WALSH 394 – It is nearly half way through the semester, and students taking Father Roth’s Biblical Literature class have started to notice that the professor is just teaching directly from the Book. Father Joseph Roth, S.J., a respected scholar in his field, has been teaching the class ever since he came to Georgetown in 1999. Despite his impressive experience, it seems that twenty years have caused Father Roth’s material to get a bit stale.

“I was really excited when I saw there was only one book required for the class, but I feel like our professor really uses it as a crutch,” said Luke Matthews (SFS ‘22). Other students resonated with this point and noted that they could glean everything they have learned so far simply by reading the Book themselves. Though Father Roth only assigns one major text, students have complained that there are lots of shorter books within the larger one, so it is really like reading several dozen books.

Regardless, it just seems like Father Roth is coasting a lot, especially for someone always talking about avoiding sloth. Nicole Yang (COL ‘21) had an interesting theory about the class: “He always pulls the Book out during lecture and just reads a long passage to us. It kinda makes me wonder if he actually did the reading before class, or if he’s just winging it like the rest of us.”