End of the 1st Semester

Now that I have reached the end of my first semester of studies here in Israel, I thought I would give a quick update. For those who expect a high quality prose from this web-site, please accept my apologies in advance. There will be no fancy words, just a quick update of each class.

Modern Hebrew- My reading of hebrew has improved dramatically and I can now confidently say things like "I like cake"
אני אוהב עוגה
even though I do not particularly like cake). I have a neighbor who speaks Hebrew and Spanish and when the two of us talk we intermix Spanish and Hebrew frequently. I purchased the first Harry Potter(הארי פאתר ) book in Hebrew and began reading it. Because Harry Potter does not use many theological terms, I miss a lot of the words. לאט, לאט

Apocalyptic Literature- This course focuses on the development of the "Apocalypse" genre. My final paper deals with the book of Revelation in this mix and how our understanding of this genre affects our understanding of the book. It turns out that Kirk Cameron might be wrong!

Christian Memory and Jewish Tradition- This class is taught by 5 different professors in a seminar style. The debate and conversations are really good. Arguments often occur in Greek, Hebrew, English, and sometimes a little French. Our readings come with some of all of these languages plus some German. If it is more than one sentence, the French and German are a bit too much for me. ein Tag erlerne ich auch Deutsches, but for now it goes slowly. The focus of this class is how early Christianity developed in light of its Jewish roots. Most of the conversation is useful and some of it is entirely speculative and not worth the time.

Early Christian Literature and the World of Late Antiquity- The focus here is also on the development of Christianity with most of our focus going to the writings during that time. It is a bit different than a seminary class on "Church Fathers" because the focus is on all of the sources to provide a complete framework for understanding. Some of the writings are very enjoyable but the 100-200 pages per week in this class add up after a while.

Biblical Archaeology of Jerusalem- I tell people that this is like my P.E. class because we travel around Jerusalem to real archaeology sites in an effort to understand the Bible. Our focus is on 1st temple period so the time of David through King Zedekiah is all we discuss. This is a great class with an amazing professor who is one of the world's leading 1st temple period archaeologists. His knowledge of the bible and of archaeology are intimidating but very useful for study.

I would discuss some of what I am learning in each but there is no time. Next semester I will have a lighter schedule as I will be using a lot of time to prepare messages and ideas for leading a church. Hopefully next semester will be a bit more relaxing which I am sure is possible living in Israel with three young boys!

Shalom, Salaam, Peace