I wish we had opportunity in this class to introduce one another properly, rather than just calling out your name and checking you off the list, but since the class is large we don't have that kind of time. However, since you're going to have to face me standing up here at night after night, I will say a few words about myself and just so you know what you've gotten yourself into and why you're here. I am excited to have you here. I'm excited about these books we'll be studying. This is the first time that I think Psalms and Wisdom books has been taught in the evening and the first time that it's been taught on a non Hebrew language base so we can thank her lucky stars for that and rejoice in what we will be able to learn from these books. A few words about myself, I am one of those guys that begins when I talk about what the Lord has done in my life. I have to begin by saying I was reared in a Christian home and it used to bug me that I had to say that because I thought, you know, wouldn't it be more exciting to say, you know, I was on the streets, I was into drugs, I was doing this and I was doing that. And then something really dramatic happened in my life and God saved me out of all of that. Well, it's wonderful if God has saved you all out of all of that but it's a shame that you had to be in that and I've since learned, I've since come to appreciate the fact that it is a great miracle as I've come to know myself. I realize it is a great miracle that I wasn't into all that stuff. And Jesus teaches us to pray, lead me not into temptation as I look back over my life. I'm not saying that I wasn't tempted and didn't sin but in terms of the big things that it sounded dramatic in testimonies, God prevented me by keeping me out of temptation. And for that I am eternally grateful. I was reared in a very strongly Christian home, my father was a pastor and both my father and mother really demonstrated to me as I was growing up the truth of his word. And so I never doubted that his word was true because I saw it lived out consistently in their lives. And when people would say, hey, Christians are all hypocrites, I knew that wasn't true. I knew there were Christians who were hypocrites or hypocritical Christians but I knew they weren't all hypocrites because I had lived in a household of two parents who walked the walk as well as talked the talk and I will always be grateful for that. However, as a teenager I was a conflicted soul as most of us are as teenagers and I had my doubts. I doubted if I believed enough to be saved and I was really helped one day when my father sort of sensing my distress shared a story from his childhood or teenage hood, he wasn't actually a hood but from his teenage days, when he was 18 years old he was going through precisely what I was going through and he finally talked to a man who came to speak at the school that he was attending and he said, you know, I'm not sure I can believe enough to be saved. Well, I'm not absolutely sure that my belief is of sufficient magnitude to be saved. The man told him something or other and encouraged him in good ways but at that point my father just said, I give up, I'm not sure I can ever believe enough. If I'm ever going to be saved, it'll be God's doing and he just forgot about it. And two weeks later he started thinking about it again, he said, you know, my doubts are gone and that really helped me because I was mistaken belief for intellectual certainty. Am I absolutely sure about these things? Can I be intellectually assured that even that God exists? How do I know? I can't prove it. I can't see him. But I then learned that really true faith is simply trusting God. You know, intellectual certainty is something about which we can't do a whole lot. Now we can study. But to have that certainty of heart, that's not really something we can do a lot about. But we can put our trust in someone. We can put our trust in something. And that's really what biblical faith is all about. In fact, a Greek word that we often translate as in John 3, 16 believe could just as well and just as rightly be translated trust. And so my conflicted soul found some solace in realizing, hey, I'm just called upon to trust. It's an active thing to live my life, entrusting God to make me his. It's not so much how, whether my doubts come and go, but where do I place my ultimate confidence? How do I live? Now that was one of the most significant experiences in my life. Another of the most significant experiences was of course when I married my wife, Polly, who is the best thing that has ever happened to me. The best person that God has ever brought into my life. And if I learn from my parents, the truth of his word and the truth of the wisdom books I learned also from Polly, the truth of God's word and the truth of the wisdom books. As I saw lived out in her life, the truth that God has given us and the instructions that God has given us. And we have been married in wonderful 23 years and had four children to attest to that. And they as well are delights by God's grace. And I am very thankful for what God has brought into my life in terms of blessing. That's not where we all are. We're not blessed every day. We don't all have positive experiences to report. And that's another reason I'm delighted that we will be looking at the Psalms and the wisdom books which have much to say not only when we're rejoicing but also when we're hurting. I've been a professor here at Covenant Seminary now for 11 years. How I got here I went to Wheaton College and then after that went to Gordon Conwell Seminary. And after that went as a missionary to Germany with my wife of course we were married right before going to Seminary and we went to Germany and spent some time there teaching at the German theological Seminary or in German the Friatea Logisha Akademi. I got that on tape now so I know I can say it one more time. And then after that I went and pursued doctoral studies sort of back to front you know to go teach and then do the doctoral studies but that's the Lord's timing. I pursued doctoral studies at the University of Cambridge and eventually completed that work and received the degree. I've written a couple of books one of which you may or may not be interested in reading the other I'd suggest you just know about and not necessarily try to read. The first was my dissertation on King Saul entitled The Rain in Rejection of King Saul. And the second is a book called The Art of Biblical History which came out in 1994. I'm an ordained elder in the Presbyterian Church in America and glad to be there and glad to be here. On the more personal side if you like any of these things you know maybe we could work out an arrangement to have an outing. I like portrait and landscape painting. I like to try doing that. I like sports especially that not the big sports you know because the big guys the good athletes are in the big three you know basketball baseball football. I'm into things more exotic sports like rollerblading, roller hockey you know of course the students who play with me know how good I am at roller hockey and that won't go on tape or soccer these gentlemanly sports where he can break your leg at any turn and I like all kinds of outdoor activities. Now sometime if we ever get a chance to call the role again be thinking about what you like or when I meet you I may say what is a hobby of yours because I would like to know and that will help me peg you and remember something about you. Having said all that let's begin by reading a song. This is a song I like to use to open this class and I often use it to open another class I teach Old Testament history. It's Psalm 111. I'll give you a minute to pull that out. Psalm 111 prays the Lord. I will extoll the Lord with all my heart in the council of the upright and in the assembly. Great are the works of the Lord. They are pondered by all who delight in them. Glorious and majestic are his deeds and his righteousness and yours forever. He has caused his wonders to be remembered. The Lord is gracious and compassionate. He provides food for those who fear him. He remembers his covenant forever. He has shown his people the power of his works, giving them the lands of other nations. The works of his hands are faithful and just. All his precepts are trustworthy. They are steadfast forever and ever done in faithfulness and uprightness. He provided redemption for his people. He ordained his covenant forever. Holy and awesome is his name. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. All who follow his precepts have good understanding to him belongs eternal praise. There are several reasons I like to begin a class with this Psalm. One is that it mentions covenant twice and this is covenant theological seminary and any advertising is good. But more seriously, I like the way it combines so many aspects of Scripture. It talks about God's mighty deeds, it talks about the words by which they are remembered. I also have the opportunity to teach a course in Old Testament history that some of you here have taken his deeds, his words and then it culminates in this motto of the wisdom literature. The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom. All who follow his precepts have good understanding and I like the way it begins and ends. It begins, praise the Lord, I will extol the Lord with all my heart in the counsel of the upright and in the assembly and it concludes to him belongs eternal praise. It's my prayer that all we do in this class will not be so that we can fill our heads with knowledge and thus be glorified before men but rather that we can learn about God and thus glorify him in our lives of service to other people. Let's pray together. Our Father God, we come to you with thanksgiving and praise on our lips and in our hearts. Not because life is always easy, not because we don't encounter adverse circumstances, not because life is always good and yet it is good as you carry us through it. We thank you that you have not promised that we will not go through hard times but you have promised that we will never be going through them alone. We thank you that you have promised never to leave us nor forsake us. Father, I pray that as we embark upon this class that you would give us guidance, there's so much that we could learn from these books and there's so much ground to cover. We ask Father that your Holy Spirit would enlighten each of our minds and hearts that we would be guided to those truths and those passages which will most speak to us about yourself. And we pray that at the end of this class, at the end of this course, we would be walking more closely with you than we are tonight, that in our lives you may be honored and glorified for you alone are worthy of glory. So we commit this time to you. We thank you for your Son who saved us and it's in his name that we pray, amen. Now let's have a look at the syllabus and it will take us a little bit of time to decode this syllabus but this sort of sets our sights for the course. Yes, Sandy. Is it Sandy? Sandy? Okay, sorry. Oh, from outside, okay, on the table, all right, and you can probably slip out and get one right now. In the future, again, this applies to us and not to the video class. In the future, whenever you come in those doors, if I have a handout and I'm on time which I plan to be Lord willing, it will be there and you should always look for handouts, never take more than one from a stack, but never overlook a stack, okay, and then bring them on in and you will all be ready to go. I'm going to give you something to look at while we're doing other things, perhaps. All right, well, let's now take a look at the syllabus and just get our sights set on what we hope to accomplish in this course. You see that I have sighted right at the top, Psalm 111, 10, and I've also given you some cross references of where similar verses regarding the fear of the Lord occur also in Job and the book of Proverbs. Then we move to the course description. The focus of this course, as the name might imply, is on the Psalms and wisdom books of the Old Testament. These are sometimes called the poetical books. The books in particular will be Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs, and lamentations in that order. Among our chief objectives will be, number one, to gain an overview of the material, which is no small order when you consider, and I haven't counted pages, but I have been told by my colleagues that in every Old Testament course, we cover a corpus of text, the size of the New Testament, okay, so in this course, you will be reading something at least the size of the New Testament. So that's not a small order to gain an overview of this material. Some of it is familiar, some of it is not. Secondly, to sample some of it in depth, we will occasionally pause and take some time to really dig into certain passages, not only because that may be a particularly important passage, but also in the doing of it, you will learn yourself how to dig into that immense body of material that we won't be able to really dig into in this class. Thirdly, to learn how to interpret the special forms of this literature, and I'll talk again more about that in just a moment, and to explore, forthly, to explore the theology and contemporary relevance of these books for our lives today. Now method of instruction, lecture, small group interaction projects, okay, that will require some explanation, which you'll get shortly. Class discussion, guidelines will also be presented on that. Personal assignments, that is out of class assignments that each of you will do individually, and testing, all of these things will be described. The following is very general outline of the lecture topics in the order in which they will be presented. Tonight, we are doing an introduction to the course and its contents. We may even get into a little bit on biblical poetry, although I wouldn't count on it tonight, but we will then talk about some hermeneutical guidelines probably next week. That is some necessary interpretive principles that we need to bring to bear when we are reading this kind of literature. You know, what is a proverb? Well, you know, is it a promise, per se, or is it something else, and we'll need to talk about those kinds of things and learn to deal with mainly poetical literature, which is what we have mostly in these books. Then we'll have a good long look at the book of Psalms, as long as possible in this course. Then we will talk about the wisdom tradition in the Old Testament and in the ancient near east, that is, the environment of the Old Testament, and then we'll look in order in at Proverbs, Job, Song of Songs, Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, I reserve the right to adjust the order of some of those books toward the end to make it fit better in our schedule. Lamentations may not be the last book that we study. I mean, it's sort of a downer, you know, so maybe, I don't know, we may turn this around a little bit there in the end. There are text, notice that I have primary literature and secondary literature, that doesn't mean of primary importance and of secondary importance, it doesn't mean the first is required and the second is optional. Primary literature is literature that we're studying because it's the focus of our study, the Bible, that's primary literature, that's our primary concern. Someone's comments about the Bible, that secondary literature is not making a value judgment necessarily. So primary literature, of course, the Bible. You may use one English Bible as your primary source, but it is a good idea to have one or two more versions available for consultation at times. We kind of, most of us, kind of latch on to one Bible that we like best, the new international version, or the new American standard Bible, or the new RSV, or any number of other things. Today's living Bible, I was a part of that project, so don't scoff too quickly. Or don't scoff too openly. I've been reading it, actually, the parts I didn't work on seem pretty good in that, and it is a translation now. So you want to gather around you, if you don't already own more than one Bible, one English Bible, you probably should have one or two more. If you work with the NIV, maybe go for the NASB or something that's more literal in terms of the actual meaning of words, the NIV captures often the rhetoric, the force, the nuance of a text, very nicely, sometimes by sacrificing some of the accuracy of the words. Now, those more accurate, the NASB sometimes sacrifices some of the rhetorical force that the NIV capture. So you always lose something in translation, that's inevitable, so it's a good idea to have two or three around you, and at times I'll ask you to, as up here, and this assignment, read Psalm 1 for next week in two or three versions, okay, read it three times, two or three times in two or three different versions. Another book that is secondary literature, I mean primary literature, rather, is this book entitled Old Testament Parallels by Victor Matthews and Don Benjamin. Now in the distant future, 10 years from now, when these tapes are still being played, this may all have changed, so by then technology will be such that they will be able to superimpose the real book and change my lips and everything. But right now, for you guys, this is the book we're using, a word about this book, this is a selection of literary excerpts from the ancient Near East, from cultures surrounding, from Israel's neighbors, they had a body of literature, and this takes some of the more significant literature and translates it more or less in a fairly free flowing fashion. Now the reason I think that's an advantage at this stage is it makes it readily understandable. Also the authors will occasionally in parenthesis put down a Bible reference that they think is comparable to something that is being said in this literature of their neighbors. They'll say compare Proverbs 2, 22 or something to this that you just read. Now when you read through this, you won't have time to do all of that comparison, but on occasion, as it strikes you as interesting, I would encourage you to do that, because often in the comparison you also see the contrast. This is not the Bible in every way, certainly not. But it is like the Bible in some ways, it's a kind of literature that we see also in the biblical text. So, if you read a little bit of Eucharitic poetry, you may be learning a little bit about Hebrew poetry or Old Testament poetry in translation. So I hope you will enjoy this, not a lot of pages to read, not a terrible amount of pages to read in this, but I hope you will enjoy just getting some familiarity with it. Both of those in our primary literature, the Bible, of course, being the important focus of the Course. Secondary literature, Trimper Longman's book, How to Read the Psalms. This book has been around for a long time, has stood the test of time. Again, whether it will still be course requirement down the road or still be in print is uncertain in this day and age of taking things out of print as quickly as possible, but this one's been around, so maybe it'll stay around. And as a good book, I hope you'll enjoy it. It will be our guide really through the Psalms or corollary reading. I will also guide us in lectures through certain issues. And then finally, Derek Kiddner, one of my favorite writers on Old Testament topics, not only because his faith shines through and his viewpoints are so good, but he is so elegant in the way he expresses things, not ornate, but just superbly readable and has a memorable way of saying things, a master of metaphors. And so I hope you will enjoy reading this book. Now again, I will give you guidance as to what exactly and when exactly to read material out of this book. I will await that as the course progresses. Now I might also say that since this is the first time I have taught this course this way, I am going to be giving assignments and kind of formulating the course as we go along. So I'm not handing out a reading list tonight, but I will always tell you what to do next, and I'll try to point you a little bit to the future so that it doesn't pile up on you if you just keep up with what I tell you week by week. Okay? So I'm going to give you a brief description now of the assignments and also the system of evaluation. I said when we were on page one that we get fuller description of these various things. As regards lectures, regular attendance in classes anticipated indeed hoped for and expected. Note taking is strongly encouraged as the student will be held responsible for lecture content at test time. So sometimes people say, how much of this do we have to know? Or are you going to ask hard questions? And that's hard for me to answer those kinds of questions. I try not to ask hard questions, but somehow I so often fail in my effort, or at least my perception of hard questions is different from other people's. But I do encourage you to take notes and try to engage with what we do in class. Try to keep it as loose as we can, given the constraints of a large class and a videotape program running at the same time. In terms of that, in terms of class discussion and appropriate number of pertinent brief questions or comments is welcome. As so long as you show respect for the needs and desires of others in a classroom setting, it's a large class. If you ask a lot of questions, then you might want to think, okay, now what if everyone in these classes ask as many questions as I do, I could just stay home, you know, which is not a bad idea or something. But just kind of monitor your own question asking, I don't by any means want to discourage you, however, because we do want a little give and take from time to time in this class. If at times your hand is not recognized, assuming you raised your hand, or if a question is deferred for after class, one of my colleagues was reported to have said, well that's a very interesting question, but probably not to anyone else in this class, you know, so let's talk about it later. Well, I would of course say it much more graciously, I'd say, oh that's interesting, let's talk about that after class, okay, if I judge that we need to move on. There may be various reasons why we need to push on. So again, if you raise your hand and I see it, you see me look at it. And realize I've seen it and you can put it down and if I don't come back to you, don't be affronted by that, it's just that we have ground to cover it and I need to move on, okay. Now memory work, this is a new idea to me, I mean not memory work itself, but requiring it in a class like this. And so I hope you like it, I think it'll be good for all of us. I'm asking you to memorize 29 assigned versus not just 29 versus that you choose, but 29 that I have chosen, otherwise you might already have done that assignment, some of you. But 29 assigned versus from the books covered in this course, see attached sheet, they should be mastered by the week noted, okay. So turn the page one, one page will come back to this page two in a minute. Memory versus, this is week one, okay. By week two, I would like you to have memorized Psalm 374, delight yourself in the Lord and he will give you the desires of your heart, now I know many of you already know that, but now you can learn the reference, and if you don't know that, Psalm 4610, be still and know that I am God, I will be exalted among the nations, I will be exalted in the earth, and you can imagine my turmoil in picking these verses, there were so many, that I could have chosen, I limited myself to two from the book of Psalms, and those are the two, I didn't choose necessarily the most familiar because I figured you might already know those. But by next week then, you should have learned those two verses and so forth as we continue. Most of the verses I've chosen happen to be from the book of Proverbs, so you will be memorizing verses from Proverbs long before we're able to talk about Proverbs in class. And it is my hope and plan, again Lord willing, to talk about one or the other or sometimes both of the verses which you have memorized for that week, as sort of a little devotional or just a little explication of that verse, or the two verses as class begins, so that you'll not only be memorizing the verses, but we'll talk about them a little bit and try to open them up to us a little bit, yes question, if you prefer a different version, by all means you can memorize them in the other version. Now if the question was, do you have to choose to use this version here, or another version? The answer has been heard. This is the NIV, if you prefer another version, that's fine, when I test you on these, which I might, midterm, final, when I test you then you should simply mark, you know I've learned this in the RSV, or I've learned this in the New American Standard, or KJV, or whatever. Okay, all right, back to page two, that's the memory work. Now this is something else that I hope will work well, I've heard of this being done and I've tried it a little bit and it seems to work well, assuming everyone is nice and cooperative, which I'm sure you will be, a small group projects, now this is nothing that will happen out of class. This is an evening class, your schedules are tight, I'm not going to say, all right I want you in a small group to get together on Saturday mornings, or you know, I'm not going to ask you to do that. It's going to happen here, or it's not going to happen at all. Now that doesn't mean that there might not be something you do in connection with the project individually, to bring back the next week, okay. So we're going to, from time to time the class will be divided into small groups of four to eight people in order to pursue a particular assignment. These small group interactions may last from 15 to 50 minutes in class, okay. So there'll, actually, there's one that will take about one minute, okay, but normally it'll be 15 to 50 minutes, and will sometimes involve individual preparation or follow-up outside of class, but individual, it will never be necessary for the group to get together outside of class. The assignments will be varied and specific instructions will be given as the course progresses. The purpose of these small group times is severalfold, one, to allow the kind of discussion that is impossible in a large class setting. You know, you may be brimming over with things you want to talk about or things you want to say. Now, they may not fit the project, so you have to kind of limit yourself to what I ask you to do, but it will give you a chance to express yourself, to talk to one another. Second thing is to gain hands-on experience in interpreting and relevantly applying biblical texts. We'll do some actual biblical interpretation from time to time when I may say, or I want you to take 30 minutes to read this song, and I'll be teaching you a method of Bible study that I want you to apply, and as a group you'll apply. Iron sharpens iron. So one person sharpens another person, and I think in that group interaction, a lot of times your best ideas are sparked in reaction to someone else's idea, that's one sparks the other. And then also this is to encourage one another in developing interpersonal skills, you know, you may say, I don't like working in small groups. I like doing my own thing. Well, you know, if you're absolutely committed to that, then this is for you, you know, because you probably need to learn, life is in community, and then we have to learn to work together in almost any setting. I guess there are some settings and you know, you might be a road warrior now and all you do is communicate over the electronic pathways, but those are still relationships, you know, you're still developing relationships even if they are disembodied. And there are certain codes of ethics even in the way you say things over the internet. So I mean, we need to learn to relate to one another, and that's another purpose for this. Now important note, all materials submitted by your small group should have all the names of the participating members on them, and absences should also be noted. In other words, if you turn something in, I want to know who all the members of the group are, you know, don't just say group one or something like that. And then in the case of some projects, you will be asked individually to rate the preparation and participation of your fellow group members as well as your own. Okay, now that's not to breed tension between you by any means. But I mean, it's a good check, you know, you go away with an impression of whether somebody really got into this and paid attention and made a contribution. I'm not saying everyone should contribute in the same way, but if someone looks like they made a good effort, then give them a good rating, you know, if they didn't, or if you didn't, you know, be honest and say, well, I never really wasn't prepared. I didn't really take, you know, I forgot to do that or something, or if someone's absent there'll be an opportunity to rate that. Yes, sir. Yes, yes, I do. Yes, I do. And in fact, if we would turn now to page five, and I'm going to go ahead and introduce this briefly now, we're going to do this before we're done tonight, that is we're going to do this little project, this begin this life issue, small group project as I describe it here. And let's go ahead and take this because our video audience will be doing the same thing. Obviously, we'll turn the tape off when we're doing it, and they'll do it on their own. But let me just describe what I have in mind here. I'd like us, before the night is over, we're going to take about 20 minutes, we're going to divide up into small groups, and you will be divided really in terms of where you're sitting. OK, so if you don't want to be in a group with the people sitting near you, very so ever so gently move. But again, that would indicate a problem, and I'll come to you and deal with you on that. But if you're willing, I'll just subdivide you and say, or here's group one, two, and so forth. And then I'll ask you to stay in those groups for the rest of the semester. So if you don't lie, if you're in the back and really want to be in the front, you might need to move for that reason. So when we divide up, it'll be after a break and so forth. Be where you want to stay, if you can do that, because it'll facilitate matters greatly. Now by this project, what I want us to do tonight, what you'll do is to break up into small groups, and I want you to make a list of life issues that are of concern to members of your group or to yourself, such as wealth, poverty, child rearing, temptation, political ethics, or political correctness, as the case may be, any number of things, control of your tongue, gossip, just all kinds of things that are part of our lives. A lot of them are ethical issues, but not all of them. And I want you to make a list as a group, just kind of brainstorming as fast as you can. What are our concerns? What are the things we think about? What do we need to know about? If I could ask, you know, if Jesus were here, and I could ask him questions about some issue in my life, what would that be? And I want you to make a list of those, and then before that 20 minutes is up, I want you as a group to choose one life issue that will become your focus life issue for the rest of the semester. It's not that you're not going to learn about a lot of other stuff. But just as you're reading the books, the Psalms, and the wisdom books, I want you to be thinking, how does that relate to our life issue? Is there something in this Psalm, or is there something in this proverb that in some way speaks to the issue that my group is working on? And as you're reading, I want you to make notes, keep references, okay, that Psalm applies, that verse applies, that proverb applies, and keep notes, and I'll describe later what you're going to do with those. Because week nine we come back and begin to put this all together. But tonight we'll just decide on it and launch this pursuit of a particular life issue in your group. Yes sir, you had your hand up up front? Did you have a hand up? Oh, you were just pointing to this guy saying, Lord help us, okay, I thought you had your hand up. I apologize. I'm not on the sheet, and this comes to the answer to your question. This is the way I've done it. It may or may not work out well this way. I've used this in another class, this rating system, and it seemed to work pretty well. Sort of a five to one, five, four, three, two, one method where five means outstanding participation. This person really contributed, or was particularly gracious, or was particularly helpful. He related well and was good at the group dynamics. Four is good, three is fair, two is poor, one is no evidence of preparation or participation. You might say, he might as well not have been here, or she might as well not have been here. And A is for absent. That's not A as in ABC. So don't put A for everybody, I mean they're all absent, okay. Well I'll introduce that again a little bit when we come to it, but we're not nearly quite there yet. Let's turn back now to page two. I told you this was tricky. And then we come to testing, there'll be two major examinations, a midterm, and a final, and I'll try to lock in those dates by next week. We know the final is what May 15th, or any time during the day, during that exam week. In the midterm I'll try to lock in so that you'll know what to expect there. Both of these tests or examinations will involve objective questions, short answers, and one or two short essays, okay. So the reason I do that is probably in an ideal world, I would sit down with each one of you for an hour, and just we'd talk, and I would try to see what you'd learned. And some of you would perform very well that way. This is not an ideal world, this is a fallen world, and so we can't do it exactly that way. So we have to test, and we have to test using paper, and a lot, some people say, I just like facts. You know, if you just give me a factual test, I'll ace it, it won't be a problem. Some people say, I need to express myself, I need to have the chance to write something. I do so much better when I'm thinking, and not just regurgitating facts and figures and such. So, I have please and half displease everyone by offering a little bit of each, okay. So the objective guys and girls can go for the objective part, and those who like to express themselves will have opportunity to write short essays, and I do encourage them to be crisp, concise, and cogent. As I sometimes say, so think about them, don't just start writing and think, boy, he'll be impressed by how many pages he's had to read. Think, let's go for quality, not quantity, all these things, and it will be a favor to me, and I'll smile at the end of that brilliant essay. Okay. Now, these tests will cover the material presented in class, in the assigned readings, including the Bible readings, Bible content, or arising from in class or out of class student projects. Okay. So, pretty much whatever we do in this course, could in one way or another, be tested, and of course that includes memory work, the memory work we'll be doing. Now, any questions on the syllabus, that means everyone fell asleep, yes, question over here. Right. The final is not comprehensive, so what we test up to the midterm, I'm not encouraging you to forget it, but let's put it this way. I'm encouraging you to concentrate on what follows for the final, so you get it in two stages. There's plenty to learn, and so that's probably a bit of a relief in that respect. Now, you may also have picked up, where did I put mine, that big stack of bibliographic material I don't think to have mine readily available. Yes. You see that thing? I'll make one comment about that. This thing here, this is your reading list, I knew no one would buy that. This is just something I thought might be a fun thing to do. There's two parts to this, really. The first part in the very fine print is sort of a list of things that I have been collecting into my database, so you can kind of get an idea of what a weird guy I am when you read some of these titles. One dealing with Old Testament poetry, the first set, and then Psalms, Wisdom, Literature, and the Old Testament Ancient Near East Proverbs, just sort of following along what we're doing in this course. All kinds of weird articles, sometimes in strange languages. I don't expect you really to do anything with this other than to have it around, and if you get to working on something, or if you become curious about something, you might, you know, something in the book of Proverbs, you might look and see if I happen to have listed an article that's at all relevant to your interest. It's more for your information, and there's only a couple of sheets, so I thought it was worth doing. The second half looks like this at the start. This is a work by John Evans, a former student at Covenant Seminary, THM student, who has a love for an adeptness at bibliography. He has compiled, and it's now in its revised fifth edition, a guide to biblical commentaries and reference works. People often ask me, what are some good commentaries on Ecclesiastes, or some good commentaries on Proverbs, and so forth? Well, John Evans has done, in my view, a masterful job of finding what's there, finding out about it, and in very concise fashion, sharing his impressions. Now, they're his impressions, they're subjective, but I have been impressed by his judgment as I have looked over this and used it some myself. If it has an asterisk beside it, if a particular title is at the front of a section, has an asterisk beside it, that means an asterisk beside it. That means that he thinks that that is a particularly good work, a recommended work. He has other ways of rating things, if it has a rather ornate looking M beside it. I think that means that's a mediating or moderate, so-called moderate work, and if it has two little crosses like this, I think what he's saying with that, I'm sure you can see that over there, is that this is leaning in liberal directions. I hate to use pificence of these little sigla that he has here, and there may be others that you stumble across. But again, I give you this to put in your notebook, put in your files, and as you're digging into texts from time to time, you may have a question and say, I'd love to own a commentary on, you know, I don't have a commentary on song of songs. I wonder what's out there. Well, here's a good place to go, and you can get information on that. So no, it's not your reading, not to worry, it's just for your information. Now, any other questions, I need to tell you about the bookstore opening, so return here no later than 730, having made whatever purchases you need, and we've got fair amount to accomplish then in the remaining hour and...