DESCRIPTION:

This course focuses on the Pentateuch (Genesis-Deuteronomy) and its interpretation in the context of the Church in mission. This focus entails attention to the content of the Pentateuch itself, to its historical-cultural context, to questions of interpretive method, and to questions of contemporary application. The course is designed to help students acquire tools necessary for an ongoing disciplined reading of the Pentateuch: an understanding of and commitment to this reading, and awareness of fundamental issues in the Pentateuch, a sense of the contributions and limitations of various critical methods, and of the challenge of reading and application in pre-modern, modern, and post-modern contexts.

Our ministries both feed off and reveal who we believe God and human beings are, what we believe a good church or society might look like, etc. Scripture takes these beliefs to be at best a first approximation: we see through a glass, darkly. The Chilean Segundo Galilea puts it this way: "Knowledge of and conversion to the God of the Gospels is a lifelong task, for everyone. Spirituality is the gradual conversion to the God of Jesus." A disciplined reading of Scripture in the contexts of ministry is part of this process of conversion.

The course will meet for 2 2-hour sessions weekly for lecture and discussion.

Alter, R. The Art of Biblical Narrative. New York: Basic Books, 1981.

Fowl, S. E. and L. G. Jones. Reading in Communion: Scripture and Ethics in Christian Life. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1991.

Hayes, J. H. and C. R. Holladay. Biblical Exegesis: A Beginner's Handbook. Atlanta: John Knox, 1987.

LaSor, W. S., Hubbard, D. A., and Bush, F. W. Old Testament Survey. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1982. [Available also in Spanish as Panorama del Antiguo Testamento. Nuevo Creación (Eerdmans).]

McAlpine, T. Syllabus with selected readings. FTS, 1996.

Pritchard, J. B. The Ancient Near East: An Anthology of Texts and Pictures. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1958.

Clines, D. J. A. The Theme of the Pentateuch. JSOTS 10. Sheffield: JSOT Press, 1978.

Fewell, D. N. and D. M. Gunn. Gender, Power, & Promise: The Subject of the Bible's First Story. Nashville: Abingdon, 1993.

Mann, T. The Book of the Torah. Atlanta: Knox, 1988.

The assignments for the course include: (1) reading the Pentateuch and the other required reading; (2) participation in class discussion; (3) a midterm and a final exam (both combining "objective" and short-essay questions; and (3) a 20-page exegetical paper.

None.

Meets M.Div. core requirement in Old Testament "a" (OTA).

Yes.