Topics
for Essay 1
I list some ideas for paper topics
almost reluctantly, because it is my belief that the very best papers are
likely to come from ideas you develop yourself. Good essays emerge
from your sensitivity to moments in a text which seem unusual or initially
unclear, which seem to demand further explanation. The Bible is full
of such moments, as, for instance, the moment in the Exodus plagues when
it is revealed that "the Lord hardened Pharoah's heart." There is
something unusual in that expression and one could spend time exploring
the meanings it might carry--Pharaoh's will to resist, God overcoming Pharaoh's
bargaining, etc. But these two possibilities by no means exhaust
its meaning--as, indeed, no single interpretation could ever exhaust it.
My fundamental recommendation is that you allow yourself to look for similar
moments in the biblical text and that you allow your own thinking processes
to lead you to a coherent, provable position on what such moments might
mean. That is to say (in a roundabout way), you may certainly reject
the paper topics found at the bottom of this sheet in favor of one that
you develop yourself. (And one other warning: the topics as
I list them are not thesis statements, but require further work to be developed
into thesis statements. They are merely general topics.)
More generally, I believe
a good interpretive essay should contain the following things:
1) a good thesis statement
of what you are going to prove in the paper. The criteria for a good
thesis statement are two:
-
it must be controversial, which is
to say, you must be able to imagine someone reasonably disagreeing with
it (otherwise it's probably not worthy of argument);
-
it must be provable using evidence
from the text.
2) good use of quoted material.
A good paper discusses specific aspects of the language of the text, often
telling me things about that language that I wouldn't otherwise have noticed.
A very good method for incorporating quoted material is as follows:
-
first, introduce the quotation with
some general statement of its place in the complete text, how it fits into
your argument, or some other general introductory comment, usually followed
with a colon (":");
-
then quote from the text, using only
as much of the text's language as you will go on to discuss, but enough
to have your quotation make grammatical and syntactical sense (i.e., don't
quote fragments out of context);
-
finally, and perhaps most importantly,
interpret your quotation, telling your readers things about the specific
features of the text that perhaps are not immediately noticable to the
casual reader.
3) a clear and well-developed
structure. Structure is a matter of how an essay is put together.
Each paragraph should treat a separate idea, each dedicated to proving
the thesis. Paragraph should follow paragraph logically, so that
the argument is developed over the course of the entire paper. Each
paragraph should be internally well-developed, so that it doesn't leave
an aspect of the idea unstated (beware of short paragraphs comprised of
only a few sentences). Paragraphs should not wander from the general
topic of the thesis statement, nor should they wander from the particular
idea of that paragraph.
4) clear and grammatical sentences.
Good ideas can only be understood when expressed in clear and grammatical
language, so I will also be considering these aspects of your paper in
grading it.
General Topics:
1. Do a character study
of one of the following: God, Abraham, Jacob, Joseph, Moses, David,
Job. More than just a summary of what happens to a character, the
study should point out the essence or operating principle of the character,
what makes him work..
2. Derive a thesis on
the place of women in the opening books of the Bible and the gender ideology
of the Bible.
3. Look at any section
of the Bible we have read in terms of its function as teaching a lesson
or setting an example. What complex techniques does the Bible use
to teach lessons?
4. Consider the effect
of God on one of the stories told in the initial books of the Bible.
How does the presence of a Divine Being change the meaning or nature of
a story? What is the nature of the interplay between the Divine omniscient
point-of-view and the human limited point-of-view?
5. Think about what
constitutes the category of the literary and discuss the role that any
idea of the literary plays in a single biblical episode or story.
Other topics are possible, but I
would ask you to discuss your ideas before you commit to writing on the
topic.