Old Testament Final Exam Austin Beasley

For Old Testament this semester I feel like we have covered a lot of interesting information that I have never thought of before. I feel like I have grown in my own life as a studier of the Bible and that I can use the knowledge that I have attained in ways that will be beneficial to my spiritual life throughout my days. I also believe that the knowledge that I have attained throughout this semester can be well reflected through my portfolio. I believe that this assignment has grown me as a Christian as well as grown me as a college student in general. The research that had to be made through this semester really gave me a great insight and foundation on the collegiate level thinking that will be asked of me here at Gardner-Webb. I believe that notable progress with my analytical and study skills can be seen through this assignment. Upon choosing my passage of scripture for the longterm assignment I read carefully through it, taking the words for face value and believing that the passage was self contained and I didnt really look deeply into context that could be found. As you can see under my musings collection of my portfolio, my initial reaction section compared to my Part III assignment are overwhelmingly more in-depth. Even in a week I believe that my progress from reader into researcher strengthened. I believe it could be assumed that my initial thoughts of how to approach this assignment changed. I realized that I would have to do some digging and searching to find how things fit together and what things actually meant. I believe that the use of commentaries and dictionaries played a vital role in how I would decode the true meaning behind this scripture. I believe that using these resources is

strength, not a weakness because the Bible is something that is very intellectual and should be approached by many people because not everyone will be able to decipher the same things. I have also grown in the knowledge that not everything in the Bible is meant to be taken the way we often take it. We often take things from context and Americanize them to apply to our lives in a very straightforward way, when we should probably check out the context and the morals and values that surround the stories. I feel like I have learned to read passages I come to through once or twice so that I can get and idea of what is being talked about. Then I may look for references or context clues that may give me insight to things that may be going on that are important but not directly stated. It is also crucial to look up words or phrases that you may not understand, for their meaning could be totally opposite of what you may assume and give the whole passage a different moral. Next once should try to find what the scripture says about God. What is it telling us about the character of God? Then look to see what it means to Israel, or to the people who are in the story. Lastly you may want to look at the morals established in the story and see what ways in your life you can apply it. If God never changes then we can see that the things that made Him upset years ago will still displease Him today. This is the basic format that I used to complete my research for the semester-long project. We have looked at God and how His love is everlasting. He loves His people and wants to see them happy and bringing honor to His name. We have looked at people and realized how sinful and imperfect we are. We as humans fail continuously and must rely on His faithfulness to forgive us. This concept has been grounded into my beliefs throughout this assignment. In conclusion, I would say that this experience has definitely grown me as a student of the Bible. I have learned to look more critically at scriptures and to look for context clues

to fill me in on what the message may actually mean. I would say this experience has also beneficially as a student in a tremendous way. I was able to use resources from the library and explore commentaries to better understand things from the scriptures that I had missed.