Okay, we want to pick up after having this brief break. We want to pick up on the syllabus where we left off if we can remember where that was. I think we had gotten as far as talking about class preparations, assignments and class preparations. I do want to go back and talk a little bit more about the synthetic outlines. If you remember point number two is to create an outline of each book as you are reading it. What I mean by a synthetic outline is perhaps best done if I just draw a little picture on the board here. The idea of a synthetic outline is to outline an entire book on one sheet of paper. Now, I am well aware that many of you may be using computers as indeed I am. You may have to customize how you want to do this. But the idea of a synthetic outline is to work on one sheet of paper. Some of you may have seen this kind of thing before. And to work sort of in this fashion, you have chapter titles across the top. So chapter 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 0 that any Old Testament book were so short. None of them in this particular class will be. You will need to write rather small. But the idea is to put your titles this way and then leave yourself room for doing a little analysis of the overarching structure of the book. As you are reading through, this is sort of an inductive approach. As you are reading through, you summarize the contents of each chapter as briefly and memorably as you can, or each section if you want to divide it differently than chapters. But chapters is probably the best in terms of handling the material and being able to keep it placed. But after putting in your short, memorable title, then you can begin to look and see how does the book divide up into larger chunks? Can I group some of these chapters together? And when you discover those kinds of divisions, then you might say, Oh, I see that 1 to 3 seems to be a division, 4 to 6 is a division, and then 7 maybe is an appendix or something has a unity of its own. And so you can begin to draw rows across that relate to the chapters that you have summarized and you can give titles then to these sections. And you notice that you still have a good bit of the paper. Sometimes people like to turn it the other way and do the chapters this way. In other words, have the paper horizontal rather than vertical. But you can analyze the book in a number of different ways. You might start with rather small divisions. You know, maybe you can see it's this and that. And then you might say, Oh, but I could group these three together and these four together. So you might work from more detailed divisions to larger and larger groupings or whatever strikes you. You may pick up on a theme in the book that you want to trace throughout the book. For instance, in the book of Joshua, there are a number of stone monuments or piles of stone that are sometimes pointed out. And these seem to be significant. They help remember the events that have taken place. And so you might want to say, Well, I'm going to devote one row to finding those passages that deal with stones. And I'm going to note them on this row. So you can analyze the book in a number of different ways. The idea, primary idea, however, is to get it on one page where you can look at it and get the big picture. And this is excellent for reviewing them, the structures of books. And particularly those of you who go on to teach from these books or to use them in a Bible study or in preaching or whatever you end up doing, it's helpful to be able to get the big picture of that book again. So that's far better than having it spill over on to page after page after page because then you might as well just reread the book as to try to look through that many pages. The idea is brevity and clarity in these outlines. Now, you have freedom to use some other structure than this unless you have a pretty fancy computer and a good knowledge of how to manipulate it. It's a little difficult to get diagonal lines printing out nicely in such with the computer, although some people do it. You can think of some other way of outlining it, but try to keep it as brief and overview-ish as possible. So much the synthetic outline. Now, that's basically the reading assignments and class preparations. There will be a midterm examination, and all students will be required to take this. It will contain mostly objective questions, though I may ask a question or two of a short essay or short answer tight just to see how you express yourself and see if you can put something together in a written form. That is more or less optional. So be prepared for that, but it's going to be predominantly objective. The final examination, as I was explaining before, is required for all students except those who qualify to write a paper. Now, you may qualify to write a paper, and still prefer to take the final. Writing a paper is a bit of work, but you learn a great deal in the process. So if you qualify in terms of your grade average after the midterm, I would encourage you to consider at least writing a paper. And I've suggested several pre-approved kinds of topics. If you want to come up with some other topics you might want to talk to me about them just to get, maybe I might have an idea or two about them, or I might see a problem with them. So you want to check with me on that. The paper should not be long. It should be not more than ten pages. It should be crisp, concise, and cogent. Try to be brief, but try to be convincing, try to make it packed, and in terms of the specific topics I've suggested, one has to do with the literary, theological, and historical relationship of the books of Joshua and Judges. As we get into those books, you'll understand why I posed that as a fruitful area of study. Another might be an in-depth and scripturally based character study of any biblical character encountered in the readings for this course. You can learn a great deal from studying biblical characters, but I would want it to be scripturally based. I'd want you to be working off indications and hints in the text rather than just waxing imaginative about what this person must have been thinking. In other words, I don't want you to write a biblical, historical novel about Hannah's loves or something. I'd rather it be more texturally based than that. Another option I give is to do a description and analysis of the narrative techniques employed in a given section of text, showing how these help persuade the reader to see persons or events in the light that the inspired author wishes. In other words, what is the art of persuasion? How is it that a biblical historiographer? Not only wants you to understand what happened, but wants you to see it in a certain way. How does he go about convincing you that that's the right way to look at what happened? And we'll see that there are various devices and narrative techniques that the biblical narratives employ to very good effect, many of which we're blind to. Because until we train our eyes, we don't see things. So we will be training our eyes to pick up on things in the text that perhaps at this point we're not seeing. It doesn't mean that our eyes are seeing what's not there. We're just training them so that we see what is there. And there are many analogies to that. You go into a doctor's office and he may ask a number of questions or tap on your back or something. Well, what in the world is he discovering there? I don't see anything significant about that. Well, he knows or she knows because that individual is trained. So we want to train ourselves to pick up on these things and writing a paper on it would be a good exercise. And then another pre-approved topic is a description or analysis of a narrative structure of a larger stretch of text. It's very interesting sometimes to see how, as we will see later in this course, the account of the life and reign of King Solomon has sort of an overarching structure to it. Likewise, the Book of Kings has something of a structure that is indicative of what is considered important in the Book of Kings. So you might want to do something more expansive and deal with a second, a large section of a book or an entire book, even. Any questions on that? These are the course requirements and general description. You'll have time before we meet again to do a little exegesis of this syllabus. That's one of the first tests I give. Can a person understand my syllabus? If they can, I know they're good people, you know, and very capable. So try to understand it by the next time we meet. Now I'm not going to march you through the lecture schedule and the preparation assignments, but I do want to orient you to them very briefly. Notice on the next page that there are dates given, 831, that's now, 97, that will come. Lord willing and 914 likewise. And what I've done is given basic titles to lectures that we will handle. Sometimes as, for instance, next week we will try to pick up on two different lecture topics. And thus we have two titles. Notice also that there are two preparations for next week's session. Don't just do the first and then ignore the second. Sometimes there will be only one lecture topic and one set of preparations. Good times there will be two different preparations for next week. So for instance, for next week, had you the book, you would be reading chapter one. And if you have the book, you should go ahead and read chapter one of Howard, which is introduction to historical narratives, that first chapter. And also looking at Genesis 12, 1 to 3. Sometimes I'll say that here's a text that's a focus text. By that I mean, just read it before you come to class. And ask yourself, what's the significance of these few verses? Because they will come up in the lecture and we'll talk about them. And if you've had a look at them, it may be more interesting to you. Now sometimes I throw in a focus text because I know it will puzzle you. And you'll think, why in the world is he going to mention that particular verse? So consider that just a little puzzler and don't worry too much about it and don't waste too much time on it. I think you'll see immediately the significance of Genesis 12, 1 to 3. Also I would like you to read Chris Wright's, a portion of Chris Wright's very excellent book entitled Knowing Jesus Through the Old Testament. And if we were moving into summer, which were not, we're moving out of summer despite the heat, if we were moving into summer, I would recommend that this would be good summer reading. Knowing Jesus Through the Old Testament, I think a book that is very interesting, inspiring, informative, and so forth. But I'm going to ask you just to read a certain section of this book, which is on reserve in the library. There's a photocopy on reserve. In fact, there are three sets of photocopy articles in the library. The reason I do that is that I think legally you're quite allowed to go make a copy of an article. And you can do that year after year or an individual can do it. Students can do it. But I can't photocopy articles year after year and dispense them to you. Now, if we gain permission for these various things, maybe I could do that. But for the time being, you'll need to go to the library and either read the article there or make a photocopy for yourself and read that. So you may want to look ahead. You may or may not accomplish that in the next break. But you may want to look ahead as a general principal and get photocopy those articles that will come to you on certain dates. So the idea of these preparations, when it says preparation, that means this preparation is due on the day of that lecture. It's not an assignment for the next set of lectures. In other words, these assignments here are due next week, next time we meet. All right. Going on down, we have on 9.28, on September 28th, we have the Francis Schaefer Institute lectures. There will be no class then. And going on beyond that, we pretty well meet straight on through until Thanksgiving. And there will be no class on Thanksgiving Thursday, for which I'm sure you will be giving thanks. And then our last class is on December 7th. All right. And then I'm not sure how they'll handle the final exam, but I'm sure we will work out something by that time, whether it will be taken during the exam week. I think it is probably on the Thursday during the exam week. Okay. Any questions on that? You may have some next week and feel free to ask them.