8/7/2019 New Testament Survey Helpful Hints

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New Testament SurveyHelpful Hints

Dear students!This is a handy little guide to aid you as you write your New Testament reading reports.The format will be similar, but slightly different than what you might have done in OldTestament Survey. This is just a guide and so it isn’t absolutely necessary that you followeverything precisely as written, but we remind you that grading papers is a subjectiveprocess. The better your papers are, the happier we are to grade them, and the better grades you get! Some of the points listed in this guide may seem rudimentary andredundant, but you wouldn’t believe some of the questions we have to field.

A reading report with two parts:

Different from OT Survey, NT Survey requires you to write chapter titles for eachchapter you read. This is part 1 of the reading report and should ideally be FIRST in your 

reading report. We grade the titles first and so we don’t want to have to flip through part2 to find them. You staple parts one and two together to form one paper (don’t leave theparts separate) and part one (the chapter titles) should be the first page of your readingreport. See sample paper.

Chapter titles:

This is an example:Matthew 1 – Genealogy from Abraham to Joseph and Christ’s birthMatthew 2 – The Magi’s visit and Herod’s slaughter Matthew 3 – John preaches and baptizes JesusMatthew 4 – Temptation, Simon & Andrew chosen, ministry begun

About the reading:

New Testament Survey requires you to read the assigned reading TWO TIMES in twodifferent translations. You can listen to one of them if you’d like. For reading report 1,you need to read Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John all the way through in the translation of your choice (the NASB, for example) and you need to read Matthew, Mark, Luke, andJohn all the way through in the translation of your choice that is different from the firstone you read (the NIV, for example). The specific books (and even chapters for Acts) arenoted clearly in the syllabus. Here is an example of how you note your reading: “I have

read or listened to all of the assigned reading (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) in

both the NIV (or the translation of your choice) and the NASB (or the translation of 

your choice).” Tell us you read ALL of it, note the specific books, and note whichtranslations you read. And if you didn’t read ALL of it, tell us you read everythingEXCEPT for ______, and make sure you tell us if you neglected the book in one or bothof the translations. If you want to say something about swearing on a stack of Bibles andyour grandmother’s grave, that’s fine, but that’s getting old so we’d encourage creativity.IMPORTANT!!! Note your reading of both translations on the FIRST PAGE of your reading report. That way we don’t have to keep track of two reading statements (one onpart 1 and one on part 2).

8/7/2019 New Testament Survey Helpful Hints

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Page Setup Details:We’re not incredibly picky, but we’re students, too, which means we know what studentsdo to increase the length of their papers to make it feel more substantial than it really is.We know what Courier New looks like and we know what 3 inch margins look like.

Don’t do that. We’d suggest Times New Roman or Arial and the default margins (1 inchtop/bottom and 1 or 1.25 on left/right). As far as spacing, you can use double space or single space. We’d suggest single space b/c it saves $ on paper.

Format:It’s quite helpful if you bold and/or underline section headings in your paper (seeexample paper) and you may even want to put significant people or events within theparagraph in bold as well.You need to summarize each book you read, plus you need to summarize the storylineand the various periods within the storyline. So, you’re going to have a book summariessection and you’re going to have a storyline section. It’s typically easier if you do not

combine the two, especially for Reading Report 1 on the Gospels. This can be seen moreclearly in the example paper.

Ohhhhh Sources:Many of you got docked for improper source use last semester, let’s reverse that trend!!!You can use footnotes or MLA, but not a combination of both! And, no matter what youuse, you MUST include a works cited page at the end of your paper. When you cite asource, you need to include page #s, every time, even in footnotes. If this was aparaphrase from Dr. Marty’s notes I would conclude this sentence with (Marty 90). Whenyou’re quoting or paraphrasing the Bible, which you should do often since it is NTSurvey, you don’t need to give the page # of the Bible, just the reference such as (John

3:30). But, if you want the Bible to count as one of your 3 sources, as everyone does, youMUST use a study Bible and you MUST cite something from the study notes in the studyBible. To cite that, you can write something like this: (NIV 1137).BIG TIP TO NOT LOSE POINTS! Though there is no set minimum of citations youmust include in your paper, if we look at any random page of your reading report andthere are no citations on the entire page, that’s probably not going to go over very well.We’re looking for multiple citations on each page!

If you have any questions about any of this, please feel free to ask Dr. Marty in class or email us at wmartysa@moody.edu.

Signed,

Your loving TAsJ