Covering The Gospels. Professor is Dr. Joel B. Green. A NT scholar that just started teaching at Fuller. Previously he was up at Asbury Seminary in Lexington. (See, it’s a good thing that I didn’t listen to you and go there, Aaron. I would have missed out on Joel Green and that would have been, quite literally, a tragedy.) Three things about him: he’s smart and he’s funny and he’s a great teacher. I’m really enjoying this class. We have five weeks left, so you should be hearing more about this class.
- I like the assignments he’s giving us. No exams. We have two book reviews to write and two interpretative assignments chosen from four passages he’s chosen from the four Gospels. And then one final paper, an exegesis on one of those four passages. The interpretative assignments are close readings of the text – no outside research required. In the first one I chose, Mark 1:1-15, I discovered so much as I just focused on that text for a couple days. Things I never saw before. It was amazing. And then the day it was due, we spent class time going through it together, and there were some more things I didn’t even get to in my 1300 words.
- One thing that stands out so far comes from Matt. 25:31-46, the sheep and the goats. Who are “the least of these”? Most often “the least of these” comes out as the poor and needy. But could “the least of these” here be our brothers, Christian brothers....missionaries? Are we taking care of the missionaries?
- He also brought up the matter of the “sea” while we were discussing Jesus the miracle worker in Mark. As I learned in NT2, in Revelation, the sea is where evil came from, the beast came from the sea. Dr. Green said the root of that word for “sea” also means chaos or evil. The sea is evil, produces chaos, which is why it “will be no longer.” And what about Jesus walking on water. He has conquered evil already...walking on the water. The storm and the seas respond to his “peace, be still” or “be quiet!” Leviathan was defeated in Isaiah 27:1.
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