Jewish Studies Courses at Shandong University

Course Outline / Syllabus

Philosophy of the Hebrew Scriptures

Taught by Prof. M. Avrum Ehrlich

Academic Department

The Department of Philosophy and Sociology

School of Religion and the Centre for Judaic and Inter Religious Studies

Shandong University

Dates and Times

Course Name: Philosophy of the Hebrew Scriptures

Year: 2006

Semester one: 5^th September – 31^st December

Semester two: 15^th February – 15^th of June.

Date/ Time: Thursday: 8.00am – 12.00pm

Duration: Four hours/ week

Suitability

Students: Post graduate students

Language of Tuition: English and Hebrew

Prerequisites: Competency in Hebrew reading; basic Hebrew grammar; good

English comprehension; post graduate students; familiarity with

biblical literature and ideas.

Goals of Course

The purpose of this course is fourfold:

Gaining fluency in reading and comprehending the Hebrew Bible in the original Hebrew Language.
Developing a broader understanding of the entirety of Biblical writing.
Gaining insight into the literary techniques, philosophy, ideas and mindset of the writers of the Hebrew Bible.
Becoming familiar with the secondary and academic literature of the Hebrew Bible.

Obligations for Course

Weekly reading of articles

Weekly practice of Hebrew reading and grammar

Ownership of books on reading list

Submission of essay or participation in project each semester

Fulfill the following criteria:

Attendance in class
Participation in class discussion
Demonstrating critical abilities
Demonstration of knowledge of Hebrew reading and translation
Pass test and/or essay and/or project

List of Readings

Primary Texts:

Breishit (Genesis), Shmot (Exodus), Judges, Shmuel (Samuel I and II)

J Texts

Secondary Texts:

Who Wrote the Bible?

Richard Elliot Friedman

In this book he deals with the types of people who wrote the Bible and their schools of thoughts and the way it was edited together to create a complete work.

From Epic to Canon: History and Literature in Ancient Israel

Frank Moore Cross (London, 1988)

The Book of J

Harold Bloom (New York, 1990)

The Levites: Their Emergence as a Second Class Priesthood

Risto Nurmela (Florida, 1998)

Ruin the Sacred Truths: Poetry and Belief from the Bible t the Present

Harold Bloom (Harvard, 1987)

The Hidden Face in the Bible

Richard Elliot Friedman

In this book he tries to identify the basic text of the Bible which was later split up by a later editor and cut and pasted with other works. He goes thru the stories of Genesis and Exodus, Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings and discovered that these were all edited and have at their core a basic text which was edited. He deconstructs them to identify the original text which he calls the Book of J or the J text. In this work he claims to have discovered the main author of the bible and that it was the prequel to another book he wrote about the court history of David. He does this by identifying huge literary and political similarities between the court history of David and the stories of the Bible which refer to the J name of God.

He argues that the start of the Book of J starts in Genesis and ends in Kings II, it begins - not “in the beginning” but rather a few paragraphs later “on the day that J made the earth and the skies” and it finishes in the book of Kings with “and the kingdom rested safely in the hands of Solomon”. He argues that the Bible was actually a prequel to the most important book he was writing that is the court history of his monarch.

In the last part of his book he includes a scholarly appendix of linguistic and historiographic references.