Peer-Reviewed Discussion Thread: Outline

Feedback:

Looks pretty good. I like that you start with the Bible’s understanding of “teaching” BEFORE you move into the contemporary implications of teaching in biblical perspective.

Still did not address the bibliography issue I raised in my earlier feedback. Taking instructor feedback seriously is a fundamental component of scaffolded assignments.

DIRECT BIBLICAL ENGAGEMENT. In my feedback on your Project Proposal Assignment, I wrote:

BIBLICAL ENGAGEMENT. While your sources are, on the whole, both on topic and appropriate to this level of work, the assignment instructions for the Theological Foundations Project make it clear that the research project must interact DIRECTLY with the biblical text. That is, research at this level is not just having conversations with the “experts” about what the biblical text says and means and leave out having your own conversation with the biblical text itself about what the biblical text says and means concerning your subject.

As the assignment instructions say: The paper must engage and interact with both primary sources (biblical text) and secondary sources (scholarly literature). Engagement with the biblical text must be done in a way that does justice both to the context and meaning of the original author as well as to the contemporary context. [Note Well: biblical interpretation at the PhD level cannot be just a book report on the views of the experts. Scholars are conversation partners, not infallible oracles; their views are not evidence of anything except what they happen to think. At the PhD level, the student is expected to engage the biblical text with their own biblical exposition and interpretation where the meaning of the biblical text is germane to the students thesis and argument, not merely report what others think the biblical text says.]

Consequently, I should have expected to have seen in your bibliography specific biblical academic commentaries on the biblical documents you plan to research in some detail in your paper.

As far as I can see, this was not addressed. What that means from the standpoint of research design is that there is no indication in your bibliography that you intend to work directly in the primary source, the Scripture.

Student used parenthetical citations, which are not permitted in the SOD except in book review assignments.

END OF FEEDBACK.

One attachment to use.

Peer-Review Discussion Assignment Instructions

Write at least 400 words, attaching your Outline or Project Map for your Theological Foundations Project Assignment (outline only minus annotations/explanations). In your thread, describe how you plan to develop this outline in your final paper, noting especially the internal logic that moves the outline from introduction to conclusion and why everything in the outline belongs there. Use current Turabian format.