objective is to articulate major themes in the testaments. They asked me to describe how the Abrahamic covenant plays out in both testaments. This seemed random to me, and I was able to talk about the Old Testament easily, but had trouble remembering specific references in the New Testament- for example, I mentioned Hebrews, but not Galatians. However they said I was using the language of Galatians as I spoke in general terms, so they were satisfied I was at least familiar with the ideas. I felt this was the hardest part of the interview.
They logged off for a few minutes to discuss matters privately, then called me back. They spoke in glowing terms, giving me 7s, 8s, and 9s on the evaluation form they had. They recommended that I keep using theological and exegetical commentaries as I study the Scriptures (something I would do anyway?)
They then gave me an opportunity to give feedback on my seminary experience. I mentioned a couple of things, such as perhaps offering courses on things like charity law (something I’ve had to deal with a fair bit since graduating college), French (if they are trying to equip the church in Canada, this is a big deal in my mind!), and perhaps altering how they teach Greek and Hebrew. I knew the Seminary has already been thinking about that (teaching Greek and Hebrew as living languages instead of just a grammatical-translation method), but I added my voice to that growing movement. My Greek professor revealed he was actually planning on attempting it for the first time this fall.
Seminary update: March 5th, 2018
Last week I did most of my graduation portfolio. I retooled a doctrinal statement I had made when I was graduating college, brainstormed a three year professional development plan, got a letter from my pastor, and secured a proctor for my MABLE exam (which is this Friday!). I wrote the portfolio essay, but it is only 4 pages right now. The guidelines suggest 6-8 pages. Looks like I’m too concise. I’ll have to expand on parts of it. The graduation portfolio is due next week, on March 14th, and this week’s MABLE exam is part of the portfolio.
Goals for this week:
- Practice parsing and translating some Hebrew. I plan to practice on Judges 18:1-13, since that is where I am this week in the concordance project I’ve been working on (a continuation of the Experiential Integration from a couple summers ago). Study as necessary, based on how I do.
- Practice parsing and translating some Greek. I plan to practice on Acts 18:24-19:7. I was studying Acts a couple years ago in Advanced Greek Exegesis, and this just picks up where I left off. Study as necessary.
- Write MABLE exam on Friday
- (If I have time): Expand portfolio essay
It still feels weird to be done the thesis. I look back and am amazed that such a project was actually completed.
Reading Challenge 2017: The Lost Books
Looks like I’m going to fall short of my reading goals for this year. I’m not going to fret too much, since it has been the year of the thesis. At the beginning of the year, I identified 31 books/types of books I wanted to read. I fell short on 9 categories (but ended up reading four extra Rick Riordan books). Why am I writing this post? I don’t know, I suppose I just like thinking about, listing and categorizing things. Plus I imagine I’ll make reading goals for 2018 soon, so this is preliminary work, where I look back before looking ahead.
- A Book on Communication. Never got around to this one. On the bright side, I’ve been communicating. I did pulpit supply about a dozen times this year, plus I’ve written pages and pages of my thesis. I’ve accessed Turabian’s Manual for Writers multiple times. I just haven’t read a complete book on this topic.
- A Book in Hebrew, a Book in Greek, and a Book in Aramaic. Since my thesis is on Jeremiah 32-38, I’ve been reading through the prophet Jeremiah in Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic. I haven’t finished, however, and have 7 chapters left in each (chs. 39-45).
- A Book of Exegesis. Hahaha. I’ve read hundreds and hundreds of pages of exegesis as research for my thesis. Commentaries. Journal articles. Doctoral dissertations. Just no complete books. Maybe one day I’ll attempt to estimate how much reading I actually did for my thesis, just for fun. I was trying to read all of Harrison’s Tyndale Old Testament Commentary on Jeremiah at the same time as I’ve been reading Jeremiah in Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic, but haven’t finished it.
- A Historical book from the Patristic era. Hmm. Nope, didn’t do anything in this regard this year.
- A book on some aspect of the Canadian Forces. I’ve read piles of things this year such as qualification standards, regulations, instructional guides, but no complete books.
- A book on some aspect of a language. Language study has been exciting this year. My wife and I have taken an interest in watching Korean dramas these days, and one day I took some time to surf the internet to find ways to learn the Korean language (I had a Korean roommate in college, too, so the interest has been on the backburner for a long time). I dabbled a bit with the alphabet and some basics for a few weeks, but wisely decided to lay it aside to focus on thesis work. Perhaps I’ll pick it up again just for fun once I’ve graduated. Meanwhile, I found two language learning tools that not only have Korean modules, but also French. I decided to use the French options to refine my French a bit more this year (since I’m a missionary in Quebec).
- The first tool is a free website (and app) called Duolingo. The system treats language learning as a game, where the user learns “skills” as they practice and learn. Skills are broken down into different lessons (from 1 to 8 lessons, depending on the complexity of the concepts). A lesson takes me about 5 minutes to complete. Different skills have different strengths, depending on how often you review. The system also keeps track of streaks (how many days in a row you log in), and gives you experience points. The system tests listening, speaking, reading and writing from English to French and French to English. I found it very helpful for refining especially my written French. There are also challenge options for those familiar with aspects of the language. I’ve worked through all 81 skills in the game, and am now reviewing to gain more experience points. Apparently I’m a “Level 14” French student, according to my experience points. I’m not sure how high the levels go. The system also claims I’m 60% fluent in French right now, which I think is related to the strength bars on the various skills. I find I need to do about two lessons a day to maintain the 60% rating. (I take the word “fluent” with a grain of salt, since the program arbitrarily decides how fast I forget vocab, even if I learned some things 25+ years ago in Elementary school and still haven’t forgotten them.) I don’t know everything about French, and Duolingo is still helpful with reviewing some of the more complicated verb tenses. Our family has incorporated Duolingo into our homeschool for our kids to practice French.
- The second language tool (or family of tools) I found is Frenchpod101.com, part of the Innovative Languages family. A basic membership is free, but there are options to pay for more stuff. They have a free podcast (with about 4 or 5 lessons a week at different skill levels), word of the day mailings, a “daily dose of language” app with a mini-lesson, as well as word lists, flashcards, courses, etc, etc. Their marketing is fairly aggressive, but I’m only in it for the free stuff. When you first sign up for a basic membership, you have 10 days or so of “premium access”. If you know what you want, you can spend those 10 days downloading piles of stuff that you won’t have access to once the premium access expires. I’m working through the Upper Intermediate French course right now (about 1 lesson a week), plus I listen to the free podcasts (three or four a week, usually while I’m cooking) and check the “daily dose of language” app most days.
- So… um, no, I haven’t read any complete books on an aspect of a language, but I’ve been refining my French in other ways, and have dabbled a bit with Korean. I noticed that both Duolingo and Innovative Languages have modern Hebrew and Greek modules as well.
- A Romance. I suppose I missed reading from that category, too. On the bright side, I’m living out a romance with my wife!
Thesis Journal: June 20th, 2017
-I read Jeremiah 14 in the Septuagint this morning. It followed the Hebrew version fairly closely, with only a couple of variations. The biggest change I noticed was in 14:15. The Hebrew has “‘There will be no sword or famine in this land’—by sword and famine those prophets shall meet their end!” (חֶ֣רֶב וְרָעָ֔ב לֹ֥א יִהְיֶ֖ה בָּאָ֣רֶץ הַזֹּ֑את בַּחֶ֤רֶב וּבָֽרָעָב֙ יִתַּ֔מּוּ הַנְּבִאִ֖ים הָהֵֽמָּה׃). The Septuagint loses the repetition of “Sword”: “Sword and famine will not come upon this land.’ They will die a sickly death, and the prophets will come to an end by famine” (Μάχαιρα καὶ λιμὸς οὐκ ἔσται ἐπὶ τῆς γῆς ταύτης Ἐν θανάτῳ νοσερῷ ἀποθανοῦνται, καὶ ἐν λιμῷ συντελεσθήσονται οἱ προφῆται).
Reading the Septuagint of Jeremiah is only loosely related to my actual thesis work. One of my reading goals this year is to read something in Greek. I figured reading through Jeremiah in the Septuagint this year made sense, since my thesis work is on the book of Jeremiah.
Yesterday I had slapped together a draft of chapter 1 of the thesis, using material from other papers I’ve already done. My chairman had suggested I needed to keep chapter 1 short, since most of my work needs to go into chapter 3. He suggested chapter 1 should be about 10-15 pages. My draft from yesterday was 16 pages. Today I read through chapter 1 and did the following:
- Moved a couple of paragraphs to the introduction. Basically, the introduction from the proposal now forms the heart of the introduction of the thesis itself. The introduction needs a bit more work, however.
- Realized about 3 pages of material will actually fit better in chapter 2, so I removed it. (the page count is now about 13 pages)
- Still need to add a subsection on Limitations of Study. I wrote a sentence, then drew a blank. I’ll need to come back to this again.
- Since the material comes from a couple of different projects, it ends up introducing James Muilenburg twice- once in the scholarship background section, once in the rhetorical criticism section. I think he’s needed in both places, but I’ll have to reword it a bit.
- Fixed a few errors. Took note of comments from instructors from original papers. Still need to address some of the things they brought up.
- I pulled another couple of sentences out of the proposal to connect rhetorical criticism and narrative criticism and transition between the two. This is probably more of a place-holder, however. I should probably integrate them better.
- Still waiting for a library book to arrive in the mail
Draft of chapter 1 due in six weeks (end of July).
Art is never complete, it is merely abandoned
I don’t remember where I first heard that line, but I usually remember it at the end of writing a research paper. That’s how I know it’s the end.
I’m done my research paper for Advanced Greek Exegesis. Sort of. As with many of my research papers, I feel like there’s so many more things I didn’t do, sources I didn’t check, etc. I’m hoping this is a good sign when it comes to thesis writing. I could do more than I’m currently doing.
So my paper is “sort of” done. I could have done more, but I felt it was time to stop working on it and move on to other things. It is not complete, merely abandoned and turned in.
Seminary Goals: 9-14 May
Experiential Integration
Last week (week 2 of 18), I logged 4 hours of EI activities, bringing my total up to 8. One of the things I did was have a meeting with the elder of my church to discuss a preaching schedule for the rest of the year. The plan right now is for me to be in charge of the teaching for 5 weeks this summer: July 2nd, 9th, 23rd, 30th and Aug 6th. (Yes, these are Saturdays, since our church recently started meeting on Saturdays instead of Sundays). I plan to do a series on spiritual gifts (in accordance with the grander vision of the church). But first I need to get that pesky Greek Exegesis paper out of the way before I can begin prep work.
As for the rest of church leadership, two things have surprised me so far. We’ve found dog poop in the church parking lot. Presumably from the neighbour’s dog. Not the sort of thing I thought I’d be doing in church leadership, but someone had to go knock on their door. (it went very well, and we haven’t found poop in the parking lot since then). The other unexpected dossier is the issue of copyright licensing. Someone suggested our church is doing it wrong, but I’m not convinced. My goal for this week is to track down the correct interpretation of the Copyright Act and make sure we are operating accordingly.
So yes, apparently church leadership includes dog poop and copyright laws. Who knew?
Concordance work… um…. no progress during the week. At all. But the wife’s been sick. To make up for it, though, I took an hour on Sunday and worked through 17 verses, finishing Leviticus chapter 8. Goal: um… finish Greek paper. Any concordance work is “would be nice” at this point.
Advanced Greek Exegesis
Is this still on my list? *sigh*. I did manage to finish the research stage. More like I forced myself to stop researching and start writing instead. By the end of last week, I basically have a 1st draft. There’s no conclusion yet, and I have 17 pages when it’s supposed to be a 12-14 page paper, so I still need to trim it down a bit. My goal this week: Finish it and send it in!
Seminary Goals: 2-7 May
Advanced Greek Exegesis
I surpassed my goal last week! I actually finished going through all five of the library books I requested, as well as all the primary research and textual variants and consulting indexes of Greek grammars. This is actually surprising to me, since I was feeling in a bit of a slump for part of the week and wasn’t always as productive as I could have been. Just for fun I’ll put pictures of the various sources I’ve consulted so far.
As I look ahead to this week, it would be nice to finish the research stage. I really need to clear this project off my plate, to make way for new things. The EI is a prime example of a new thing. EI time suffered this week because of this Greek paper still hanging around.
Experiential Integration
Concordance: Now at Leviticus 8:19. Only five verses last week. Not nothing, but not much accomplished, mainly because I’m still concentrating on the Greek paper.
Logbook: I logged about 4 hours of EI activities last week. The syllabus suggests that the total EI should be somewhere from 150-250 hours of a committment. Since my contract is for 18 weeks, I should probably try to aim for between 8-13 hours per week. I’ll have to work up to that. With the Greek paper still on the radar, there’s not much time available for EI activities. My goals for this week will be to maintain the 4 hours and hopefully get the Greek paper taken care of.
Seminary goals: 24-30 April 2016
Advanced Greek Exegesis
Last week the books I requested from the Briercrest library arrived in the mail. They are due back in mid May. I could always renew them with a simple email, but it is a good goal to be done with them by then so that it won’t be necessary and I can just mail them back. Last week I set out to do primary research. I often skipped this step in college and jumped straight into the commentaries, but I think my research is better now if I actually work through it myself first. I’m comparing the three accounts of Paul’s conversion in the book of Acts: chapter 9, then his speech in Jerusalem in Acts 22 and his speech before King Agrippa in chapter 26. So for primary research, I’ve laid out the three accounts (in Greek) side by side in a table, and am noting the differences and similarities between them. As I worked on it, I ended up dividing it into a four different sections: introductory comments, Paul’s life before conversion, the conversion itself, and what happened afterwards. I managed to work through the first three of these categories last week. I would have liked to finish all four, but didn’t get to it, due to the rest of life.
Goals: finish primary research; in my mind this would mean (1) finish working through the text on my own, and (2) work through textual variants, if any. Then there’s secondary research. I have 5 library books, the two books I was using for the class, plus a couple of other commentaries I have access to, then a few online sources I wanted to track down. So perhaps my goal for this week would be to work through at least two of the library books once I’m done the primary research.
Experiential Integration
This week marks the official beginning of my Experiential Integration. The contract I wrote has four goals:
- Use Hebrew for the glory of God
- Use Greek for the glory of God
- Gain experience using God’s word to edify God’s people
- Gain experience leading God’s people
I work as a BLF Canada missionary in Lachute Quebec. BLF has partnered with DEQ, a publishing house that makes French tools like concordances and Bible Dictionaries. I’m helping make the OT concordance for the Segond21 French translation of the Bible. This is a great opportunity to help, and I’m being coached by Jack Cochrane, the man who made the first French Bible concordance of the original Louis Segond translation. I’ve actually been working on this for awhile, usually a verse a day. I joined the project when we were working on Exodus 40. My role is to match Hebrew words to French words and make sure every word is tagged with the Hebrew original. As well, I’m noting differences between the Segond21 and the Louis Segond, so we can simply modify the original concordance instead of starting from scratch. Today I am on Leviticus 8:14. I will probably still only do a verse a day until the Greek research paper is done, then I hope to do much more, as this concordance work is supposed to make up 50% of my EI activities.
To fulfill the other objectives of the EI, I am going to be working with my church, teaching lessons, etc. Once the Greek paper is done, I hope to devote more time to this aspect as well.
Seminary Goals: 18-23 Apr
Advanced Greek Exegesis:
Last week I wrote the last test, logged onto the library website and requested several items in the mail, as well as identified sources from my own library. I would have liked to spend time on primary research (working through the texts myself), but it just didn’t happen. I may not be able to finish by the end of April like I hoped. This week’s goal: primary research. Would be nice: begin secondary research.
Experiential Integration
Last week I finished reading the book for my pre-EI reflective reading assignment.
What the Best College Teachers Do by Ken Bain
Since it was fresh in my mind, I decided to go ahead and write the reflection paper once I finished the book, instead of arbitrarily waiting until next week, (just because I originally said I’d write it next week). Perhaps it’ll be easier to focus on the research paper for Greek now that this is out of the way.
One week left until the EI officially starts. Theoretically I shouldn’t need to do anything this week for EI.
Seminary Goals: 11-16 Apr 2016
Goal setting time.
Aramaic
Done! I wrote the exam last week. Now, I’m just waiting for a mark. At some point I’ll want to sort my flashcards, but that is low priority.
Advanced Greek Exegesis
Last week I had my last reading meeting with the professor. I also chose a paper topic. I plan to look at Paul’s different accounts of his conversion, compare the differences, and explore the rhetorical function of those differences. Didn’t get any actual research done, though.
Goals this week: Write last test and begin researching paper. Ideally, I’d like the paper done by the end of April. So specific research goals would be to identify sources from the library and order books, so that they can be here by next week. While waiting, I should be working through the relevant passages on my own. Next week do all the secondary research; last week of April: write, edit and polish.
Experiential Integration
Last week I set out to read 4 chapters of the book for the “pre-EI reflective reading assignment”. I read 3. The book is interesting. I now have two weeks remaining before the EI contract start date. Goal: finishing reading the book this week, and write the reflective paper next week.
Seminary Journey 