Module description
This module focuses on the range of the Hebrew Bible’s strategies for accommodating challenges to its theological frameworks of meaning. It examines the theological construction of meaning, the challenges posed to this, and the presented strategies for recovery of meaning. Topics such as creation, law, covenant, history, ritual, and prayer will be explored as mechanisms by which experiences of disorder, injustice, and loss were rationalised and reconfigured. The project is rooted in rigorous exegesis of the Hebrew Bible in its ancient Israelite context and of related ancient Jewish texts, including the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Assessment details
Coursework: one 3,500-word essay (100%)
Educational aims & objectives
This module will enable students to learn to carry out close exegetical analysis of biblical texts from a variety of genres (narrative, ‘history’, prophecy, poetry). The biblical passages selected will focus on the closely related topics of biblical mechanisms for constructing theological frameworks of meaning, ordering chaos, and responding to disorder and injustice.
Learning outcomes
The students will be able to demonstrate intellectual, transferable and practical skills appropriate to a level 7 module and in particular will be able to demonstrate:
• A detailed critical knowledge of thematically related biblical texts.
• The ability to read biblical texts with a view to the social and historical circumstances that generated them.
• The ability to use secondary literature and commentaries to enhance readings of biblical texts.
• The ability to evaluate competing interpretations and to defend their own textual readings, both orally and in a research essay.
• The ability to read some key terms in Hebrew
Teaching pattern
One two-hour class weekly over ten weeks.