RELIGST 132: Jesus the Christ
How did Jesus of Nazareth, who never claimed to be Christ or divine, become the son of God after his death? Sources include the history of first-century Judaism and Christianity.
RELIGST 132C: How Jesus the Jew became God
Contemporary historical-critical methods in investigating how one might study Jewish and Christian texts of the 1st century CE. Social contexts including economic realities and elite ideological views. What can be known historically about 1st-century Judaism and Jesus' part it in it. How Jewish apocalyptic messianism shaped the birth of Christianity and its trajectory through the 1st century.
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum
RELIGST 133: Inventing Christianity in Late Antiquity
The transformation of an apocalyptic sect into an imperial religion from 200 to 600 C.E. Shifts in structures of authority, worship, and belief mapped against shifts in politics, economics and religion in the larger Roman empire. Cultural visions of this history including Edward Gibbon's
Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Dan Brown's conspiracy theory in
The Da Vinci Code, and Elaine Pagels'
The Secret Gospel of Thomas.
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum
RELIGST 134: Sacred Space
Religions throughout history have marked certain spaces as out-of-the-ordinary, as places where the gods reveal themselves, where special events have taken place, where one can see and experience things not possible in ordinary space. Individuals and groups who enter and create these sacred spaces create the opportunity to transcend the everyday world. Some of these spaces are natural--mountains, rivers, deserts. Others are constructed--temples, churches, tombs. This course will explore such sacred spaces: how they come to be, what distinguishes them from ordinary space, what happens in them. Part of the course will be theoretical, looking at different approaches to sacred spaces developed by recent scholars of religion; part of it will be focused on specific sacred spaces, especially in Israel and America, and the course will conclude with a chance for students to explore the variety of sacred spaces found in our own community.
RELIGST 146: Religious Mystery and Rational Reflection
Explores the boundaries of rational knowledge about Christian faith through a careful reading of the transcendental project of Jesuit theologian Karl Rahner. Rahner¿s thought, informed by various sources (e.g., the mystics, Aquinas, Kant, Hegel and Ignatius Loyola), results in an interpretation of Christian faith that strives for intellectual honesty in the face of challenges from science, atheism and post-modern culture. Yet it leaves room for a fundamental human openness to the source and goal of self-transcendence, what Rahner calls Holy Mystery. Weekly short position papers will be required to stir both reflection and discussion.
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum
RELIGST 148: From Jesus to Paul
Jesus considered himself God's definitive prophet, but he did not think he was God, and had no intention of founding a new religion. How did this Jewish prophet become the gentile God and the founder of Christianity? The role of Paul.
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum
RELIGST 148A: St. Paul and the Politics of Religion
The major letters written by Paul, the Apostle, and his biography, Acts of the Apostles. Historical context in first century Jewish cultural politics. Origins of Christianity, and the split into Judaism and Christianity. The relationship between Jews and non-Jews. The juxtaposition of law and faith. Origins of cultural universalism. Paul as Jewish radical versus Paul, the first Christian thinker and theologian. Recent philosophical readings of Paul (Taubes, Badiou, and Agamben).
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum
RELIGST 150: The Lotus Sutra: Story of a Buddhist Book
The Lotus school of Mahayana, and its Indian sources, Chinese formulation, and Japanese developments.
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum, GER:EC-GlobalCom
RELIGST 161: Modern Religious Thought: From Galileo to Freud
The three centuries following the Protestant Reformation led to a gradual clarification of the notions of the religious and secular and gave rise to a new genre of religious thought, ideally freed from theology, church or synagogue-a secular philosophy of religion, or in some cases a religiously-imbued philosophy. We will examine some of the foundations of religious thought in modernity, including Galileo, Spinoza, Diderot, Kant, Hegel, Schleiermacher, Kierkegaard, Feuerbach, Marx, Nietzsche and Freud.
| UG Reqs: GER:DB-Hum
RELIGST 170C: Reading in Biblical Hebrew
Third of a three quarter sequence. Readings and translation of biblical narratives emphasizing grammar and literary techniques. Prerequisite:
AMELANG 170B.
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