>As the regular readers of my blog have noticed, I have not posted to the blog lately. I have not stopped blogging. The reason for not posting is that, here at Northern Seminary, we are coming to the end of the academic year and the work is piling up.

Most people do not understand the work of professors at the end of the academic year. There are tons of reading to do, papers to grade, meetings to attend, and preparations for graduation. And I am involved in all of these academic enterprises.

As for the reading, I generally wake up at 6:00 a.m. to read (sometimes even at 5:00 a.m.) and work until 11:00 p.m. During the day, I am so busy that I do not have much time to blog.

In my Hebrew class, my students and I are busy translating from the Hebrew Bible. This quarter, my students have translated the book of Ruth and now are translating from the book of Genesis. As a result of my course on Hebrew exegesis, I have written two posts on Ruth this quarter (here and here).

I am also teaching a course on Old Testament Ethics. My students have written papers on divorce, homosexuality, poverty, war, the repentance of God, and the law dealing with the wife who interferes in a fight to help her husband. As a result of this course, I wrote a three-part study on the law in Deuteronomy 25:11-12 (here, here, and here).

This quarter I am supervising a doctoral thesis for the Doctor of Ministry program. I also served as the second reader on another doctoral thesis. All these involve much reading and rereading in preparation for the submission of the thesis proposal or the final presentation of the thesis.

I am the Faculty Marshal for Northern’s faculty. As such, I am involved in the events related to graduation. In a few days I have to complete the arrangements for the processional and the recessional for the graduation.

All these things I mentioned above take time. This means that something has to give and what has suffered is the time to write for the blog. I hope to begin to blog regularly again on Monday. Until then, thank you for your understanding.

Claude Mariottini
Professor of Old Testament
Northern Baptist Seminary

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Tags: Blogging