Reflection on Holmes, Smith, and Massey (690 words)

Read at least one of the chapters of Barbara Holmes' work, "Joy Unspeakable." Comment not only on the chapter(s), but how you imagine you could utilize Holmes' insights alongside those of Wimberly. Notice the story-telling connection. Remember also the contemporary hunger for spirituality. Then read at least one chapter of Yolanda Smith's "Reclaiming the Spirituals." Finally, consider the fifth chapter of James Earl Massey's book, "Spiritual Disciplines" on the discipline of dialogue.

How might you utilize these insights as you educate in faith? How might you use them to improve your Bible study?

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Reflection on Holmes, Smith, and Massey

All three works, by Holmes, Smith and Massey reinforce the idea of importance of live human interaction, dialogue, and sharing of experiences as a central point of a religious experience. Their argument strengthens and supports the four-phase scheme of reliving the Bible that we saw in Wimberley's book.

Holmes' work stresses the fact that much of the human interaction, including that at a religious level, is done through the means of oral communication. Holmes draws on the historical notion of Jewish midrash, a model of text analysis developed by rabbis starting from the 2nd Temple period, and offers a concept of griosh specific to oral cultures, such as African and, later, African American. The main feature of that method is storytelling and listening to a story through a prism of prevailing topics of African experiences in the Americas, such as slavery and liberation. Thus, biblical exegesis effectively becomes the art of storytelling. It communicates the reality expressed in the Bible in the textual form as a story that resonates with the audience's cultural memory and sociopolitical expectations. This way biblical texts are relived by the listeners and reinterpreted as part of their personal and collective memory....