Introduction to the Bible Understanding the Bible: Its History, Structure, Genres, and Interpretation
An accessible introduction to the Bible that explores what the Bible is, how it developed, how its books are organized, the different kinds of literature it contains, and how readers can approach it responsibly.
About this course
This course provides an introduction to the Bible as a collection of ancient texts, religious literature, and historical documents. Rather than beginning with assumptions about what the Bible should say, we will first examine what the Bible actually is: how its books were written, collected, organized, transmitted, and interpreted.
Along the way, we will look at the Old and New Testaments, the major genres found within them, the historical worlds in which these texts were produced, the development of the biblical canon, textual transmission, translation, and some of the basic tools used in modern biblical studies.
The goal is not simply to summarize the contents of the Bible, but to give students the background and tools needed to read it more carefully and understand why different readers sometimes reach very different conclusions about the same text.
Lectures
The course begins with the Bible as a whole before moving into its history, structure, major divisions, literary genres, and the methods used to interpret it. The lectures are designed to build upon one another, but individual topics can also be explored independently.
