2010/01/23
My class on World Scriptures–Week 1
I’m teaching two sections of a class that I’ve named “Literary Aspects of World Scriptures.” Oddly, out of 60 students, none of them are listed as religion majors on my roster. Hmmm….
Thursday saw some good discussion about reading practices. We read the Abraham story on Tuesday, and on Thursday we compared it to the biography of Moses and to the Exodus/Passover narrative. Because we live in the Bible belt and because we were starting the course with Hebrew readings, I raised the question of how much we, as 21st-century readers in a Christianized American culture, are adding into the text, and how much we aren’t paying attention to.
My students picked up on the notion that we tend to spiritualize these stories (as the Christian church has always done) at the expense of some of their historical aspects. That is, we acknowledge the historicity of these events even as we wrestle with the fact that they are not OUR histories, except insofar as we graft ourselves into that history by faith.
My hope is that we can recognize how much our own context as readers influences how we read the texts. Once we leave behind the Judeo-Christian world in 2 weeks, we’re not going to be able to rely on what we’ve heard growing up!
