Funny Samuel Course
About the Course
In this three-meeting course, we will go over six stories from the books of Samuel that were written as comedies.
We will go over the context in which they were written, and we will then read the stories together as comedies and see how funny they are. In other words, we will laugh.
We will go over two stories in each hour or so-long meeting (including a discussion after each story).
Pricing
The course costs $70 for the general public and $49 for members of the tribe (a 30% discount)
I will use Patreon to refund the 30% directly to your credit card. After signing up, you will get a note document with the Zoom link and a link to add the course meetings to your Google Calendar.
Sign up for the course here (coming soon)
Become a member of the tribe here
Please make sure to email me at podcastofbiblicalproportions@gmail.com after signing up so we can say hello.
Time and Date
Each meeting is about an hour long, and will take place at these dates and times:
Meeting 1: Saturday, February 24
Meeting 2: Saturday, March 2
Meeting 1: Saturday, March 9
All meetings are held at the same time:
4 pm US Eastern Time
1 pm US Pacific Time
10 pm GMT
8 am Sydney Time
The Suffering Servant Course
Who is the Suffering Servant?
The Suffering Servant is an unnamed man mentioned several times in the book of Isaiah as a man who spoke the word of God but received from his people disrespect, scorn, and ridicule. Hence, the Suffering Servant of God.
What will the course be about?
In this two-part course, we will go over the Suffering Servant song in the book of Isaiah, chapter 49, both in English and in Hebrew, and we will answer these questions:
- Who first noticed the Suffering Servant passages in Isaiah in 19th-century Germany?
- How were these passages viewed?
- How did the Christian writers of the New Testament use these passages in their stories about Jesus Christ?
- What did Jesus say about these passages?
- Who are the "Three Isaiahs" that contributed to the book of Isaiah?
- What was the world like when these passages were written in the original Hebrew, in Babylonian and Persian times?
- When the Hebrew biblical authors wrote about a suffering servant, who might they have been alluding to?
That last point will be the first step in a biblical investigation which will lead us to a very promising candidate to be the actual suffering servant. This will all be simple and easy to follow and the many "clues" will be there for all of us to see and follow together.
We will also send the attendees overviews of all of the above to make it even easier to follow along during the classes.
Why makes the Suffering Servant important?
In Jewish tradition, the servant is regarded as the nation of Israel, while in the Christian tradition, the passages are believed to be prophecies about Jesus. This is the topic we will explore in our new pilot course!
Who will teach the course?
Garry Stevens of History in the Bible podcast and Gil Kidron of the A Podcast of Biblical Proportions.
Garry is an architectural sociologist; family boardgame designer; teaching resource creator; producer and the author of the History in the Bible podcast, which covers all of the history of all of the Bibles.
Gil is a Hebrew-speaking writer, editor, and podcaster: As Depicted on Film, which dives into the historical, sociological, political and storytelling aspects of films, and A Podcast of Biblical Proportions, which looks at the historical context in which the Hebrew Bible was written, and what that teaches us about the biblical stories and the people who wrote them.
When will it be and how much does it cost?
The course will consist of two interactive meetings and will be limited to 20 people. The course will be delivered on Tuesday, January 16, and Tuesday, January 23, 2024.
We're starting at:
7 pm Eastern US
4 pm Pacific US
Midnight Greenwich time (at midnight it turns into Wednesday)
Each meeting is 90 minutes long (mas o menos) and includes a Q&A.
Because it's Garry's and Gil's first course in this format, we're offering it at a reduced cost of only $49 USD (49 is an auspicious number in the Bible and the ancient world in general!).
How do I sign up?
Follow this link to sign up for the course. nd It leads to a page on my Patreon page where you can purchase a ticket for the course and get the Zoom link. It's on my Patreon page for convenience purposes, we have yet to set up a separate way to let people sign up for the course without signing up to Patreon.
It's going to be great - hope to see you there!
Here below is a very useful PDF for our first meeting. It will help you know a bit more about the topics we'll talk about then, and it includes maps, timelines, and the verses we'll be going over. We recommend downloading it.