The Bible as Literature

SAME AS RELST-UA 23.

Over the past few decades, many readers have come to a fuller appreciation of the emotional and imaginative power of the Bible?s narratives, which still speak with remarkable clarity to our own sensibilities, leading one critic to characterize the Bible as a ?full-fledged kindred spirit? of modernism. The course pursues this ?kindred spirit,? using a broadly literary approach as its guide. While the focus is on narrative?the Pentateuch (Genesis?Deuteronomy) and the Former Prophets (Joshua?Kings), as well as shorter narrative books (Ruth, Jonah, and Esther)?it also studies Ecclesiastes and Job as ancient precursors to modern skepticism. Finally, it studies one modernist engagement with the Bible: Kafka?s Amerika.