I’m just wondering about this. In the class I’m
teaching in the Spring, I’m requiring my students to read all of
the wisdom books in their entirety, but I’m going to council them
to skim some of the sections. For example, I will give them a
section of sentence proverbs to read normally, but tell them they
do not need to read the rest quite as closely. I want them to
get a feel for the sentence proverbs. I think there is way
too much there for them to really do justice to all of the material
in a two hour course over one semester anyway. I will also do
this with the dialogues in Job, though I will have them look more
closely at some sections. Anyway, what do you think? I think
for a first reading, though hopefully it is not a first for some of
the students, reading quickly for main ideas is very helpful.
But, I think for some, the details of the Bible are so important
for them to imagine reading it in this way.