Appreciation for Project Timothy

From Dr. Harrigan Bowman, Ed.D. (Columbia University)

A few years ago, I began Project Timothy. At the time, I had begun to feel the desire to pursue an understanding of the word in deeper ways, but was unsure how to do this, short of seminary classes. I had experienced fruitful women’s group Bible studies where fellowship, prayer, and study were cultivated and esteemed; however, often much of our study of the Bible was done on our own through study guides and our conversation around it was reflective of our sentiments towards what we were learning and how it could be applied to our lives, or hermeneutics. I felt that I wanted a deeper, even more rigorous study of the texts of the Bible, similar to the rigor of other things I had studied more in my life, and through a friend I was introduced to PT. What more could I be looking for than a three year in-depth study of the Bible? What I came to experience, through those three years of study and subsequent year of serving as a PT tutor, was that hermeneutics—how it applies to our lives now—are often the basis of our interaction with the Bible, but that a respectful, thoughtful and humble exegesis—how it was understood by readers in its time—can offer so much more, both in the way of understanding God, our world, and ourselves, as well as applying a more honest hermeneutic. If I thought, years ago, that I was entering a “class” to “learn everything there was to know about the Bible” (not that I necessarily thought this), I would have been way off course. PT offers an abundance of reading material, challenging questions for study, and a group of others seeking a deep study of the biblical texts. But what it really offers is a challenge of learning how to learn better. PT has worked to transform not only my knowledge base of the biblical texts and historic issues surrounding the writings, but has more lastingly transformed my way of approaching a discipleship of the mind. Like all good learning, PT teaches you how much more there is to know, and in the process, offers a student a model of how, in humility and with responsibility, to approach the texts exegetically before we approach them hermeneutically. I recommend PT to all those who love to learn, who love to take risks in their learning, who love to be challenged, and who want to learn more about the incredible ways that God has given us the Bible, deeply embedded in the history, culture and humanity of its writers.