1 - 10 of 244 results for: RELIGST

This is a one term intensive class in Biblical Greek. After quickly learning the basics of the language, we will then dive right into readings from the New Testament and the Septuagint, which is the ancient Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible. By the end of the term everyone will be able to read the Greek Bible with ease. No previous knowledge of Greek required.

Raise ultimate questions about life. Yes, the unexamined life is not worth living, but also the unlived life is not worth examining. Students and professor examine their own lives in the light of questions that the readings and lectures bring up: 1. The big picture: Is there such a thing as "the" meaning of life? 2. What is entailed in making personal-existential sense of one's own life? 3. What constitutes the good life, lived in society? 4. How can a university education bear upon the search for a meaningful life? 5. What "methods" for or approches to life can one learn from studies in the humanities? After introductory lectures, the seminar studies a series of artworks, poems, diverse texts, and a film, all of which bear on the questions mentioned above -- works such: 1. Plato's Allegory of the Cave, from "The Republic" 2. Manet's "A bar at the Folies Bergere" 3. A comparison/contrast of Monet's early (1862) "Still Life" and van Gogh's late (1889) "Irises" 4. Lyric poetry T.S. Eliot: "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock," "The Waste Land," and "East Coker"; Edwin Muir: "The Heart Could Never Speak"; Philip Larkin: "Days" 5. Martin Heidegger's "What Is Metaphysics?" 6. Jean-Paul Sartre's novel "Nausea" 7. Marx's Paris Manuscripts of 1844 8. Bergman's "The Seventh Seal"

Hindu traditions, from approx. 1500 BCE to the present, will be selectively studied through multiple approaches, including texts, practices, rituals, arts, and politics.

The question is how to approach and evaluate different perspectives on the good life, especially when those perspectives are beautifully, and elusively, presented to us as texts. We will consider both classic and modern writers, from the West and from China; some are explicitly religious, some explicitly secular; some literary, some philosophical. Most of the class will revolve around our talk with each other, interpreting and questioning relatively short texts. The works we will read � by Dante, Dickenson, Zhuangzi, Shklar, and others - are not intended to be representative of traditions, of eras, or of disciplines. They do, however, present a range of viewpoint and of style that will help frame and re-frame our views on the good life. They will illustrate and question the role that great texts can play in a modern 'art of living.' Perhaps most important, they will develop and reward the skills of careful reading, attentive listening, and thoughtful discussion. (Note: preparation and participation in discussion are the primary course requirement. Enrollment at 3 units requires a short final paper; a more substantial paper is required for the 4-unit option.

From its beginnings to the 21st century. Principal teachings and practices, institutional and social forms, and artistic and iconographical expressions.

An introduction to how archaeology has been used to illumine the Bible and biblical history. Did Abraham exist? Was there an Exodus? Did Joshua really conquer Canaan? What does archaeology reveal about ancient Israel beyond what is recorded in the Bible? This course will address such questions as it seeks to introduce biblical archaeology to students with no prior introduction to either the Bible or to archaeology.

Since the beginning of civilization, humans have refused to believe that physical death is the end of life and have sought in various ways to travel into the afterlife. We cannot know what lies beyond death, but there are other kinds of insights to be learned from these otherworldly journeys. The first part of the course will explore the origins and history of the afterlife, going back in time to ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Israel, Greece, and medieval Europe to survey these cultures' view of death and what lies beyond it. The second part of the course will investigate what has happened to belief in the afterlife in modern American culture. Our ultimate goal is to confront one of the most difficult aspects of life--our fear of death and oblivion--and also to explore the power of thought and imagination to move beyond the confines of mortality.

Classical Zen thought in China, and its background, origins, and development.

If God is omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent, then why is there Evil in the world? We will read and discuss the key thinkers and foundational texts from Plato and the Book of Job to Nietzsche and Dostoevsky in order to appreciate the diverse responses to this question. We will survey approaches such as skepticism and theodicy in the works of the Classical authors and among Christian, Jewish, and Islamic thinkers like Augustine, Maimonides, and al-Ghazali. We will also engage with earlier dualist traditions such as Zoroastrianism and Manicheism, and with the responses of Enlightenment thinkers such as Leibniz, Hume, and Kant. We will conclude with the most strident atheistic responses from contemporary philosophers like Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett.