Rm. 111 / 9:45 – 10:50 a.m. The Brotherhood Class is made up of men and women of New Garden Meeting who are interested in Bible study. Anyone can be a part of this class, and we invite you to come and see if you are interested. In December, the Brotherhood Class is starting a new unit on the gospel of Luke. I find that spending three months on one book of the Bible is rewarding, because it allows time to look closely at the text, and to reflect on the context of the that text in the larger writings of which it is a part. We discuss the text, and share our questions and reactions. There are tensions and complexity in these texts, reflecting and illuminating doubt and faith, the great problems we face in the modern world, and different perspectives on our hope for the future.
We just finished a similar three month session on the book of Genesis, and just speaking from my own experience, I found that although I had a fragmentary knowledge of much of this book, it meant a lot to me to put it all together and to see the sweep and scale of this text. We became aware of repeating motifs that give cohesion to this book, and which reflect concerns and needs of the community within which these writings arose. There is again tension and complexity in the book, and we discuss these, drawing both on historical interpretations by Fox and Fell, Woolman and contemporary Quaker authors, as well as on contemporary scholarship.
We hope you can join us. Each class can be appreciated on its own, so you may attend as you are able. We sing hymns for the first 15 minutes, and then move to the unit to be discussed for the day. –John Kepchar