Thursday, October 18, 2007

Bible College Charade

It was around 8:30 a.m., Dr. Gordon Ceperley was well into his Genesis lecture a third of the way into the semester when we were interrupted by the College Registrar, who, standing at the door asked for Mr. Neutic to step out of the classroom for a moment...

First of all, Dr. Ceperley knew his Old Testament. More precisely, he knew Genesis like the back of his hand. He lectured to us using just his Bible; no notes, no illustrations. In fact, while the syllabus laid out that we'd cover Genesis through Joshua over the course of the semester, Cep spent all but the last week or two solely in Genesis. I was privileged to have the opportunity to benefit from his wealth of knowledge about the Torah was expansive. Truth is, I was a third generation Cep pupil, my grandparents and parents were both students of his during their college years.

Now, you have to understand that Cep didn't pay much attention to the administrative details of his classes. So when he would pass out exams, he didn't account for extra copies etc. A classmate of mine, Wes, took advantage of the loophole and began taking an exam for himself and a second exam for his invisible friend. And after about a third of the semester had passed and several exams had been turned in, the Registrar came to class to seek payment from this un-enrolled student. There stood the Registrar that morning, "Would Mister Neutic, Mister Herman Neutic, please step outside for a moment."

Such is the humor among Bible college freshmen.
What I found most humorous about this charade was that Herman outperformed Wes on the exams.