Thursday, April 30, 2009

Comprehensive Ph.D. Exams: Day Two


Day Two is under my belt, and yet again, I feel good. Quite good. Another five hour session, from 8am to 1pm.
Today I received four OT questions. They were (roughly) as follows.

Pentateuch
Discuss the last 25-30 years in Pentateuchal scholarship, citing specific portions of the Pentateuch where relevant. Mention the treatments of Rendtorff, Blum, Carr, Van Seters, among others.

Writings
Compare form-critical and holistic/canonical approaches to the Psalter. Demonstrate these approaches with "wisdom" in the Psalms.

Old Testament Theology
Choose three OT theologians from the 20th century and describe their approach to constructing an OT theology. Demonstrate each approach with texts from the OT.

Latter Prophets
Discuss your view of how the book of Isaiah depicts the Temple and sacrifice. Pay attention to scholarship and cite from the biblical text. Choose either a synchronic or diachronic approach.

I wrote about 9 pages on Pentateuch, and 7 pages on the other three questions . . . so 30 pages total in five hours. Wow.

This weekend my task is memorizing 10 NT questions for my final day of tests on Monday.
All the best!

3 comments:

  1. Keep up the hard work, John!

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  2. A page every ten minutes. Yep, how well I remember the “tons of info squashed down into a small box” experience of Comps. Remember…and shudder!

    While the details differ, the content is *very* similar to what we dealt with in ours. And in truth, I really do use regularly the understandings I gained in Comps prep. Congrats on this work in progress!

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  3. Ha! It's a good time. This NT stuff is pretty rough right now, though. There are 11 potential questions (which I know in advance), and I will get and have to answer 3 of them. I think in the end all will be fine (please pray it is the case, and I pass NT, along with OT and Hebrew with no problems), but it will be a long 5 hours on Monday.

    The finish line is near! I appreciate all your thoughts and prayers.

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