English C107

Book List

New Oxford Annotated Bible NSRV with Apocrypha [College Edition]; Alter, Robert: Genesis; Browning, WRF: Oxford Dictionary of the Bible

Description

We will read a selection of biblical texts as literature.  That is, we will read the Bible in many ways, but not as divine revelation.  We will take up traditional literary questions of form, style, and structure, but we will also learn how to ask historical, political, and theoretical questions of a text that is multi-authored, fissured, and historically layered.  Among other topics, we will pay special attention to how authority is established and contested in biblical texts; how biblical authors negotiate the ancient Hebrew prohibition against representing God in images; and how the gospels are socially and historically poised between the Jesus movement that is their source and the institutionalization of the church that follows.  Assignments are likely to include two take-home midterms and a final.

This course is cross-listed with Religious Studies C119.