Scripture, Spirituality And Society Research Centre

This book provides answers to the following questions:

• “What is the tithing behavior of the different age-groups that make up the congregations found in Seventh-day Adventist churches?”

• “What is motivating Seventh-day Adventists to tithe?”

The answers are based on the results of the analysis of more than 118,000 separate tithe receipts and the responses of over 8,000 surveys collected in five countries.

WHO WOULD BE INTERESTED IN THIS BOOK?

• Academics and researchers who are interested in the demographics of and motivations for giving behavior;

• Professionals such as church pastors, church administrators, stewardship directors, church treasurers, and others who are interested in what is motivating church members to tithe, and the various factors that influence giving;

• Anybody who is interested in patterns of and motives for giving.

This is a study of student responses to the teaching of history in an American university context, conducted by an Australian professional on a year’s exchange. It is based on an analysis of data drawn from student response surveys conducted across the units taught. The results highlight a number of key principles for a curriculum that is centred around the revealing of Jesus, particularly in the nature and effect of the learning experiences he created as a master teacher during his earthly ministry. Students identified the following qualities as responsible for measurable changes in their attitudes and perspectives: inspirational teaching, the promotion of critical thinking and discernment and the creation of relevant Christ-centred educational encounters, utilising an inquiry-oriented, open-discussion, and deep-learning context. Students considered these approaches transformational, inspiring them to life-long learning. This study draws on the Christian educational perspectives of White (1903), Palmer (1993) and Kilgour (2019), particularly for its theoretical framework.

This chapter considers the public reading of Scripture, with the aim of expressing its literary beauty and theological richness and doing ‘vocal exegesis’, rather than losing these due to lack of preparation and committing the ‘heresy of boredom’. It suggests strategies for readers to prepare, to consider words, phrases and images, and to make interpretive choices, note variety in texts and read characters.

Current national developments in composition have identified a lack of chamber music repertoire for non-traditional combinations of instruments. This composition, The Death of Baldr by Australian composer Paul Smith, was commissioned by clarinetist, Ian Sykes, and premiered by the Sirius Chamber Ensemble. The composition was a collaborative process, being work-shopped with minor edits made to the score to adapt to the ensemble.

Obviously, media convergence and the 24-hour news cycle have crossed these containment lines to produce boundless data—we deliberately employ the word data here as opposed to the mediation of meaningful information that is often sacrificed in the commodification and commercialisation of news as product.

The more traditional editorial practice used to determine whether a storyline constitutes ‘news’ involves a mapping to at least one or more standard news values. These now often run second to the pressing agenda of media entities needing to present something, or anything, continuously to the public.

Texts from Qumran received attention in publications and research since their discovery. The text under investigation here is no exception. There are some serious questions to consider in relation with this text: What can this Qumran text tell us about the relationship with the consonantal text of the Masoretic Tradition? What can it tell us about its relationship with any of the Ancient Translations? What can it tell us about its relationship with the so-called LXX or Septuagint? And what can it tell us about the condition of the Septuagint in the pre-Christian era? What scholars may not have realized, is that 4QLXXNum is able to tell us something about the conditions of the Hebrew Vorlage in the pre-Christian period related to the existence or not of one canonical perceived and applied text. Textual variety over millennia is no secret nor surprise. Close correlation of texts over millennia is a noteworthy surprise. It appears that 4QLXXNum is the survival of a pre-Antiochus Epiphanes text-form of the Septuagint (pre-164 BCE) which was more literal and in line with the consonantal text of the Masoretic tradition than the Greek text-form that survived in post-Epiphanes times through Christian hands. Since 4QLXXNum is aligning so well with the consonantal text of the Masoretic tradition (a period of nearly 1148 years) the stability of these two texts calls for a canon form to have existed almost identical to the consonantal text of the Masoretic tradition from which the literal translation was made. It implies that this form existed already at Qumran. Any deviation from this standard is later and due to degenerative scholarship. Wevers is correct, he did not reconstruct the original Septuagint of Genesis for the Göttingen edition. He reconstructed the post-Epiphanes degenerative product and what was preserved through Christian hands, and not the original, of which 4QLXXNum is an example.

Objective: We aimed to explore the effect of a poetry writing program for people who had experienced a serious illness.

Method: For this study we randomly assigned 28 volunteer participants with a history of serious illness, usually cancer, to one of two poetry writing workshops. Each group met weekly for 2 hours for 8 weeks. The second group was wait-listed to enable comparison between the two groups. We used the Kessler-10, a measure of wellbeing, before and after the workshops and also interviewed the participants at these times.

Results: Participants responded enthusiastically and each group demonstrated an increase in wellbeing over the course of their workshop, moving them from medium to low risk on the K10. Participants enjoyed the challenge of writing and the companionship of other group members.

Conclusions: Psychiatrists, especially those working in liaison psychiatry, are in a position to encourage patients who have experienced a serious illness to explore writing as a way of coming to terms with their experiences.

The Fourth Gospel’s (FG) account of Jesus’ trial before Pontius Pilate has some affinities with Mark and-to a lesser degree-with Luke’s narrative; but overall, John marches according to his own drum-beat. The most obvious difference between the FG’s account of the Roman Trial and the Synoptics is their length. The FG devotes 593 words to its account (18.28-19.16) of the trial compared with 338 words for Matthew (27.11- 31), 265 for Mark (15.1-20), and 252 for Luke (23.1-5, 13-25). However, a more startling difference is the FG’s positioning of the scourging and the Roman soldiers’ mocking of Jesus in the midst of Pilate’s investigation of the charges against Jesus. Matthew and Mark place these events at the end of Pilate’s interrogation of Jesus, just prior to his being handed over to be crucified. In contrast the FG situates them in the midst of Pilate’s inquiry, that is, as scene four (John 19.1-3) of the seven scenes that form the FG’s trial narrative. Thus John distances the scourging and the troops’ mockery from Pilate’s handing Jesus over to be crucified. Why does he do this? He does it for dramatic effect: so as to forcefully portray the abused, pitiable, and mocked Jesus, as indeed being the true King (Messiah) of Israel. Hence the FG’s remarkably frequent use of basileu/j and basilei/a in its trial narrative.

If Seamus Heaney’s observation that ‘poetry is more a threshold than a path’ aligns with the lived experience of those who teach or study the art of writing poetry, then there is an ongoing pedagogical discussion to be had about the way students acquire skills and achieve competency in writing poetry in a tertiary learning context.

The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews writes to a small group of former Jews, who are now followers of Christ. They have suffered much on account of their commitment to Jesus, and many of them have faltered in their pilgrimage of faith.Their pastor is temporarily absent from the group, so he writes to encourage them to persevere, and to warn them of the serious implications of abandoning their faith in Jesus.