Absolutely Andrew, this is really an excellent summary of what James is saying.

What might it mean for us to be listening to the unheard voice in the midst of confusing and traumatic events in our own communities or society?
If Cleopas and his companion are our example, then listening to the unheard voice in the midst of trauma and confusion means listening to something foreign. I found Alison’s commentary (in the essay) on t…[Read more]

Yes, Andrew, that is a good summary of what James is teaching as he always comes back to the fact that we learn to read scripture through the eyes of Jesus our Rabbi. You will find that during the course James constantly has us reading Jesus’ commentary on the Hebrew texts, and giving his listeners an entirely new way of reading them. This is…[Read more]

Does it help or hinder your approach to reading the Bible to place importance on the hermeneutic, or method of interpretation?
It helps. I believe I read the Bible better when I am conscious of how I am approaching the Bible. Maybe that’s because I’m a novice. Perhaps it is a habit I’ll fall into overtime and someday I’ll stop being so conscio…[Read more]

Yes I agree Andrew, ‘How do you read the text” is a very good question. I think this is what James is illustrating in this session on The Road to Emmaus”; we read the text through the eyes of Jesus our Rabbi.

Sheelah, no, I haven’t yet read _Decite, Desire and the Novel_; although, I did attempt it a couple of years ago. Regrettably, I can be a bit overly fastidious when I sit down to read and with every page turn I felt myself to be more and more inadequate of a reader—as I hadn’t (at that time) ever read a single page of Cervantes, Flaubert, Stend…[Read more]

Andrew, I think you have an excellent, mature attitude to the reading of scripture. And Hermes was indeed the Greek messenger.

Too often we see the literal word set in stone resulting in a rigid reading of this great work of literature, which in itself can mean differing things to different people in different times. I remember someone telling…[Read more]

James used the term “hermeneutic” at the opening of this module. Do you recall what that word means?
I take it as a reference to the study of those methods by which people interpret messages. Somebody told me that the root of the word hearkens back to Hermes.

What hermeneutic have you used or been taught to use for reading Scripture?
I was rai…[Read more]

Yes, Andrew, “you shall have no other gods before me” is a command from YHWH and a universal, timeless truth. It is a prohibition against idolatry.

The many gods of the ancient world, and of today, are truely the stuff of human projections. Many in the ancient world saw the God of the Hebrews as just another god among many, some considered YHW…[Read more]

Sheelah, I’m glad there is a tech person out there looking into your missing post. In the meantime, know that, even on those occasions when your posts don’t upload to the public Forum properly, they DO seem to be forwarded on to those of us who have subscribed to receive private notifications of postings. [I briefly thought about posting your com…[Read more]

Yes, Andrew, I think there is a technical hitch. When I submitted the post it did not appear as it usually does under your last post. And an old post from Rich is there too, I don’t know how that happened. I actually posted my reply about four times, but it seems that it did not arrive on the Discussion Forum.

I am copying Maura Junius from t…[Read more]

Sheelah, I’ve signed up to receive notices each time someone posts on these Discussion Forums. You posted yesterday, I read it in my email, but now I don’t actually see it on the JFV website itself. Perhaps there is some technical problem with the Module 1.4 Forum? I wonder this because I see that for some reason one of your responses to Rich from…[Read more]

Share your favorite news sources. Can you defend your news source as “objective”? How would you describe its editorial bias?

It just so happened that a “smart” phone came into my possession just last week. I could wax ambivalent for no short moment on what I think about becoming a human with an open internet portal perpetually in his pocket.…[Read more]

Andrew, have you listened to it yet?

Share ways in which you have noticed the content, questions or insights from the previous Module showing up in your lives.

As someone who is expected to lead people in Bible study at least once a week, I endeavor to be circumspect about what I ask others to do when they read scripture. I don’t want to dazzle a class into a fixation that p…[Read more]

Yes, that is a very good point Andrew, there is an “unheard voice” to which we are not listening. I don’t think this is a command from James, but more a quaint way of expressing that we are about to hear something extraordinary.
James begins with Hebrews 1: 1?2 which describes an odd form of communication from God. In talking to us through Jes…[Read more]

Andrew, this is a process. We learn how God is communicating with us through Jesus and the Bible, and in so doing we gradually learn who we are, and how we are made in the likeness and image of God, and loved unconditionally. This is not instantaneous, but a gradual ongoing conversion in which we and inducted into the new Creation of Christ and…[Read more]

Why do you think the title of the accompanying essay for the first three Modules of the course is, “Don’t speak until you’re spoken to”?

The command not to speak could be taken to mean the one giving the command is taking charge of a situation.

I think Alison’s point is a bit different. The command not to speak until spoken to entails conscious…[Read more]

“To understand how God is communicating with us through Jesus and through the Bible, we need at the same time to understand ourselves”. I agree with this culminating statement and all that James said leading up to it. However, let me point out two ways of reading the language he uses: one I find I can accept quite comfortably and the other is—…[Read more]

Yes, Andrew the true ‘I’ is being called into being, but in your case it seems to be from a narrative that is extremely rich and varied. As James indicates “ our Memories are produced in us over time by repetition in imitation of the gestures and sounds produced by others” and as you say “by the others who were beholding me at those times and…[Read more]