#50-2-Follow: 50 NT Scholars to Read and Follow—Elizabeth E. Shively

Teaching makes me a lifelong student, and I love to learn. I find teaching the texts of the New Testament, especially the Gospels, particularly fulfilling because of their transformative power. My own experience as a student of the Bible shaped the kind of teacher I am. What I mean is, my best former teachers awakened me to new ideas about approaching the study of the Bible, thinking critically about what I believe, and engaging my world. So, I love it when my own students experience moments of discovery like those that were so powerful for me. I also find that there is a reciprocal relationship between my researching, writing and teaching. For me, the act of writing is the act of thinking, and I find it helpful to reverse that process by bringing some of what I’m currently writing about into the classroom, to think about it out loud. This forces me to communicate my ideas clearly and see faulty thinking, and helps my students learn along with me.

‘Context is king’. I admit I stole this emphasis from a former teacher, Scott Hafemann, who refers to the centrality of grammatical, historical, and literary contexts for determining the meaning of texts. I’ve come to extend the dimensions of this emphasis, though, because I’m convinced that investigating the complex interrelationship among a text’s contexts of creation, reception(s), and textual phenomena are crucial for understanding and responding to an author’s communicative intentions (I think we can and should ascribe intentions to authors).