THEO675 A Synoptic Gospel

After the debacle of first semester 2004, I ploughed on the with the MA degree at ACU, doing Dr Margaret Hannan’s course. “A Synoptic Gospel” in second semester. This time Luke was chosen as the Gospel and I had a much better time just doing New Testament studies – it was harder to piss people off.

Dr Margaret Hannan was, I think, in charge of the theology department at one point. I also think she was Sister Margaret Hannan sgs as well, although I wouldn’t have known that at the time. I do remember she was very encouraging about my work, which was a bit of a change. As far as I can figure out she would have retired not too long after taking this course and it looks like she died in 2013, from the small amount information available on the internet.

The content of the unit was:

1&2 Introducing the Gospel of Luke

3 The Infancy Narratives : Annunciations

4 The Birth of Jesus

5 Preparation for Public Ministry

6 The Galilean Ministry of Jesus

7 The Journey to Jerusalem

8 The Parables in Luke

9 Jesus in the Temple

10 The Passion Begins

11 The Crucifixion

12 The Easter Narratives

The set text was Luke Timothy Johnson’s “The Gospel of Luke”, which I still have. Brendan Byrne’s “The Hospitality of God” was a recommendation that I also purchased and used.

We given the lecture notes and a lot of additional readings to assist us. The course was assessed by two 40% assignments, 10% for contributions to the discussion board and two more short discussions pieces worth another 10%.

I found some samples of what I was submitting to the discussion board. This was a contribution about the Prologue:

Luke and Women:

John the Baptist:

I think this was my first formal discussion submission, I actually referred to Mark Coleridge of all people:

The second contribution was this one:

I appeared to be having fun.