Public schools looking at Bible literacy class

[Chicago1871]

Public schools looking at Bible literacy class (http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/20060125/ts_usatoday/publicschoolslookingatbibleliteracyclass)

High schools across the nation are considering an elective course in Bible literacy. That's pitting advocates of church-state separation against proponents of the class who say their mission is purely scholarly.

Lawmakers in Alabama and Georgia in the past few weeks have introduced legislation clearing the way for their high schools to offer the course, which is based on the textbook The Bible and Its Influence.

The book's publisher, the Fairfax, Va.-based Bible Literacy Project, says about 300 school districts are considering the course, which covers the Old Testament, followed by both Jews and Christians, and the New Testament, the story of Jesus and his disciples.

In the past week, the school board in New Braunfels, Texas, voted to offer the course next year. Some high schools in California, Oregon and Washington, where the text was tested in a pilot program last year, already are offering it.

[minorthreat]

As long as 'elective course' is the key word, I don't see any problem with it, as it's entirely left up to the student whether or not to take it. Should they start requiring it, then we have a problem.

[bojendyk]

As long as 'elective course' is the key word, I don't see any problem with it, as it's entirely left up to the student whether or not to take it. Should they start requiring it, then we have a problem.

I agree, with the added caveat that the teachers should be prevented from proselytizing and from teaching myth (e.g., Moses wrote the Old Testament or the Gospel of John was actually written by John) as fact.

[Chicago1871]

As long as 'elective course' is the key word, I don't see any problem with it, as it's entirely left up to the student whether or not to take it. Should they start requiring it, then we have a problem.
Yea, I agree with this. The elective factor doesn't mean the class isn't walking a fine line, but the way the course is laid out seems to be on the "ok" side of that line. However, crossing that line won't prove all that difficult.

[GringoTex]

I don't want my tax money supporting someone else's religious instruction.

[bojendyk]

I don't want my tax money supporting someone else's religious instruction.

I should have looked at the original link more closely, as it certainly sounds like religious instruction after all.

Truth is that an objective class on Bible literacy and influence wouldn't be what the fundies hope it would be.

[GringoTex]

Truth is that an objective class on Bible literacy and influence wouldn't be what the fundies hope it would be.

This kind of class is a college course anyway.

[#10 Jersey]

I don't want my tax money supporting someone else's religious instruction.

I don't want my tax money supporting geometry. Is that ok?

Even if you don't believe what it says, wouldn't you agree that the bible can be taught as literature.

[speedcake]

There is already a great place to study Bible literacy, much more appropriate for this in fact, it's called Church.

Count me out.

[bojendyk]

Even if you don't believe what it says, wouldn't you agree that the bible can be taught as literature.

Perhaps the Christians should start pushing to get Dante and Milton into high schools, then. Because it seems disingenous, to put it kindly, that there is suddenly an interest in adding a class on the Bible's influence on literature in schools where they influenced literature isn't also being taught. (Either that or they're suddenly teaching Paradise Lost again.)

Here's what the Society for Biblical Literature (http://www.sbl-site.org/Article.aspx?ArticleId=465) has to say about this book:

The "down side" of the attribution approach is that this textbook does not engage in what most SBL members would consider academic study of the Bible. There is no real critical analysis concerning such matters as authorship, date, and historicity of biblical books. The treatment of the biblical material is essentially a superficial summary of content. Statements in the text are, for the most part, accepted at face value without the recognition that such acceptance is in itself an interpretation. Thus, Gen 2:4b-25 is referred to as the second part of the Genesis creation account (p. 31). Similarly, there is no reference to source division of the flood story or to Mesopotamian parallels. No historical problems relating to the Joseph-exodus-conquest sequence — or any other part of the Bible, for that matter — are mentioned. The section on "The Authorship of Isaiah" (p. 116) is the exception rather than the rule, and is interesting for its content. It begins with a statement that the question of who wrote Isaiah is "a point where faith traditions diverge." Noting that Orthodox Jews and Evangelical Christians tend to regard Isaiah as a unit by the eighth century prophet, it offers an argument for unity in the occurrence of the title "The Holy One of Israel." No comparable argument is provided for the position of liberal Jews, mainline Protestants, and Roman Catholics that there were three Isaiahs. Nor does the book indicate which view prevails in the field of biblical scholarship.

The suggestion of bias in the treatment of Isaiah's authorship is furthered, if not confirmed, by other features of the book. Most obvious is its overall layout. There are forty chapters in fourteen units, evenly divided between the two Testaments, notwithstanding the enormous discrepancy in the amount of material contained in each. As a consequence, there is a significant imbalance in the coverage afforded to distinct sections of the two Testaments. Thus, Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Ezekiel, are all consigned to one chapter, while there is one chapter devoted to each of the four Gospels and three chapters on Acts. An informal, anecdotal survey of biblical scholars listed as consultants suggests that the Evangelical Christian representative may have been solicited more regularly than others. This could, of course, have been accidental or even a mistaken impression on my part. However, it is difficult not to perceive a Christian bias driving the statement about the prologue of the Gospel of John that "John clearly reveals Jesus' divine nature" (p. 243). Other errors, though equally egregious, do not seem to be ideologically driven: for example, Hebrew "five" is transliterated humash (p. 18); Judea and Samaria are said to be predominantly Gentile in population at the time of Acts (p. 263).

It is not surprising in our current cultural environment that a textbook designed for public schools essentially ignores historical-critical problems. However, these could easily have been incorporated within the attribution approach with statements such as, "Many biblical scholars believe..." Moreover, it is not just historical criticism that is absent; synchronic methods and conclusions receive no real attention either, despite several references to the work of Robert Alter, who is also listed as a consultant. None of the actual authors or "content contributors" — Joanne McPortland, Marjorie Haney Schafer, Ph.D., Marc Stern, J.D., and Eve Tushnet — is listed in the SBL directory or appears to be a biblical scholar by profession. On one level, the absence is astonishing. The project as a whole might be likened to a high school textbook on, say, government, in which no recognition is given to the fields or methods of political science or history, and treatment of issues proceeds by attribution: "conservative Republicans say," "moderate Democrats hold," etc.

So I withdraw my approval.

[Chicago1871]

I don't want my tax money supporting geometry. Is that ok?
Sure. It's kind of dumb, being that math is a fundamental principle and all.
Even if you don't believe what it says, wouldn't you agree that the bible can be taught as literature.
Again, if this a literacy class and doesn't turn into preaching, then it's not a bad thing. Personally I'd rather see a comparitive religion class as opposed to a class about a single religious lineage (christianity, judaism, islam, hinduism, budhism, etc.). Sure it's available in college, but it could reasonably be taught in high school.

[Chicago1871]

So I withdraw my approval.
Good find. Makes me question my lukewarm support.

[bojendyk]

Good find. Makes me question my lukewarm support.

It's too bad I can't design a class around this textbook.

Week one: The Bible and Its Influence

Week two: "The Dream of the Rood" and assorted medieval mystery plays

Weeks three and four: The Divine Comedy and La Vita Nuovo

Weeks five and six: Paradise Lost

Weeks seven and eight: Moby Dick and Emily Dickinson

Week nine: We'll watch and discuss Andrei Rublev

Man, it would be great to fail all of those teenagers.

[minorthreat]

Here's what the Society for Biblical Literature (http://www.sbl-site.org/Article.aspx?ArticleId=465) has to say about this book:On reading that, I do too.

[christopher d]

IMHO, it's nigh on impossible to bring biblical texts into the classroom without bringing religion into the classroom. My ex- incorporated "The Song of Solomon" (NRSV translation) into her CompLit 200-level class (a survey of global literature pre-Renaissance), and even at that level the kids couldn't get away from "God said it, I believe it, that does it." I couldn't imagine things being any better in a highschool in the Bible Belt.

[minorthreat]

IMHO, it's nigh on impossible to bring biblical texts into the classroom without bringing religion into the classroom. My ex- incorporated "The Song of Solomon" (NRSV translation) into her CompLit 200-level class (a survey of global literature pre-Renaissance), and even at that level the kids couldn't get away from "God said it, I believe it, that does it." I couldn't imagine things being any better in a highschool in the Bible Belt.Eh, my humanities class my freshman year of high school was on ancient history, but it incorporated elements of comparative religion as well. We read both the Old and New Testaments, selections from the Mahabharata and the Koran, and one or two Buddhist texts whose names escape me at the moment, and there was virtually no element of "God said it..." etc in the class. It can be done, as long as you don't solely focus on the Judeo-Christian tradition.

[christopher d]

Eh, my humanities class my freshman year of high school was on ancient history, but it incorporated elements of comparative religion as well. We read both the Old and New Testaments, selections from the Mahabharata and the Koran, and one or two Buddhist texts whose names escape me at the moment, and there was virtually no element of "God said it..." etc in the class. It can be done, as long as you don't solely focus on the Judeo-Christian tradition.
She didn't focus on that -- she was a Comp Lit major, and not very religious. And surprisingly, when she taught the Bhagavad Gita, there were no problems along those lines at all. Nor with Gilgamesh (which has, for those who haven't read it, a flood story that nearly precisely mirrors Genesis). Just when she got to the Bible...

[bigredfutbol]

I don't want my tax money supporting geometry. Is that ok?

That's not a good analogy. You don't covert to geometry. Nobody is proselytizing the x axis, as far as I know.

Even if you don't believe what it says, wouldn't you agree that the bible can be taught as literature.

Of course it can. But is that what the creators of this course really want?

[YankHibee]

What a stupid idea for a course and an incredible waste of money by all those involved. We should start charging fundies for the public funds required to challenge their stupid ideas in the courts.

[GringoTex]

I don't want my tax money supporting geometry. Is that ok?


There are a hundred different places within a five mile radius where you can go get any demonination of Bible instruction you want for free. Why do you big government types want this kind of government-sponsored redundnacy?


Even if you don't believe what it says, wouldn't you agree that the bible can be taught as literature.


Sure. We spent a week on Job in my high school World Literature class. I think it was sandwiched between the Illiad and Dante.