Family Strife into Family Values?

Now that you have finished reading the story of Joseph and his family, have your impressions about this family changed at all? Does the family seem to have changed and evolved due to the events involving Joseph or are they primarily the same? Look back to your last entry about family strife and explain how and why your thinking about the family has or has not changed. You should quote your previous entry in this entry and you should also cite specific examples from the chapters you read most recently to support any observations or insights you have.

Family Strife

At this point in our reading of Genesis, we have encountered multiple families that have complex, confusing and often violent encounters with one another. At the heart of many of these problems seems to be favoritism. Paying particular attention to Jacob's family, how do you understand the role of favoritism in his family? What values does this family seem to emphasize and prize? In what ways is Joseph as the favorite different from  Jacob, Isaac or Abraham? In what ways is he similar? If you read about a family like this in a book that wasn't the Bible, what kind of conclusions and judgments might you make about them? Given the fact that this family is feature in the Bible, how does that change your understand of them? How does it change your understanding of the Bible?

In your answers, you should refer to specific moments and/or lines from the Bible to illustrate each of your points. You must include at least 3 examples from the text in your response.

Flat vs. Round Characters

Throughout the chapters we have read in The Bible thus far, a number of difficult, upsetting and even traumatic events have occurred for the characters in The Bible, but how those characters feel about what has happened is rarely shared or discussed in the chapters. In literary terms, the characters in The Bible are known as "flat" or "one dimensional" characters, which means that they are not written as complex human beings, but rather as characters who serve a particular purpose in the plot.  Why might creating stories with "flat" characters be a strategy for the writers of The Bible? What role might "flat" characters play? What goals might they help to achieve? Are there drawbacks to having "flat" characters? Are there any characters who do not appear to be "flat" characters in The Bible?
 
As you answer these questions, please refer to specific stories and characters to illustrate your point.

If you were in charge of teaching...

If you were in charge of teaching a group of third formers the chapters you read in the Bible last night, what elements would you stress that they understand and remember about the chapters and why.

Divine Inspiration

Select one of the literary works inspired by any of the Bible Chapters we've read and reviewed (1, 2, 3 or 4) and explain how you understand the connection between the literary work and the chapter that inspired it. Do you understand the Bible chapter differently or in a new way due to the way it is presented or described in the literary work? Please be specific in your discussion of both the chapter and the literary work.