FRAGMENT: The 1980s.

 The 1980s started with a job move to North Riding College, Scarborough, then affiliated to Leeds University. I was to teaching in a course on world religions, and education studies. Jean stayed at home commuting to Devizes School with a colleague, Lionel, and applied for a couple of posts in Yorkshire without success. We looked at a few houses, again without success. My knowledge of world religions was sketchy, drawn from the few school textbooks then available. This post offered me the opportunity of in depth study. In order to balance my secondary school teaching experience I studies for the Post Graduate Certificate in Early Years Education which included a dissertation in early reading. I supervised students in early years settings as well as junior and middle schools. I lodged firstly in a 'winter let' (holiday flat hired for the winter season) and in summer had a flat in the College. My study on Filey Road overlooked the harbour and castle, built-in distraction. The journey to coffee in the winter was very cold. Home was 310 miles away so I couldn't get home every weekend. Jean came over during her half term.

There were memorable events and incidents. There was a classical music series who put on fortnightly concerts. I remember a performance of Samuel Barber's Reincarnations, a composer of importance to us who had recently died. A different group went to Opera North: I remember Boheme in Leeds and Samson and Delilah in Hull, the first operas I had been to. I was in the chorus of the Gilbert and Sullivan light opera The Sorcerer in 1982, by first and last experience of performing. Our student days were to orchestral events in the Manchester Free Trade Hall. 

I applied for and accepted a similar post in Westminster College, Oxford. from April 1983 and we looked for and bid for our current house near Swindon between Oxford and Jean's job in Devizes - a restoration project that would take many years to complete. Jean became Head of Careers in her school, in  addition to her history teaching. She made close friends I am still in touch with today, but more inexplicably enemies, In retrospect I think some victimized her for her hidden disability, the brain damage I have spoken about elsewhere, the effects of which she coped with admirably. Most of my work in Oxford I focused on education, including multi-faith religious education. Biblical Studies was taught by a different team. I taught Interfaith Studies in a new degree, and developed it into a distance learning degree, M.Th, in  Pastoral Studies for church ministers. The sessions on Islam, Hinduism and Sikhism are still online. The Judaism module was co-written and does not survive online. I became Postgraduate Tutor in 1986 in charge of PGCE primary and secondary and planned an Early Years version. Course leadership was gradually delegated so my role changed in the 1990s.

During the 1980s I put together a book for university students on the Old Testament/Hebrew Bible. We wanted it to be written quickly so divided the 16 chapters between different writers, all university lectures or professors. It was the story of the writing of the Old Testament. I gave it the title Creating the Old Testament: The Development of the Hebrew Bible published by Basil Blackwell in 1989. One writer pulled out and I wrote the chapter on Moses in her place. Another did not write to brief, so I rewrote 'Stories of the Prophets'. My scheduled chapters were Introduction, 'The Bible and Islam' and 'Symbol and Metaphor'. 

The book followed the general pattern of Torah (Law), Prophets and Writings, with a final chapter oon the additional books in the Septuagint, the Greek translation/version. The assumption of the book was to follow the evidence rather than assuming belief, so it was a critical and not conservative text.  Thirty five years later it is still in print.

I also became involved with the union (NATFHE) Religious Studies Section which produced the journal Journal of Beliefs and Values for which I wrote and reviewed frequently. There is a list on my CV on stephenbigger.blogspot.com.