Sunday, September 23, 2007

Updates to the previous couple of posts

1. Jeff's comment on the Reverend Al Sharpton is well taken, and did a bit to revise my opinion of Sharpton. That said, I think I'm far from alone in my kneejerk mistrust of Sharpton and I still don't think he does causes many favors from showing up. I would consider him more honest that Michael Moore, but in the same basic ballpark.

2. I really didn't give sufficient background on the bible stories topic, so here are a few clarifications:

-My youth seem to know many of the basic bible stories, especially those that Unitarians like and/or those that are particularly palatable to children. They aren't totally ignorant and I'm certainly not planning to teach them all of the Bible in an hour or attempt to.

-A couple of weeks ago, I was reading a case for Property class where the Judge makes a reference to the Tower of Babel wherein he not only assumed the reader knew what it was, but assumed the reader knew it well enough to apply its implications to the situation at hand. I of the Presby upbringing was ok. It made me wonder how well my youth would do with it, though.

Thus, I am looking primarily for bible stories that aren't so well known that they would know them already, but do come up in society.

That said, the responses here have convinced me that a series of classes on this are in order.

Thanks, guys!

CC

3 comments:

LinguistFriend said...

In personal discussion I suggested that one approach to the selection of stories would be to look through such a work as the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations for Bible material. You correctly pointed at that many such references are not quotations. So, another sort of source would be books such as Benet's Reader's Encyclopedia, which I found a very useful book when I was studying literature more systematically than now. It limits the number of references, missing a few, but probably has as many such references as you could use.
LF

Chalicechick said...

Well, I do not have that book and the library doesn't open in time for me to do any such research before class at 11.

Asking people "What bible stories have you seen referenced that you think the kids need to know?" has worked fine.

CC

Bill Baar said...

A good deal of what I know about the Bible comes from Hollywood.

I wasted a Sunday Afternoon flipping back and forth between the cubs and Victor Mature in the Robe.

Old movies might not be a bad way to introduce kids to the bible.