RELS 101-02 and 06, The Bible: Texts and Contexts, Fall 2007

Abstract

Religious Studies 101 is designed as the introductory course in the foundational “Life: Then and Now” sequence. As such, it has several aims. First, it introduces scholars to the academic study of the Bible as a central and influential sacred text for the West. Such a study is deliberately and necessarily different from the sectarian, denomination, devotional or confessional approach offered by synagogues, churches, “Bible” colleges or divinity schools, although the interpretation of the Bible can never be divorced from its meanings in religious contexts. Second, the course introduces scholars to the contexts – historical, literary, and cultural, as well as religious – in which the various texts of the Bible arose, were written, transmitted and interpreted. Third, it introduces the study of the idea of a scriptural “canon,” and the processes by which the Jewish and later the Christian canons were developed and eventually “closed.” Fourth, the course introduces scholars to hermeneutics, the method of biblical interpretation within various cultural contexts, including those of the present. Finally, it introduces scholars to major questions and problems of the relationship between the two great “religions of the Bible,” Judaism and Christianity. The overall organizing principle of RS 101 is how the relationship between God and a people is portrayed and understood in the Jewish and Christian Scriptures and by those responsible for their composition and preservation.