My Advice to Students: Charles Halton Says “Make Friends with Your Peers.”
(Can’t see the video? Watch it here)
Academia can be a lonely, isolating road. You spend hours reading and studying alone; you write articles and papers alone. Yet according to Charles Halton, editor of Genesis: History, Fiction, or Neither?, it doesn’t have to be that way.
Friendships are really important in academia…make friends with your peers.
Halton has practiced his own advice, sharing that everything he’s done professionally has come through friendships. Here are some highlights from his insights:
Go to professional meetings; Don’t be a mercenary friend to exploit people; Get to know people deeply; Congratulate professional accomplishments;
I have personally found Halton’s advice to ring true. Most of what I’ve accomplished has been because of friendships (I’m looking at you Dr. Jason Myers and Dr. Michael Wittmer!)
Listen to Halton’s advice above,…
How Is “Genesis: History, Fiction, or Neither?” Distinctive Among “Genesis” Books?
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Thanks to biblical scholars like John Walton and cultural shapers like Darren Aronofsky, there seems to have been a resurgent interest in the opening chapters of the Bible.
But where many books address Genesis 1 or 2 and 3, the broader “primeval history” chapters are often left untreated. The new book Genesis: History, Fiction, or Neither? bridges this gap in engagement by addressing Genesis 1–11 in its entirety. Because as the book’s general editor Charles Halton argues:
You can’t really discuss Genesis 1 or Genesis 2–3 without looking at it in the entire narrative that goes from Genesis 1–11.
Genesis assembles the various discussions about Genesis, origins, and the beginning of the Bible into the bigger Biblical storyline using three distinct voices and three important pericope case…
What Genre Is Genesis 1–11: History, Fiction, or Neither?
Four hundred years ago, the Roman Inquisition investigated the scientific exploits of a one Galileo Galilei, finding him guilty of all charges. They concluded Galileo’s scientific beliefs were false and contrary to Scripture, forced him to recant them, and confined him to house arrest.
His crime? Heliocentrism. To reconcile his scientific understand with Scripture, Galileo concluded the Bible often means “things which are quite different from what its bare words signify.”
Galileo gets at an important set of questions, which Charles Halton asks as editor of the new book Genesis: History, Fiction, or Neither?:
Is Genesis 1–11 similar to the genres of our culture? If so, what genre is it? Is it factual history, fictional fable, or somewhere in between? And how does its overall genre effect our interpretation of individual passages? (19–20)
In the last…