I. First day 354: Bible as Literature and in Literature and the Arts

II. 12:10 Attendance, seating, pictures

III. 12:15 Any reading of the Bible will be controversial

A. Religious

1. Protestant, Catholic or Jewish or Muslim—all consider it a sacred book, the word of god, but with very different readings, or interpretations

2. Blood spilled and religions fragmented, as well as new religions built around differing religious interpretations of what god’s word says and means

B. Secular

1. Not regarding it as god’s word but as an artifact of human creation produced and collected over a period of 1300 years

a) Historical readings—ancient record of culture and politics

b) Literarary readings—interpreted as art—examination of its poetic and fictional values, as an epic like other epics—Vedas, Odyssey, Iliad.

(1) Epics as works including the gods and humans, cosmic scope, historical pedigree, cultural centrality

(2) Authors of epics always claim divine inspiration and so regarded by later ones—Milton retells story of Adam and Eve in Paradise lost invoking both the classical muse of inspiration and the Holy Spirit. Also Blake.

(a) I had a small taste when I was writing my book, Shakespeare and the Bible. Though I’m not a religious person, I prayed for inspiration every morning I worked on it, and when ideas came to me I experienced it as such

2. Text rather than scripture

a) May be unappealing because it puts the bible down a notch from what you're used to. May also raise it up--find wealth of unexpected meanings and beauties. What's shared with a religious view is great respect for the text--assumption that answers to all questions about it are contained within it or within the history of interpretations of it.

3. Our approach in this class will steer away from religious teachings, from personal experience of faith or conversion and from any theory of absolute truth, but rather will be looking for interpretations. It will consider the God of the Bible more as a character in a story or as a presence experienced by humans and described by them than as the ultimate reality. Nevertheless, we will maintain respect for the book we are discussing, even when coming across some of its more raw aspects. This class has room for the divergent perspectives of Catholics, Protestants, Jews, Muslims, agnostics and atheists. That also holds true for the large community of religious and non-religious scholars who study the bible in a secular academic framework. However, if you are uncomfortable with such a broad and secular approach or don’t want to abide by its conventions, this probably isnt the course for you.

IV. 12:25 Bible and bibles

A. Multiple Bibles—languages, translations and canons [website]

B. Internal variants and interpretations

1. NT is reinterpretation of OT, prophets are reinterpretation of the Torah, Torah is partly a reinterpretation of itself--i.e. story of Deuteronomy in Kings.

C. Incoherence and coherence

1. Discontinuity, inconsistency, repetition—two creation stories; gospels, new and old testament, variety of genres. Multiple Torah authors—56 books

2. Obscure passages, corrupt texts, contradictions and contrasting values—e.g.Beatitudes and decalogue, Isaiah war and Isaiah peace, Job and Deuteronomy

3. Overall structure—beginning, middle, end of Xtian bible; multiple internal references

4. Figure of God—benign creator, stern father, ferocious war god, jilted lover, suffering servant, merciless punisher, comforting mother—all aspects of higher power

5. Multiple texts and sources

D. Genres of books—almost always more than one of a kind; each book contains examples of multiple kinds

E. Written at different times in different places and languages for different communities, then later gathered up and partly homogenized and partly memorialized. Compilers and redactors

V. 12:30 Course outline

A. Texts

B. Quizzes, papers and projects

C. Report schedule

D. Companion texts and Supplementary reading

VI. 12: 40 Book of Ruth