Paying Attention to Place Resource Pages

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Location, Location, Location

The title of this page refers to the three things that real estate agents say are the most important factors in determining the value of a piece of property: location, location, location. When reading the New Testament, location can mean a particular city, or other named place, or it can mean a general place, like the desert, or a mountain, or "at table."

Desired Results

Each Into the New Testament unit has been designed to foster enduring understandings as well as key knowledge and key skills. Here are the learning goals for Comparing Similar Texts. (Here's more about the pedagogical theory behind Into the New Testament.)

Enduring Understandings

  1. Sometimes you need a map when paying attention to place.
  2. You don't always need a map when paying attention to place. (That is, setting includes references to particular locations but also to geographical features, architecture, "props," etc.)
  3. Context matters. (That is, reading what is before and after a specific text in order to see where the action has been and will be can shed light on where we are now.)

Essential Questions

  1. How would this story (or other text) be different if it were transplanted into another location?
  2. Have we been here before? What's the same and what's different?
  3. Where are we going?

Key Knowledge

  1. Matthew Skinner's five functions of setting in narrative: (a) creating limits & possibilities for action, (b) contributing to mood, (c) creating archetypes, (d) creating symbolic oppositions, (e) patterning events.
  2. Location of territories & cities in Palestine and Asia Minor that play a major role in the NT.

Key Skills

  1. Use a concordance to find references to specific places ( Capernaum, Corinth, etc.) and to generic settings ("home," "synagogue," "mountain," etc.)
  2. Use a map and a Bible dictionary or study Bible notes to locate and research historical locations.
  3. Determine the function(s) of setting in a New Testament text.

Resource Pages on this Skill

Location, Location, Location | This is the introductory page you are reading right now.

Discovering Where We Are | Find questions here to point out narrative setting on the one hand and geographical location on the other.

Finding Out More about Places | This page lists some resources to help you find out as much as possible about places you have noticed.

What Is this Place Doing Here? | What difference does setting make for your text? My Luther Seminary colleague, Matt Skinner, has written on what location does for a text. Find a review of his main points here.

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