Introduction to the old testament part 3

We're not going to read every bit of it word for word. We will read certain chunks of it quite carefully and from others we will choose selections, but you will get a very good sense and a good sampling of the contents of the Bible. A second goal is to introduce you to a number of approaches to the study of the Bible, different methodological approaches that have been advanced by modern scholars but some of which are in fact quite old. At times, we will play the historian, at times we will be literary critics. "How does this work as literature?" At times we will be religious and cultural critics.

"What is it the Israelites were saying in their day and in their time and against whom and for what?" A third goal of the course is to provide some insight into the history of interpretation.

This is a really fun part of the course. The Bible's radically new conception of the divine, its revolutionary depiction of the human being as a moral agent, its riveting saga of the nation of Israel, their story, has drawn generations of readers to ponder its meaning and message.

And as a result, the Bible has become the base of an enormous edifice of interpretation and commentary and debate, both in traditional settings but also in academic, university, secular settings.

And from time to time, particularly in section discussion, you will have occasion to consider the ways in which certain biblical passages have been interpreted--sometimes in very contradictory ways--over the centuries.

That can be a really fun and exciting part of the course. A fourth goal of the course is to familiarize you with the culture of ancient Israel as represented in the Bible against the backdrop of its Ancient Near Eastern setting, its historical and cultural setting, because the archaeological discoveries that were referred to in the Ancient Near East, reveal to us the spiritual and cultural heritage of all of the inhabitants of the region, including the Israelites. And one of the major consequences of these finds is the light that they have shed on the background and the origin of the materials in the Bible. So we now see that the traditions in the Bible did not come out of a vacuum. The early chapters of Genesis, Genesis 1 through 11--they're known as the "Primeval History," which is a very unfortunate name, because these chapters really are not best read or understood as history in the conventional sense--but these 11 chapters owe a great deal to Ancient Near Eastern mythology. The creation story in Genesis 1 draws upon the Babylonian epic known as Enuma Elish. We'll be talking about that text in some depth. The story of the first human pair in the Garden of Eden, which is in Genesis 2 and 3 has clear affinities with the Epic of Gilgamesh, that's a Babylonian and Assyrian epic in which a hero embarks on this exhausting search for immortality.

The story of Noah and the flood, which occurs in Genesis 6 through 9 is simply an Israelite version of an older flood story that we have found copies of: a Mesopotamian story called the Epic of Atrahasis a flood story that we also have incorporated in the Epic of Gilgamesh. Biblical traditions have roots that stretch deep into earlier times and out into surrounding lands and traditions, and the parallels between the biblical stories and Ancient Near Eastern stories that they parallel has been the subject of intense study. However, it isn't just the similarity between the biblical materials and the Ancient Near Eastern sources that is important to us.

To be continued in part 4.