My daughter came home from Sunday School having just completed a study of the book of Esther with the youth. She said that the person who taught it, did not think that Esther was a woman of good character and did not think the whole book should be in the canon of the Old Testament. This got me thinking. It wasn't long before I concluded that Esther would be a perfect fit for me. It was Old Testament; it was narrative; it was pretty short so my chances of finishing the study were good.
Perhaps the biggest issues in Esther are: Why doesn't it refer to God (one of only two books i the Bible like that, the other being the Song of Solomon? Isn't the whole episode at the end of the book wherein the Jews kill a bunch of opponents kind of an embarrassment? After all, they seem to celebrate and enjoy it. What was Esther up to and what can we conclude about her character? I'm sure more questions will arise as we step into the book.
2 comments:
So...what approach do you take/are you going to take when studying a narrative?
Are you going to share the 1 Peter love? I wanna see your notes dude! It helps me. A lot to see how other people study/prep
I'm not sure yet on Esther, still doing background study, but I think it's going to be dividing it into individual parts of the story and then looking at how the author shapes the story with language and repetition, stuff like that. We'll see. I've already had some pretty productive study on why God is never mentioned.
I'll send you a PDF of my 1 Peter notebook. Might be a little cryptic...
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