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RELS 101-02 and 06, The Bible: Texts and Contexts, Fall 2007
Streete, Gail P.
Streete, Gail P.
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Religious Studies, Department of, Syllabus, Curriculum, Academic departments, Text, 2007 Fall
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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.
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This syllabus was submitted to the Rhodes College Office of Academic Affairs by the course instructor.