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Thursday

Saturday, 05 March, 2005

After making a real effort to go to bed at a decent hour, getting up at 6 am isn't so bad. Traffic is also better when you leave the house at 7 so we get into Moore by 7:40 and hang around under the grapevine until Old Testament 1. John Woodhouse gives us a lecture on reading the Old Testament and its relationship to the New Testament (well, it was more than that but I can't capture it all in one sentence).

We had our first chaplaincy group meeting with Philip Kern. Chaplaincy groups have about twenty or so people in them from all different years. Each member of faculty takes one and, for the first week, everyone meets together. Philip got us into pairs to interview each other and then introduce the other person to the rest of the group. We went around the circle to see if we could name everyone. Then Philip talked a bit about mission (first week in May). We're going to a Mandarin-speaking congregation in Campsie however most of us aren't Asian and most of us can't speak Mandarin. Philip talked about some of the challenges we'll find there (the language thing being a big one, so there won't be any door-knocking [yay!]) It will be interesting to find out how they do things at that church to reach out into the local community.

In future weeks, however, just the first years will meet together during the chaplaincy group hour apart from the rest of the group. It's a little confusing but at Moore, if you're in first year, you're assigned a mission chaplain (in our case, Philip Kern), a first year chaplain (Richard Gibson [a.k.a. Gibbo] and Bill Salier for us) and, if you're a woman, a women's chaplain (Christine Jensen for me). So next week during the chaplaincy group hour, our first year chaplains will be meeting with us and setting us reading/discussion material.

After morning tea, we had our second hour of Old Testament 1 and John Woodhouse finished off his first lecture and started the second (on the background of the Old Testament world. I love how this degree contains so much history!) Ben left at this point to go to the funeral of a distant aunt. The following hour was supposed to be women's chaplaincy group however, since we had met the day before, we didn't have anything on for the period. Fiona suggested that we have prayer group so, she, myself and Cathy went to her house for that as she lives close by. Our fourth member, Elizabeth, wasn't able to make it but we think she will in future weeks. It was nice getting to know Fiona and Cathy a bit better during that hour and we prayed for each other and the overseas missionaries we know. Lunch followed and then an hour of Greek in which we had a look at the imperative mood and the passive voice.

I went to the library to hunt again for this particular book and found it this time. I waited for Tho outside Chappo (I didn't know what was the proper thing to do in that situation—all Moore college students have access to Chappo house, including the women, however only MAC residence have access to MAC (because MAC is a separate entity to Moore). Some lecturers have their offices in Chappo as well. So technically it's fine to waltz in and out of Chappo, even though it's the boys' residential college, but I still felt a bit funny about it. Standing outside on the doorstep, I met a guy from Belfast who is in my year and enjoyed listening to the lilt of his voice. Tho showed up and we headed back into Moore to sit under the grapevine and do some Greek.

He had to go at 4 and I headed into the library to do some work. I read my photocopied chapters of Josephus' Antiquities of the Jews (my goodness, he rattles on a bit and he will continue down one tangent for some period of time, then change tack and start talking about something else). I found the bit in Book XVIII where Josephus mentions Jesus and says of him, “He was [the] Christ.” however most people reckon that that bit was added in by one of the monks doing the copying and that Josephus did not write it himself (Joseph being Jewish and an Hasmonean). This makes me question how much of what is said elsewhere was actually written by Josephus himself; he calls John the Baptist a “good man” but was that just a later addition?

I had to stick around until 6:30 for the 1st Year Moore Women welcome so I thought I'd stay in the library, despite the extreme air conditioning. I pulled up all the passages that talk about John the Baptist in Matthew, Mark and Luke and wrote some notes. Then it was time to go over to Moya Woodhouse's for the dinner.

Their house is absolutely gorgeous and John's office/library is to die for—fabulously large desk against one wall, filing cabinets, two comfy lounge chairs positioned in front of the gas heater, wooden horizontal slat blinds and mahogany bookshelves along three walls of the room packed full of interesting reading material. It was raining so their original plan of having the dinner outside was hastily revised. We had a buffet meal of pasta dishes and salad and sat in their lounge room eating and chatting. The rest of the women were going over to the first Moore Women evening for the year (Moore Women meet every Thursday night. It's for female Moore college students and wives of current Moore college students to meet together to study the Bible, get trained in various ministry skills, learn about various theological topics, etc. Their aims are:

• To encourage each other to love and serve Jesus and to grow in our knowledge of Him;
• To stimulate Christian thinking;
• To provide practical help for ministry now and in the future;
• To give all women at College the opportunity to feel welcome, enjoy fellowship and build relationships.

but attendance is not compulsory and you're free come as little or as much as you like. I decided not to go that night and I don't think I'll be going very regularly, if at all; it's a bit much on top of everything else that happens during the week: church wipes out Sunday night, training/Bible study wipes out Tuesday night, another night of the week is devoted to hospitality, another night of the week is devoted to rest so that leaves only three nights of the week to do study. If another one of those is taken up with something else, I really feel the strain. It's a huge contrast to school or Uni when I only had two or three nights of the week taken up with other things. During HSC, I was only doing 4 subjects (Maths, English, Ancient History and Visual Arts); during Uni, the most I ever did subject-wise was 5. But at Moore, I've got 12 subjects for the year—I'm doing 10 a week at the moment and 8 of those are assessable and year-long:

1. BS 101 Greek 1 (all year)
2. BS 111 Old Testament 1 (all year)
3. BS 121 New Testament 1 (all year)
4. BS 125 New Testament Survey (all year)
5. BS 130 Biblical Set Books (hasn't started yet)
6. BS 141 Biblical Theology (hasn't started yet)
7. CM 120 Pastoral Ministry 1 (non-assessable)
8. CM 152 Cross Cultural Communication (non-assessable)
9. CT 100 Doctrine 1 (all year)
10. CT 122 History of Christian Mission (all year)
11. CT 130 Mission Foundations (all year)
12. CT 161 World Religions and the Gospel (all year)

Anyways, I decided I really needed to go home and have an early night and Huong happened to be going too and she offered to drive me home since she lives fairly close by. But first we drove to UNSW to pick her husband who was giving a talk to Campus Bible Study Science students at their first year welcome. I got home just before 9:30 and stuffed around for too long (found “Monty Python and the Works of Josephus”) before going to bed.

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