The last couple of months have been somewhat sparse in the blogging dep’t. In June I taught an accelerated introductory hermeneutics course at PBU Cairn University, so most of my spare time in May and June was spent prepping for the class. It was certainly intense–4.5 hours on Friday night and 9.5 hours on Saturday, three weekends in a row–but I feel that it went quite well for my first graduate class. The students responded positively to the material, and, though they entered the course with varying degrees of experience and ability, I believe they all learned quite a bit, judging from their assignments. I certainly hope that I will get to teach the course again, since there are quite a few things I would do a little differently.

But it’s just as well that I don’t have any courses on the horizon–just a week teaching Pentateuch in Wisconsin in October–because I need to get started on my dissertation. Monday is the day that I have designated quite melodramatically as “Dissertation Day,” the first day of a two- to three-year project on Chronicles. I’m sure that it will be a struggle at first to resume my train of thought after working so hard in March and April to get the proposal approved. But I’m looking forward to a fresh challenge as other aspects of my academic and church life conclude. My PBU Cairn students will be submitting their post-course work by Saturday evening. Sunday is my final Sunday-school class on Numbers and Deuteronomy. At work, things are quite busy, but we seem to be getting caught up–not as much pressure for me to work overtime.

Suffice to say, I am looking forward to resuming what was my normal rhythm for much of 2011: work, church, family, research.

There were two notable blessings in the last few weeks in the academic realm. First, I received confirmation that my article on Lamentations was accepted by Old Testament Essays and will be published in the last issue of 2012. This article was the fruit of my thesis–mostly chapter four. Second, I was notified that my paper proposal for the national ETS meeting in Milwaukee (November 2012) was accepted. Now I just have to write the paper! Fortunately, I have quite a bit to work with on Lamentations already.

Thanks for checking in. I hope to post something more substantial in the weeks to come. With election season heating up, I can’t imagine that I will lack fodder for parody, mockery and satire.