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So we had our history final Tuesday.
The exam was the same format as the midterm, only with two essays to write instead of one. We had four questions from which to choose:
( The Exam Questions )
I was part of a study group and the guy who'd organized it randomly assigned us different essays--just for the purpose of studying, we certainly weren't bound to this. I was assigned questions 3 & 4. I banged out three--I actually came up with seven different factors, just to give the other students many reasons to consider--and posted it to our Google docs group. (We also had fifteen identifications--terms we were going to have to define/identify for the exam--that I uploaded.) I was rather proud of one of those reasons--I said that one factor was Christianity's sacred texts, which we hadn't actually discussed at all in class, but when I was composing the outline, it occurred to me that not every religion has sacred texts. Certainly paganism didn't. I did a little research on other Mediterranean basin religions in Antiquity and found out there were only 3-4 other religions that had sacred texts, and none of them were explicitly evangelical. I whipped off an email to my professor:
I've been working on that essay question number 3 and came up with an interesting idea that I don't think we covered in class. I think the fact that Christianity has sacred texts is another factor in its success--it's much easier to propagate and reinforce information (the Word) when you can write it down and pass it along. The other Mediterranean basin religions with sacred texts (as far as I can find out) were ones that were not explicitly evangelistic, like Judaism, Manichaeism and Zoroastrianism. I think it's the intersection of Christianity's evangelism and their sacred texts that helped them explode eventually.
Am I completely off-track here? I realize that many of Christianity's early adherents might not have been able to read (hence reducing the effectiveness of the gospel as a tool for evangelization), and it wasn't until it had been firmly established as the state religion that they established the biblical canon and started translating the Bible into other religions. But surely before that time, during the early church, evangelists used the sacred writings as part of their outreach--did Paul preach the written gospel or did he improvise?
He responded:
Dear Clara,
your idea is absolutely not off-track. There are several studies arguing about the decisive role played by the written word, and hence interpretation, that is theology, in the rise of Christianity. Paul: remember that Paul wrote his letters before the evangelists wrote the Gospels. The Gospels are later and take into account Paul's letters. Moreover, Paul wasn't an apostle and never met Christ in person. Thus, Paul's letters are based on an oral tradition and the Gospel on orality and Paul's letters.
Eeeh! So I worked that into my argument.
Then I studied the last question. I wrote a quick outline for it but as I was composing the outline, I realized that question would be a little difficult to answer, by memory, with sources (remember, the difficult thing--the REALLY difficult thing--about this format is that we have to not only write an essay, we have to cite original sources--from memory). With this kind of format, linear is better for me, it's much easier to remember a linear argument than a convoluted, circular one. And no matter how you choose to answer no. 4, all those factors influenced each other. Example, one economic factor was the debasement of the currency--but this wasn't an isolated phenomenon, it influenced--strongly--how the legions acted...which then influenced the imperial succession. The 3rd century was basically a precursor to the Fall of Rome in the 5th century and like any event where things are falling apart, they all feed into each other and social entropy takes over and...
Basically the 3rd century was a hot mess, yo.
So I decided I would rather concentrate on no. 2 and emailed our study group leader, who was fine with that. This was a more complicated question than no. 3 (albeit still linear) so my outline was longer. It boiled down to:
( Long Boring Outline on How the Roman Empire Held Together )
I committed this to memory (as well as my other outline) and basically spent two days muttering under my breath every chance I got. Got to the final on Tuesday was pacing around, still muttering--my TA saw me and made a "you're going to be FINE" gesture and mouthed that. We had nearly three hours to do the exam but the other TA said it shouldn't take nearly that long. I clocked out at about 3:30 (2.5 hours) after 3 blue books and one aching hand. I did this exaggerated walk up to drop off my blue books and one of the TAs said "we were taking bets on how many you would fill up." I gave him a long-suffering look and gimped off to treat myself to some Pinkberry. GOD, that stuff is good!
Have to register for next semester now!
The exam was the same format as the midterm, only with two essays to write instead of one. We had four questions from which to choose:
( The Exam Questions )
I was part of a study group and the guy who'd organized it randomly assigned us different essays--just for the purpose of studying, we certainly weren't bound to this. I was assigned questions 3 & 4. I banged out three--I actually came up with seven different factors, just to give the other students many reasons to consider--and posted it to our Google docs group. (We also had fifteen identifications--terms we were going to have to define/identify for the exam--that I uploaded.) I was rather proud of one of those reasons--I said that one factor was Christianity's sacred texts, which we hadn't actually discussed at all in class, but when I was composing the outline, it occurred to me that not every religion has sacred texts. Certainly paganism didn't. I did a little research on other Mediterranean basin religions in Antiquity and found out there were only 3-4 other religions that had sacred texts, and none of them were explicitly evangelical. I whipped off an email to my professor:
I've been working on that essay question number 3 and came up with an interesting idea that I don't think we covered in class. I think the fact that Christianity has sacred texts is another factor in its success--it's much easier to propagate and reinforce information (the Word) when you can write it down and pass it along. The other Mediterranean basin religions with sacred texts (as far as I can find out) were ones that were not explicitly evangelistic, like Judaism, Manichaeism and Zoroastrianism. I think it's the intersection of Christianity's evangelism and their sacred texts that helped them explode eventually.
Am I completely off-track here? I realize that many of Christianity's early adherents might not have been able to read (hence reducing the effectiveness of the gospel as a tool for evangelization), and it wasn't until it had been firmly established as the state religion that they established the biblical canon and started translating the Bible into other religions. But surely before that time, during the early church, evangelists used the sacred writings as part of their outreach--did Paul preach the written gospel or did he improvise?
He responded:
Dear Clara,
your idea is absolutely not off-track. There are several studies arguing about the decisive role played by the written word, and hence interpretation, that is theology, in the rise of Christianity. Paul: remember that Paul wrote his letters before the evangelists wrote the Gospels. The Gospels are later and take into account Paul's letters. Moreover, Paul wasn't an apostle and never met Christ in person. Thus, Paul's letters are based on an oral tradition and the Gospel on orality and Paul's letters.
Eeeh! So I worked that into my argument.
Then I studied the last question. I wrote a quick outline for it but as I was composing the outline, I realized that question would be a little difficult to answer, by memory, with sources (remember, the difficult thing--the REALLY difficult thing--about this format is that we have to not only write an essay, we have to cite original sources--from memory). With this kind of format, linear is better for me, it's much easier to remember a linear argument than a convoluted, circular one. And no matter how you choose to answer no. 4, all those factors influenced each other. Example, one economic factor was the debasement of the currency--but this wasn't an isolated phenomenon, it influenced--strongly--how the legions acted...which then influenced the imperial succession. The 3rd century was basically a precursor to the Fall of Rome in the 5th century and like any event where things are falling apart, they all feed into each other and social entropy takes over and...
Basically the 3rd century was a hot mess, yo.
So I decided I would rather concentrate on no. 2 and emailed our study group leader, who was fine with that. This was a more complicated question than no. 3 (albeit still linear) so my outline was longer. It boiled down to:
( Long Boring Outline on How the Roman Empire Held Together )
I committed this to memory (as well as my other outline) and basically spent two days muttering under my breath every chance I got. Got to the final on Tuesday was pacing around, still muttering--my TA saw me and made a "you're going to be FINE" gesture and mouthed that. We had nearly three hours to do the exam but the other TA said it shouldn't take nearly that long. I clocked out at about 3:30 (2.5 hours) after 3 blue books and one aching hand. I did this exaggerated walk up to drop off my blue books and one of the TAs said "we were taking bets on how many you would fill up." I gave him a long-suffering look and gimped off to treat myself to some Pinkberry. GOD, that stuff is good!
Have to register for next semester now!
