From SBL 2006: Saturday Evening

Back in our room for the night after several evening receptions, including the big SBL HarperCollins reception celebrating the New Study Bible.

Earlier this afternoon, I attended a fascinating session on Teaching Bible in a Liberal Arts College. The panelists came from different enough perspectives to make the discussions quite interesting. There's obviously a lot of interest in this topic, because the session was standing room only.

Christian Brady did a great job with his talk, which he had been working on for quite a while and which we've noted before on this blog. He actually quoted quite a bit from the discussions on the biblioblogs, which was terrific. Among many excellent points were the following: Addressing the theological dimensions of biblical texts is not the same as doing theology; Work to develop "moments" in your teaching where you should pause and allow the energy to bubble up (e.g., the issue of divorce in the book of Ezra); Don't "shoot down" a student's view just because it may seem pedestrian, but work to problematize over-simple readings of Bible. Well, these are just some sample insights from a very rich session.

More reports from on site soon. Stay tuned...