Teaching, the Liberals Arts, and Quintilian

Quintilian in Institutio oratoria II.3:

"For my part, I do not consider a man a real teacher if he is unwilling to teach little things. But I argue that the ablest teachers can teach little things best, if they will: first, because it is likely that he who excels others in eloquence, has gained the most accurate knowledge of the means by which men attain eloquence; second, because method, which, with the best qualified instructors, is always plainest, is of great efficacy in teaching; and lastly, because no man rises to such a height in greater things that the lesser fade entirely from his view."

Popular posts from this blog

NT Wright on Mind, Body, Spirit and the Intermediate State

The following quote is N.T. Wright's paper  ‘Mind, Spirit, Soul and Body: All for One and One for All Reflectionson Paul’s Anthropology in his Complex Contexts’ given at the  Society of Christian Philosophers: Regional Meeting, Fordham University in March 2011.  In his paper, Wright discusses the body/soul dualism as it is often addressed within philosophical circles. Coming from his understanding of Paul and other NT writings, he argues that as human beings we are made up of a unified mind, body, soul, and spirit. These aspects cannot be separated, but we are fully and wholly one. The resurrection is thus the remaking of the whole person and not just the body. This quote is part of the heart of his argument of which there is much to ponder. "...we do not need what has been called ‘dualism’ to help us over the awkward gap between bodily death and bodily resurrection. Yes, of course, we have to postulate that God looks after those who have died in the Mess...
Read more

John Ashton, Understanding the Fourth Gospel -- Second Edition

Image
I have recently finished reading through John Ashton's second edition of his work Understanding the Fourth Gospel (OUP, 2007), and it is not merely the Technicolor version of the original publication (1991), although it may look that way. His introduction has had a significant overhaul in the second edition that streamlines the discussion, but the first edition's introduction may offer further background for readers on the state of play prior to Ashton, especially regarding Bultmann's contribution. The second edition has some rearrangement of chapters and four new excursuses. John Ashton's overall study remains the same: he argues for the importance of the theme of revelation in John's Gospel and disagrees with Bultmann's conclusion that all Jesus reveals is that he is the Revealer. Ashton concludes that the mode of the revelation, the gospel, has a part to play in the revelation. For the Fourth Gospel, revelation is not just about Jesus' words or the...
Read more

Visualized Bible: Cross-references Imaged

Image
Recently the Guardian Data Blog brought together a number of data images of the Bible in a post entitled "Holy Infographics: the Bible Visualised." The above image is the first of those images. I think that the image itself is actually quite beautiful in the rainbow like arcing of color, especially when the high resolution image is viewed (find that here ). The image is attributed to Christoph Römhild and Chris Harrison. And the following description of the image is given:   "This is about how the bible speaks to itself - or the textual cross-references within it. The bar graph that runs along the bottom represents all of the chapters in the Bible. Books alternate between white and light gray and the length of each bar denotes the number of verses in the chapter. Each of the 63,779 cross references found in the Bible is depicted by a single arc - the color corresponds to the distance between the two chapters, creating a rainbow-like effect." This ap...
Read more