1/13/12: First Campus Field Trip and Quiz Prep (Symbols)

1) We took our first "field trip" around campuses.
These field trips are meant to show the importance of the "historical world" of the Bible.  As we have seen, geography matters in the Bible, common history is huge.  Jesus often took his disciples on "field trips" to certain places on purpose, as the history and heritage of the place was significant to his teaching.  As you saw Wednesday with the Herodian, geographical backdrops can be object lessons and acted parables.

So you heard (and saw) some of my "historical world" when I was a student here.
Here is Sonya and I  before we were married, in a friends apartment on campus.

Here I am   with Michel from Quebec.Remember his story of missing the trampoline?

Here, my dorm-mates and I walk to breakfast past Michel and Diane's place..the same route we took today. What plaque is near this spot today, that wasn't there then?

Remember  the "Module E By the Sea" door I pointed at?:




Quiz: a week from Monday will consist of these eight diagrams, with the instructions to explain each, giving an example if possible:
 (Note: all quizzes are 4 points, see schedule tab at top.
(Note: some of these we covered previously, if so there is a link to the day we covered it:
the rest we covered today , or will next time)

1)Three Worlds
2)Bounded Set
3)Centered Set
4)Inclusio
5)Recurrence
6)Chiasm
7)Divisions
8)pp. 269-272 of H & Y book


1)Three Worlds  (see 1/9 post here)
2)Bounded Set  (see 1/11 post here)
3)Centered Set  (see 1/11 post here)

4)Inclusio:

 or "inclusion"

Ever notice Matthew starts with "His name will be called Emmanuel, which means 'God with us.'
And ends...very last sentence...with "I will be with you."?

No accident.
And neither is the midpoint and message of the gospel: "I will be with you" (18:20).
In Jesus, God is with us.
Jesus is the With-Us God.

That's an INCLUSIO.
You knew God was with us in Christ.. But now you see it as you look at Matthew structurally..

Links with more info:

• Inclusio
• inclusio: an intro 

• Who is Jesus in Matthew?
• He is the "WITH YOU" God

5)Recurrence:
One response to the key question of the course-"Who is Jesus in Matthew?" is

"Jesus is the new Moses."

Matthew could have said that, but instead he embedded it in the literay structure of his book;

 is no accident that 5 times Matthew offers an almost identical sentence  (RECURRENCE) to close off his five teaching blocks..

                        "When Jesus had finished saying these things, he moved on..."

..shows up in

1. 7:28
2. 11:1
3. 13:53
4. 19:1
5. 26:1

diagram credit

See  page 269  of your Hauer/Young textbook (the three paragraphs underneath the "Higher Righteousness" section)  for more on this..

There is huge  significance of five teaching blocks in Matthew, how they are identified, and what they likely symbolize.

Why 5?

Jewish people reading Matthew would say
"Oh, I get it.  Matthew is trying to tell us  (5 times, no less( that Jesus is the New Moses (or the fulfillment of Moses)!" 
Why? The answer has to to with the obvious intentionality of the5 "teaching blocks" in Matthew..Five being a hugely significant  number for Jews...it's the number of books in the Torah, AKA the Five Books of Moses, AKA The  Pentateuch "(Five Books in One.") .  Moses=5ness.

See  page 269  of your Hauer/Young textbook (the three paragraphs underneath the "Higher Righteousness" section)  and be very familiar with this concept for exams..

6)Chiasm
chiasm(definition) .
 once you are attuned to seeing them in Scripture (and most ancient literature) it seems they are everywhere.

Sometimes they are.
Who can argue that "the first shall be last
                                          the last shall be first"
 is a chiasm?
A-B-B-A (or 
" X") pattern.


...and this one, because it's in Matthew (20:16), will be important
for our class.
But often the chiasm is wide enough to spotlight an intended embedded theme in between the endpoints.

And to really help us get what the Spirit is saying...structurally.

People remember how to perform a piece of music by using musical notations on scale. A similar solution to the problem of remembering how to perform a piece of dance has been solved with the use of Labonotation. In antiquity, it seems most written documents were intended to be read aloud, hence to be performed. The purpose of writing wasto facilitate remembering how the document went when one read it aloud. But how did one make paragraphs or mark off units in a document read aloud? It seems that the main way to mark off a unit was to use repetition of words and/or phrases at the beginning and end of a unit, either alone (as in Matt 5:3, 10,"...for theirs is the kingdom of heaven) or in parallel bracketing fashion (as John 1:18). The Greeks called such parallel brackets a chiasm, after one half of the letter "chi" (our 'X"), thus ">."-Social Science Commentary on the Gospel of John, p. 295, emphasis mine.. a free read online here. 

 here are some links that may help or give more info:

• Chiasm and inclusio: an intro

• "Chiasm led me to Christ"

   (a great story from a recent FPU grad)
• Detecting chiasm
• Chiasm in the Bible

7)Divisions

It is helpful to  discern and chart out and envison large sections.."divisions" of a biblical book.  This helps us see large themes better that chapter and verse divisions (which were not prat of the original text).

For example, in Matt 4:17, we read "From this time on, Jesus preached, 'Repent, for the Kingdom of heaven is here.."

In Matt 16:21, we catch a similar phrase: "From this time on, Jesus began to prepare his disciples for his death.."

This is a structural way of saying that all the content between 4:17 and 16:21 is about the Kingdom.  It's a "division" (large section) of the book.

8)pp, 269-272:

 Find one example of one of the previous 7 symbols/literary devices in this section of Hauer and Young textbook...even if they don't use the names we used above.