Teacher, Test Thyself

There are not that many people named as “teachers” in the Bible. This is a bit suprising, since the basic term for Jewish clergy, “Rabbi,” means “teacher.”

A full list of the individuals given the title “teacher” in the Bible, Old and New Testaments:

Ezra
The author of Ecclesiastes (by tradition, Solomon)
Jesus
St. Paul
Anne Valikosky

Okay, perhaps not Anne Valikosky. Not yet, at least. Perhaps in later editions.

This is perhaps a measure of the Bible's esteem for the position. After all, in the Quran, only one being of any kind is named as a teacher: Allah. It would seem that it is not that easy to be a teacher.

What does it take? From this list, we can deduce that the Bible considers vast knowledge the prime requirement. For this is what sets Ezra apart from the other prophets—he was believed to have the best knowledge of the Hebrew scriptures since Moses, the gent who wrote them.

And this is even more true of Solomon—for he never was a teacher in the conventional sense. But he was renowned for his wisdom. This, and not the actual act of teaching for a living, was definitive.

Jesus, in being given the title of teacher, joins such founder figures of other religious traditions as Confucius, the Buddha, Nanak, Sankara, Zoroaster, and Krishna. Not a bad group to hang with, in the end.

All this is in flat contradiction to the current thinking in schools of education. There, they believe good teaching is all about process, not about knowing better than others what you teach, and certainly not about ultimate values. As one teacher aquaintance of mine put it, a good teacher can teach anything; because a good teacher is like an actor playing a part.

Chillingly, the direct translation of that concept, “like an actor playing a part,” into New Testament Greek is “hypocrite.”