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>>One problem, though, surprised me, and I had some difficulty attempting to >overcome it: They displayed a remarkable tendency to read the Hebrew >Bible as if it were a preface to the New Testament. I found myself >confronted with remarks like "Well, Jesus said about this. . ." or "This >changes in the New Testament." While I appreciated their enthusiasm, it >became a near-daily task for me to explain to them that the texts we were >exploring were not written with the intent of explaining Christianity; >they had trouble understanding that Christianity did not yet exist (one >kid even wrote about "Christian converts" in _Genesis_!). > >Have other people encountered similar problems in teaching the Bible? How >do you address it? > >Beth Crachiolo >University of Iowa >[log in to unmask] I have encountered exactly the same attitude in my Early Civilization class. Each year on the first exam, I have "Moses" or "Abraham" in the identification section, and each year someone tells me that one or the other was the founder of the Catholic Church/the first Christian, etc. I try to give a caveat on this issue in my lectures on ancient Israel and during our discussions, and yet the problem never goes away. Though this is a specifically religious question, I think the problem is related to the difficulty that my students have in reading history without immediately relating it to something they already know about. I am all for drawing connections between the past and the present, but I find it a constant struggle to get my students to understand history in as much of the terms of the past as is possible (for us here in Oshkosh). > So you have my sympathy, Beth. I too would be interested in any ideas people have come up with for this issue. Kim Rivers ************ Kimberly Rivers Department of History Assistant Professor University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh (414) 424-2451 [log in to unmask] %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%