Starting Apr 5, I will be teaching a 1-quarter adult Sunday-school class based on Donald Knuth’s quirky book 3:16: Bible Texts Illuminated. Knuth, the world’s most pre-eminent living computer scientist, is an unlikely candidate for writing a book about scripture and art. But his development of metafont and TEX software for typesetting put him in touch with font designers and calligraphers from around the world; that together with a Sunday school class that he developed to statistically study the whole Bible with stratified random sampling, turned into 3:16. For the 16th verse after 3:1 in each book of the bible (thus, for instance, 1 Thess 4:3), 3:16 has 4 pages:
- 1 page overview of the book
- 1 page calligraphic illumination of the verse
- 2 page commentary of the verse
The class will include elements of
- Bible study (including — but not restricted to — Knuth’s commentary)
- Memorization
- Translation
- Illumination
The syllabus (click for PDF) includes the ESV for each verse, which we will be memorizing. The schedule below includes links to the translation worksheets (also PDF):
| 4/5 | Introduction | OT 3:16s |
| 4/12 | Matt 3:16 | Luke 3:16 |
| 4/19 | Mark 3:16 | Acts 3:16 |
| 4/26 | Rom 3:16 | 1 Cor 3:16 |
| 5/3 | 2 Cor 3:16 | Gal 3:16 |
| 5/10 | Eph 3:16 | Phil 3:16 |
| 5/17 | Col 3:16 | 1 Thess 4:3 |
| 5/24 | 2 Thess 3:16 | 1 Tim 3:16 |
| 5/31 | 2 Tim 3:16 | Heb 3:16 |
| 6/7 | Jam 3:16 | 1 Pet 3:16 |
| 6/14 | 2 Pet 3:16 | Rev 3:16 |
| 6/21 | John 3:16 | 1 John 3:16 |
| 6/28 | Overflow | Review/Reflect |
In the translation worksheets (the raw source comes from here), the verbs all come with two Strong’s numbers: one for the verb, and one for the tense/mood/voice; so helpful explanations are included in the worksheets. For the other words, however (especially nouns), a key for the notations can be found at this link.
Looks wonderful :) Wish we could join you. The weakest link in the chain at our much-loved new church is its Adult Ed. Maybe we just haven’t figured it out yet. As for M/C Dialogue, I am waiting for the newly configured Neighborhood Bible Study folk (now called Q-Place) to decide whether they are going to publish it. The new CEO likes it very much and wants to add some outreach type targeted studies to their collection, but she sent it out to be reviewed by various and sundry in January and I haven’t heard back from her yet. Waiting too on Calvin’s decision re my Jan. term proposal for a course in Muslim-American fiction. I’ll just have to remember the snail named Herbert…..
How’d wk 1 go.
The small audience (about 10) seemed receptive. But pretty much all the time was spent by me lecturing on the methodology. The proof will be in the pudding next week, when we actually dive into Matt, Luke 3:16.
Update: for anybody interested, I have updated all of the .pdf translation worksheets to actually put a line above an o, instead of just printing “overlineo”. I have also included the name of the book, before, you had to do the translation to solve the puzzle of which book it was from!
[...] 3:16 [...]