2:30-3:45 TR (30) 3 cr

The initial aim of this introductory course will be acquaintance with the biblical text, including the ideas behind it and the ideas it has inspired; but we shall be concerned too with more general issues of authority and originality, metaphor and enigma, interpretive license and the status of the author--issues which a reading of the Bible raises in their acutest form. Our approach throughout will be literary rather than historical. This means that we shall be studying the various writings with reference to their own proposed chronology and without trying to reconstruct the underlying events. But we shall look carefully at the Bible's own view of human history as radically contingent, and at some imaginative responses which we have come to take for granted, such as the notions of election, revelation, and a personal God.

Readings will include extensive selections from all three divisions of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament), together with some excerpts from ancient Near Eastern epic and wisdom literature. We shall also look more briefly at the way the canonical texts were reinterpreted and revised by the authors of the New Testament.

There will be two short papers, a mid-term and a final. Please bring a Bible (King James Version) to the first meeting.