Texts and teachers: the findings report

This report is for all those interested in teaching sacred texts, in particular the Bible and texts sacred to Muslims including the Qur’an. This project was part of REsearch 7, a Culham St Gabriel’s initiative. Academic papers about the project will be forthcoming in research journals and monographs. It took place between October 2018 and July 2019.

Many secondary pupils encounter texts in fragments, collected by topic, and used as proof texts for argumentation.1 The texts themselves are rarely studied in their own terms. Currently, curriculum debates are framed by the language of powerful knowledge and disciplines, and therefore it is timely to consider a scholarly hermeneutical approach to connect the classroom subject to advances in understanding sacred texts. Hermeneutics is the art or science of interpretation, concerned with meaning and significance. In this project we also refer to Sacred Text Study and Sacred Text Scholarship to describe the hermeneutical aspects of disciplinary study, especially in relation to studies of the Bible in Christian faith, and the Qur’an and Hadith in Muslim faith.

Anthony C. Thiselton, English Anglican priest, theologian, and leading scripture scholar, observed that when his students studied hermeneutics their understanding and approach to sacred texts changed.2 The hypothesis of this project was that exposure to hermeneutics and sacred text scholarship might improve classroom confidence, competence, practice and understanding.

1 Bowie, R. and Coles, R. (2018) ‘We reap what we ‘sew’: perpetuating biblical illiteracy in new English Religious Studies exams and the proof text binary question’ British Journal of Religious Education 40(3) 277-287
2 Thiselton, A., C. (1992) New Horizons in Hermeneutics, Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA, Zondervan, 1992