Hello, I'm Dr Mary Marshall and I am a tutor in Theology and Religion at the Faculty of Theology and Religion and I'm going to talk about interviews for Theology and Religion which students applying for that course will be taking in December and of course also the students applying for Philosophy and Theology, and for Religion and Oriental Studies. We invite many, sometimes just over half, of our applicants to interview and you can find the statistics online, but not all of our applicants, so if you get as far as an interview you're doing very well already and you should be congratulated for that. All of our applicants are interviewed at two colleges. That's a process that we carry out to make sure, firstly, that all our applicants are getting a good chance at being seen and it maximises the opportunity for the strongest applicants to get offers and it also gives our tutors, our interviewers, a good sense of the general field of applicants so we think it's a good thing, it's a positive thing to be interviewed by two colleges. If you're applying for Philosophy and Theology or Religion and Oriental Studies you will of course have interviews at colleges for those subjects, as well as for Theology and Religion. If you're applying for Religion and Oriental Studies you'll certainly have an Oriental Studies interview at the Oriental Studies Faculty. Now this works slightly differently in different colleges depending on how they've set things up, so in some colleges you might find, for example if you're a Philosophy and Theology student, that the Philosophy bit of the interview and the Theology and Religion bit of the interview are combined in one interview, whereas in other colleges they'll be separated out in two separate events. But if you've applied for Philosophy and Theology you will be interviewed in both subjects. We don't require any particular subjects to be studied at A-level or IB (or equivalent) before you arrive and so in an interview we are definitely not testing subject knowledge, we are not expecting you to know particular facts or figures or have understanding of particular concepts, that's really important, so your interview is not a quiz. Inevitably, in any conversation your interviewer might assume some general knowledge . Now if what they think is general knowledge is not general to you, if the interviewer says something like imagine a person commits murder and goes to prison and you don't know what murder is and you don't know what prison is, then don't struggle, please just ask the question, ask for clarification, and if the interviewer poses questions in a way that you don't understand, it is absolutely fine to ask for clarification, that's perfectly ok. It's also perfectly ok to pause and think about the questions that you're being asked, it's not a problem if there is a little bit of silence in your interview where you are thinking carefully. That's not a problem either. An interview is a conversation so what you hear and your listening skills are just as important as what you have to say. That, I think, is a really important thing to remember your interviewer is on your side and is trying to help you fulfill your potential so do listen to what's being said and answer the questions that you're being asked and when the interviewer is trying to help you that is probably what they're trying to do. I've been talking about an interviewer, it's likely in fact (although not in the recording you're about to see for technical reasons) that there will be two people in your interview and it may be that those two interviewers both share the questions or it may be that there's one main questioner and a note taker but you can expect two people. It's unlikely that you're going to face a panel of 10 people so don't worry about that and our interviews last about 25 to 30 minutes. It's also possible that you might get asked about things you've written on your UCAS form in your personal statement or the written work that you've submitted so do keep a copy of those things and read them through before your interview. However, that's probably not going to be the main portion of the interview, you're not going to see that element of the interview in...in the mock interview recording you're about to watch.

Our interviews last about 25 to 30 minutes. What are our interviewers looking for? It's not a mystery, it's something that we make publicly available that is written down for all our interviewers and it's the criteria that they are bound to use and on the Faculty website so that is where I'm going to read them from . It's here. So at interview our tutors are looking for the ability to think clearly including understanding complex concepts, forming sound arguments and responding to counter arguments...so can you reason clearly, can you provide justifications for your answers, do the way that you...do the ways that you pin your answer together connect things through and make sense. Do you have an openness to learning, so that's where the listening might be very important. We're looking for an ability at close textual reading and interpretation. In all three degrees that's a huge part of the course and so obviously that's going to be something that our admissions tutors are looking for. For that reason, it's highly likely (as you will see in the recording) that you'll be given some kind of prompt material which may well be a text. It's not a text that we expect you to know, might not be a text might be a picture, might be an artefact, but some kind of stimulus for you to respond to and for you to interpret. We're looking for evidence of enthusiasm or motivation including dedication and diligence in work and evidence of independent thought and reading. Now that does not mean that you bounce into your interview and you're overflowing with how much you love theology and religion, it's just brilliant. The way you demonstrate your motivation, the way you demonstrate your enthusiasm is by investing seriously in the interview and engaging deeply with the material that you're being given and the questions that you're being asked and drawing on the things that you know and the things that you're interested in and in those ways your enthusiasm, your motivation and your independent thought will come through. We're looking for an ability to develop ideas, including those that you put in your written work and your oral communication skills and I'll say it again, remember that your oral communication skills are not only what you say but also how you listen to what the interviewer is saying. So interviews are no mystery, what we're looking for is publicly available, they are a conversation and they're a conversation about something you have said that you would like to study for three years. It's not a performance, you don't have to dazzle us with beautiful presentation, it is not some kind of interview on News Night where you have to pick a side and stick to it no matter what, it's an honest and sincere discussion about something that we all hope you will find very interesting. Although we realise that many people feel nervous about their interview and that's perfectly understandable, I do also hope that it could be an experience that you enjoy because I hope that we will be discussing really interesting things with applicants.

Before we start, can I just check who you are and what you'd like to be called so that I don't spend the next 20 minutes using the wrong name. Of course, I'm Rory and you can call me that. Thank you very much, Rory. I also understand that you've received a copy of two passages, passage a) and passage b), is that right and have you been able to spend 10 minutes looking at those? I have yes, thank you. Good that's okay so what's going to happen now is we'll take about 20 minutes and we'll start off with some questions looking at those passages and then maybe broaden it out a little wider, so is that clear and understood? Absolutely. Good. Let's start with passage a) so my first question and your answer to this doesn't matter but it's useful for me to know. Is this passage familiar to you at all? Yeah I think so, yeah. And are there any words which you'd like explained? I think...I think I'm happy with the words in there. Good, if as we're talking anything emerges then do just ask. Thank you. So the first substantial question I have for you is, would you begin by summarising passage a) for me, summarise passage a). Someone from the synagogue, a Jewish leader maybe, asks Jesus if he'd be able to heal his daughter and Jesus tells the people not to be upset and reassures them that the child isn't actually dead, he seems to say anyway, heals the the child or raises the child from death and the child's given something to eat. Good. So is all of this story happening in the same place? It seems like there's some movement that he goes to the house from being out in in the world somewhere and then comes in and the rest of it seems to happen in the house. Good, good. What do we know about the girl, what information do we have about her? She's...she's the daughter of this leader, little--I don't know if that's a term of just endearment or whether that is implying young but at least 'girl', I suppose, is implying that she's not an adult daughter anyway. Is there anything else in the text that might give us a clue whether little little is. Oh the child is not dead and the child's father, little girl get up with Talitha cum. Good. Ok, so...I'm sorry 12 years of age is probably the main signifier. Well spotted, well spotted.

So we do know how old she is 12 years of age. How would you describe the event or the phenomenon, shall I call it, how would you describe the event that occurs as a result of Jesus's actions in this story?

It's almost downplayed. Jesus himself seems to downplay it...it's presented as in...as if she's just kind of raising from a bit of a sleep and has a bit of breakfast, you know, it's really quite casual. So would you...would you say that that's...that's what this account is telling us? It's a story about some some insightful medical care. Not quite, it seems nonetheless that there's still very much a miracle going on, you know, it is explicit that the daughter is dead. It seems to be Jesus's words that are peculiar rather than the crowds in in saying that she's dead. It seems more to me that the action of Jesus is being presented as something, oh yeah of course Jesus can do this amazing miracle, rather than, nothing's actually going on...Good there's a lot of information there for us to unpack, so 'miracle' is this word that you've now used. What is a miracle and how are you identifying this as a miracle? Sure I mean there are strong and weak ways of either, you know something that breaks the laws of nature or an astounding or unlikely to happen event that is

normally done by God or some spirituality or spiritual...Pick one of those, so you pick the definition and then tell me whether you think this event meets the...meets the criteria. I'll be safer, I'll go with the weaker although it should probably should fulfill the other one as well but it...the fact that she's dead and then is alive is pretty remarkable and

now the God bit isn't made explicit here, actually I don't think is it...that which is doing the action we don't see described in explicit detail but I suppose the fact that Jesus is doing it maybe implies that Jesus himself has got some of this supernatural power that...that we associate with miracles. Ok so what if I were to say to you now, having made...having made that nice clear case that what we've got here is something that is astonishing and a marvelous act that would be accomplished by God, what if I were to say, I want you now deliberately to argue something different and I want you to make a case for me that that's not what we're seeing here. Is there anything in this passage that suggests, no this this isn't a miracle, something else is happening, is there anything that challenges that? I suppose I...I said earlier that it's Jesus's word such as the strange ones, we could very much read it in the other way of Jesus has just been insightful, you know, he's a very good doctor who's noticing that she's not actually dead but is just asleep, so there's that there I suppose.

The very simplicity of the miraculous action, I suppose, feels more material, there's no sort of big ritual or visible sign of God working or anything like that, it's...No fireworks. Right, indeed. Yeah. There are some strange things happening so about two-thirds of the way down can you see where it says 'then he put them all outside'...yes...'and he took the child's father and mother and those who were with him and went in where the child was', so he sent a load of people out and then when he speaks to the girl, he uses this phrase 'Talitha cum' and the author of this passage tells us what that means it means 'little girl get up' but the author of the passage doesn't say he says 'little girl get up', he uses these strange words. What might we make of those those two elements? That's interesting.

I suppose there could be a few things going on there. In other parts of gospels we often see Jesus saying, don't tell lots of people about the amazing things that I've done, so I suppose it could be partly that...keeping the miracle contained sort of thing with very few people going upstairs maybe. On the other side, the preservation of the words, I presume they're Aramaic, are they Aramaic? They are Aramaic...ancient language. And it's very rare that anything apart from the Greek is preserved in the new testament so there's clearly some emphasis that the author's putting on that but I imagine as well that it's not anything particularly remarkable, I imagine it's just normal conversational...Ok...phrase. So it does mean, like the author tells us, 'little girl get up' so it's a perfectly straightforward phrase. So I think we've teased quite a lot of stuff out of passage a), can we turn to passage b), so passage b), same questions as before, are you familiar with passage b) at all? I've heard of Apollo...I can't even pronounce his name now...Apollonius. I've heard of him but I've not read the passage before. And are there any words here that you would like to have explained?

Who is Alcestis? A figure in Greek mythology who is brought back to life by Hercules who is, if not...who is the the child of a god and a mortal, so is it...a figure from a...Is that Hercules, is it? Ok, cool right. Is there anything else there? Is the 150,000 sesterces a lot of money? Yes. I think if we if we assume that without getting into too much detail that...that's, yeah, it's a lot. Cool. So a slightly different question from before, I'd like you to compare passage b) with passage a). What are the similarities? Yeah they're...remarkably similar actually in the

the sort of idea that maybe, maybe not, she's actually properly dead, there's some confusion as to the nature of the miracle, or at least that's explored in the text. Can you show me where or which bit of the text where you see that? So here it's right at the very end where the narrator says maybe he detected some spark of life. Now of course the emphasis is very different there, that's slightly sceptical, whereas in the...passage a) the hint of, maybe this isn't supernatural, is dismissed by Jesus rather than the narrator. Maybe that's a difference, not a similarity? True, true, although it's a difference based on a very similar theme, you know, the difference is stark because of how similar it is, I think. Are there any other similarities? Sure. You can start with quite simple things. Sure. So why do you think that so...the first thing you said is actually they're really similar so...A young girl has just died. Yeah. And the young girl is brought back to life by a miracle worker and her relations are around, there's a crowd there. And what are the crowd doing? They're mourning. Yeah, so that's the same as passage a), there's...there's a lot of people around and there's a lot of grief and I suppose what we call them funeral rights, so rituals surrounding death.

What about the girl's family?

They're a very important family. Yeah so there's another similarity. Oh yes, of course. What about the...the event itself? Are there's similarities there? Now the narrator presents it as merely touching and saying some words, so the narrators both clearly think that these are very simple mundane actions, though I suppose there's a difference there, as well, I suppose in the secretness of the words that were spoken and the fact that they're presented as a spell rather than normal conversational phrase. And is that different from passage a)? Yeah, yeah because we know exactly the words, in fact the author's gone to the trouble of preserving it in the original language to make it as clear as possible what Jesus actually said and it's a normal phrase rather than a spell. Does that make it clear though, so we're back to these words Talitha Cum. Is that something that makes it clear to you who are reading it in English, those are not English words or is it something that makes it special. Interesting.

I...yeah, again, there are there are the two ways of looking at it in either there's something mythical and magical about the exact utterances of this miracle worker or like I said it's going to pains to make it as transparent and open and we know exactly what he said, there's no secret to it at all. Ok. Good.

And what happens to the the girl afterwards? Is that a similarity or a difference? We know about the sort of aftermath of this event, let's not forget the end of the story. Yeah sure. There seems to be in in passage b) a return to the joyous celebration that was already going to happen, you know, the dowry's provided and she goes off to return to the house, presumably soon to go and have a wedding again. The...in passage a) she has some food...the...in comparison to the public wedding that's going to happen in passage b), in passage a), everyone's told, don't say anything. Good. So we're already...we've already started to find differences among these similarities but I'm going to give you an opportunity now to flag up any other differences between passage a) and passage b).

I suppose there...although both families are powerful, passage b) are even more powerful and important I suppose than than those in passage a). We have a name in passage a) of Jairus. Let's see, the...tone of the narrator, I think I briefly mentioned but...Just say a little bit more about what you mean by that. Sure, it seems in passage a) like the narrator is convincing the audience that Jesus is doing something amazing here. In passage b) it feels more like I've seen something, I'm a bit sceptical but here's what it is and here is what it might be or might not be. So in passage b), if this isn't a miracle what might it be? A perceptive person noticing that the girl isn't actually dead. That's...that's a very valid but also very positive take on it. Is there a...is there a negative take on it? Oh ok.

I suppose that maybe that is you know shamming and

and being fraudulent. I suppose at least he's not doing it for the money, he gives away the money which seems positive and unsurprising, although there is mention of money so it's clearly within this context of...you know, again, it's quite a public declaration of, oh no I won't take the money...here's your dowry, right you know, look how good a healer I am and how much of a sage because I won't even accept the money, whereas it is not even talked about. So he does get something out of this, Apollonius, he gets notoriety. Yes, indeed. Is there anything else you'd like to say about passage b), do you think b) is a miracle?

As in a miracle historically happened or that in the text. Do you think that passage b) is giving an account of a miracle, I should say, so do you think that the author is presenting this as a miracle at the end of the day? I don't...I don't think so, that the author is still somewhat agnostic. So, next question, sort of bringing all this together, having considered passage b), how might that influence our interpretation of passage a)? Should it? Does it help at all? Yeah. Partially, I think it would depend on which one was written first. We might be able to talk about one influencing the other or maybe there's an independent trope of this sort of miracle that each author is independently kind of building upon and that'd be quite interesting to see if either is trying to present the other as being in a particular role or doing a particular action that demonstrates one to be a certain thing. So what about...that's the authors. What about you, what about the reader. Having read passage b), does that have any influence on how you understand passage a) and not necessarily...you can speak personally but I'm not saying just you...any any reader. Yeah...I'm remarked by the seeming humility of Jesus in the difference in the spectacle of the miracle and how it seems to be done for its own sake rather than for anything else and I think that's enhanced for me. At the same time

I think often when you read this in the gospels it feels very spontaneous and Jesus is just, you know, carrying out a random act of compassion but it feels now like it's part of a wider literary tradition that is doing something more than just reporting some random action of Jesus. This kind of event might be something that is, I won't say commonplace, but you know that there's other accounts of this kind of thing in the ancient world maybe? Yeah.

So one question that we haven't...that I haven't yet asked you but I will ask you now. Do you think that either of these events actually happened? And explain your answer, tell me why.

That's a big question.

I don't think there is enough information in either of these passages for me to make a decision on that really. I would actually be more inclined to say that the events in passage b) happened than the events in passage a). Why? Because passage b) is presented as, make of this what you will this is what I saw, it's not trying to convince anybody of anything, it's not trying to present

Apollonius...I'll mispronounce his name again. No, that's fine.

It's not trying to present him as anything more than someone that they saw, whereas it seems that passage a) is trying to present Jesus as

a particular thing, a particularly remarkable man. So if passage a) were about...in the... from the same pass-...from the same book by the same person that was telling a story of Jesus going to Jairus's house and making sandwiches. Yeah. Would you believe that that happened? Yeah, yeah I think I would or unless it was saying, oh look how great a sandwich maker Jesus is. What's the difference? The difference is that the actions that Jesus is presented as doing in passage a) are unique and remarkable and say something about him that the author wants us to know, in comparison to making sandwiches where that doesn't actually tell us anything about Jesus that one would make a polemic about. Could that be the case with passage b)?

Oh I see if the agnosticism is actually a

...it's agnosticism but really, you should probably believe that it's not a miracle sort of thing, maybe trying to be anti-Apo-...I'm going to give up on the name.

Apollonarius. No, Apollonius. You see, I got it wrong.

I suppose I don't...I don't see it being as damning as passage a) is positive. So what if I were to remove this from the question of the two passages and say, Rory, do you think that miracles happen and you can choose your definition of miracle? Ok. I think that God acts in the world but whether that is in raisings of dead people in historic circumstances I really don't know and that is something I would like to learn more about. I can see that. Thank you very, very much Rory. Do you have any questions for me before we go? No, I think that's alright. Ok, thank you very, very much. Thank you.

I've now had a chance to reflect on my interview with Rory. I hope you could tell that even while I was trying to put him on the spot, I was also working quite hard to put him at his ease. I wanted Rory to be comfortable and to speak naturally and to engage well in the interview and I think he did. At a couple of points you'll notice that I asked Rory if he was familiar with the texts he'd been given to read. Just to be clear that's not because I needed him to be, or expected him to be, quite the reverse, but so that where he did have prior knowledge of the text I was aware of that so that I was positioning my questioning from the...from the right point, not assuming too much or or too little knowledge. And in the interview Rory couldn't help drawing on his prior knowledge and of course if you have prior knowledge and prior experience of things that come up at your interview then it's perfectly sensible to draw on those and Rory mentioned depictions of Jesus's miracles in other texts and he talked about Aramaic and that's fine but it's not something that I necessarily expect, it's certainly not required and it wasn't necessary to answer the questions. You'll have noticed that most of the interview was based on close reading of a couple of passages, that's one of the selection criteria that admissions tutors are looking at, at interview, ability to read the text and to interpret it and we spent a lot of time really drilling into the detail of those passages. I would say, where do you see that, can you find this in the text, show me where. He had the opportunity to pick up on things that he missed the first time around and indeed when he arrived at an answer just too late...oh it also says she's 12 years old...it wasn't too late, he noticed and he let me know....that's a perversity of nature, quite often we realise the answers to things or we realise our mistake when someone's no longer asking us, when we've already given the answer to the question. Don't worry about that, just like Rory did, you can flag up when you notice something new or you notice that you might have made a mistake. Another thing we're looking for is the ability to form complex arguments and to form counter arguments and respond to counter arguments and as you can see in that interview I did ask Rory to form arguments...what kind...how would you describe the event and why does the description of this event meet the criteria for a miracle, argue that case, and indeed then I asked him deliberately to argue the opposite case, is there evidence here, can you form an argument that we're not reading about a miracle. So arguments and counter arguments and complex concepts, so dealing with complex concepts and thinking clearly about them and of course the complex concept that we were talking about was a miracle and it's not a simple concept, it's something where we found various definitions floating around that we explored from within those texts. The direction that the interview went in is just one of the directions it could have taken. If Rory had given different answers or noticed different things, we could have talked about different concepts, different ideas of miracle, we could have contrasted miracle, for example, with magic, whereas Rory's line of answers led to us putting a miracle in contrast with a confidence trick or with medical healing or...natural healing. So there's lots of directions an interview could go in if you thought of different answers, answers Rory didn't give, that doesn't mean your answers are wrong, it means that you're picking up on different things, we'd have had a different conversation. Rory was listening as much as he was speaking so when I put new ideas to him, for example about why the...why the child's family is being put outside, he was able to manage those new ideas synthesise those with what he thought and respond to them so listening as well as speaking. I'm never looking for a particular answer necessarily, so at the end when I asked him a question whether he thought these things happened, I'm just giving him the chance to play with ideas, I'm not looking for a particular answer. And right at the end he said, oh I would like to learn more about this. Lots of candidates say that and tutors are looking for evidence and motivation and enthusiasm but that's not where we find it. I found evidence of Rory's motivation to learn, I knew that he wanted to learn more and I saw the evidence of his enthusiasm rather in the way that he engaged with the questions throughout the whole interview and the...the sincerity with which he handled the text and really invested in the task that he was given. So I hope that that has been a useful thing to watch.