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    Let There Be Lite - eBook [ePub]: Using Limericks to Introduce the Hebrew Bible
    Let There Be Lite - eBook [ePub]: Using Limericks to Introduce the Hebrew Bible
    Let There Be Lite - eBook [ePub]: Using Limericks to Introduce the Hebrew Bible
    Ebook205 pages1 hour

    Let There Be Lite - eBook [ePub]: Using Limericks to Introduce the Hebrew Bible

    By Prof. Marvin L. Chaney

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    About this ebook

    For many, understanding the difference between Zephaniah and Zechariah or Micah and Malachi is difficult. This book uses humor and simple poetry in the familiar form of limericks to help students grasp and remember basic facts and concepts of the Hebrew Bible. Relevant biblical passages are noted in the book margins. Here's a sample: If a text is an answer of sorts, Common sense to a query exhorts With a homely suggestion: What on earth was the question? For the text with that question comports. In the Bible, the history’s systemic, And the literature there is polemic. If you grasp those two truths, It the way truly smoothes For all else, be it etic or emic.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAbingdon Press
    Release dateSep 1, 2012
    ISBN9781426755163
    Let There Be Lite - eBook [ePub]: Using Limericks to Introduce the Hebrew Bible
    Author

    Prof. Marvin L. Chaney

    San Francisco Theological Seminary

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      Book preview

      Let There Be Lite - eBook [ePub] - Prof. Marvin L. Chaney

      PREFACE

      To the best of my knowledge, no one has ever before written an introduction to the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament in limerick form.  The reasons why are as patent as they have been persuasive—until now!  At the outset and far beyond, I had no conscious intention of transgressing such well-founded boundaries.  One spring term years ago, I had an introductory class in Hebrew Prophets at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California.  The students were bright, highly motivated, sincere, and far too earnest for their own good.  Their sober good intentions kept getting in the way of their significant encounter with the prophetic texts of the Hebrew Bible. 

      With that pedagogical issue in the background, I found myself one day with a few minutes to spare before class.  I scribbled a handful of limericks regarding the subject of the day, on the premise that no one—not even these earnest students—could be overly serious about what was stated in a literary form that virtually requires imperfection and playfulness.  Students who had not previously cracked a smile in that class begged for more.  Far more important, they cracked open to the profound challenges and resources present in the biblical texts that were the focus of the course.  Further limericks in this and other introductory courses followed as time permitted.  The corpus, like Topsy, just growed.

      When I supplied copies to students in typescript, they made different uses of the limericks.  Some, who were put off by the extended prose discussion in standard introductions, found that the limericks often conveyed a quick epitome of a text, issue, or viewpoint that allowed them to see why the more extended discussion mattered.  Many found the limericks a convenient way to review for comprehensive final examinations.  If they understood the allusions and passing references in the limericks, they understood many broader connections within a mass of material that can be quite intimidating, both in bulk and in complexity.  Using the limericks as a study guide helped them focus limited time and energy where the yield for integrated learning was greatest.

      Once I had a class at San Francisco Theological Seminary that was almost evenly divided between European-American students, on the one hand, and Korean and Korean-American students, on the other. The two groups were interacting with each other far less than optimally, but both asked to make a few limericks that I chose for them the focus of discussion in small groups. We structured each of the discussion groups to be composed of about equal numbers from the two parts of the class.  I circulated among the groups to observe and answer any questions students had for me.  What quickly became apparent was that the Korean and Korean-American students, who on the whole knew the content of the Hebrew Bible far more intimately, were explaining that content to the European-American students.  As a group, the European-American students had a deeper background in the sorts of literary, historical, and social-scientific tools that the limericks presumed and used, and they were often explaining those to their Korean sisters and brothers.  All were energized and enlightened by the exchange and asked to repeat it.  Walls of language and culture were breached in ways that allowed greater interaction and mutual edification.

      The advantages of the limericks—their brevity and pithiness—are, of course, also their limitations and liabilities.  Nuance, detail, and multiple alternatives have often been sacrificed.  Any finer sense of verse has succumbed to mere doggerel.  From their inception, however, the limericks were never intended to stand alone.  They are adjuncts to other instruction, whether in classroom or through individual reading and study.  Many require a good deal of knowledge about a topic to be comprehensible.  None was ever intended as a lazy person’s painless introduction to the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament.  Taken in sum, they demand real effort from their reader, but they seek to lighten, summarize, and enlighten a process that can too often become stultifying.

      Most of the limericks were written and used while I was teaching the material in question.  I have only rather recently had occasion to read them through repeatedly as a whole at one sitting.  At first I was struck by how much attention I had devoted to social stratification, its dynamics, and its results in the world of the Hebrew Bible. Upon further reflection, I have made no attempt to alter that emphasis, and I make no apology for it here.  While it is the datum of the biblical world, a majority of introductions ignore it, leaving modern, middle-class readers of the Bible to suppose—erroneously—that those who people the Bible had life experience no different from their own.  If I shout and bounce on this topic, it is because I occupy the light end of the titter-totter. 

      While I alone bear responsibility for venturing where all my disciplinary colleagues have been wise enough not to stray, I nevertheless owe many debts of gratitude in my venture.  My senior colleague in the Graduate Theological Union and friend of many years, Norman K. Gottwald, encouraged the madness and brought the limericks to the attention of the editorial board at Abingdon Press.  Robert B. Coote, with whom I shared the Old Testament department at San Francisco Theological Seminary for decades, and who has been a friend even longer, influenced much of the content through an extended history of interaction and co-taught courses.  He has never walked out on a limerick or failed to spot its humor, however arcane.

      My long-suffering wife, Rilla McCubbins Chaney, has heard and read innumerable versions of the limericks, all with good humor, a keen ear, and a critical eye.  M. Kathryn Armistead of Abingdon Press has been unfailingly helpful and supportive through the process of publication, and was responsible for suggesting that I expand the corpus of limericks she first saw to include those books of the Hebrew Bible that I had never taught at the introductory level. 

      My greatest debt of gratitude is owed to my many students through the latter years who suffered the limericks, laughed at the limericks, learned from the limericks, made fun of the limericks, wrote limericks in response to the limericks, and made my teaching career a fulfilling delight.  It is to them that I dedicate this work, for, in truth, they inspired it!  As you join their ranks, gentle reader, remember, as one of the limericks states, Yes, Old Testament’s serious fun!

      INTRODUCTION

      Introductions require introduction.

      This involves but exceeds mere seduction.

      It explains why and how,

      And does author allow

      To interpret book’s signal construction.

      Ne’er before has an intro existed

      That of limericks solely consisted.

      Though they’re only a tool,

      Most think none but a fool

      In such enterprise would have persisted.

      But if others you strive to help learn,

      For techniques new and diff’rent you yearn.

      There is naught you can’t teach,

      If you only impeach

      The desire all things foolish to spurn.

      It’s a book that I ne’er planned to write.

      Earnest students one term were wound tight.

      Just to loosen them up,

      I became playful pup,

      Tried a limerick cure for their plight.

      As with popcorn, one always can quit

      Writing limericks, but, I admit,

      One thing led to another;

      ’Twas an urge hard to smother,

      To keep writing as time would permit.

      No discouragement dampened my zeal.

      Keep your day job! was frequent appeal.

      But an itch must be scratched—

      Thus more doggerel hatched,

      Though detractors did groans scant conceal.

      Frequent rolling of eyes met my verse.

      It’s niche market! was one judgment terse.

      But when finals close loomed,

      Sales for limericks boomed—

      Course essentials condensed they rehearse.

      Can’t remember those reams of detail?

      Here’s a help when prosaic means fail.

      Just enjoy corny rhymes.

      They sum up paradigms

      That connections ’twixt dots can unveil.

      Although limericks often are ribald,

      These to serve pedagogy I’ve scribbl’d.

      Thus, a form deemed quite base

      Noble learning can grace.

      If it works, I, for one, have not quibbl’d.

      Here the poesy inquires ’bout the Bible.

      Its intentions are never to libel.

      ’Neath the surface it looks,

      In Old Testament books,

      To investigate processes scribal.

      In the abstract, it’s book to revere.

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