NT Exam

With this morning's effort out of the way, the exams are over, so I can concentrate on getting the other essays done, as well as continuing to be formed for the priesthood!

Today's exam was much the same as yesterday in format, although it did include some Greek translation, which went fine, thankfully! Essay topics were the christology of Matthew's Gospel and the contribution that the social sciences make to interpreting 1 Corinthians. Both fascinating subjects!

No more work today - need a bit of a rest after all the revision, so it was nice to head to the pub for lunch with fellow ordinands! Also looking forward to the Eucharist this evening.

OT Exam today

I had the first of my two exams this morning: 3 hours on the Old Testament.

Went reasonably well, I think, but am so glad I did the mock last week! It helped me to get my timings right, so I was able to pace myself pretty much perfectly, with 5 minutes at the end to go back and finish an earlier question!

There were 4 'gobbets' in the exam (short passages of scripture which have to be commented on - with regards to history, literary and theological insights). I did the two from Genesis and two from Second Isaiah.

The two essays were interesting - not quite as expected, but fairly easy to adapt the mock essays to. One was on whether or not it is adequate to describe Genesis 1-11 as "monotheistic myth", in its Ancient Near East context - an opportunity to talk about things like the Creation and Flood narratives in comparison with those in (for example) the Mesopotamian narratives of Atrahasis & Gilgamesh.
The other essay was about the 'servant' figure in Second Isaiah (chapters 40-55), and whether or not the fact that he is 'anonymous' is significant.

As I say, it went fairly well on the whole - I'm sure I've passed, at any rate, which is all I need to do.

Time now to replace the OT theology with NT, ready for exam 2 tomorrow morning!