RLM4090

The authority of the text: the hermeneutical question

Peter Howard and Kevin Hart

12 points -2 hours per week -Second semester -Clayton

Objectives Students who successfully complete this course will have a comprehensive knowledge of the strength, status and scope of claims to authority made both by and for the Bible, and the historical, theoretical and cultural issues involved. They will acquire a close knowledge of the different claims to authority made for the biblical text at different historical periods, will have mastered the various debates about textual and contextual hermeneutics, and will have developed skills in evaluating distinct kinds of exegesis.

Synopsis A crisis of authority is characteristic of contemporary Western culture. One symptom of this is the question of the authority of the text, a problematic which has its origins in classical and Judaic-Christian cultures. Texts which were once assumed to have an unquestioned authority can no longer claim such. This is particularly the case with a religion such as Christianity which is predominantly textually based. The aim of the seminar is not only to examine the specific claims to authority of the Bible and its interpreters in the early Christian period but also to explore the ways in which modes of interpretation specific to sacred literature have been displaced onto secular literature.

Assessment Essay (6000 words): 60% -Seminar participation: 10% -Additional written work (3000 words): 30%

Prescribed texts

The Bible
A booklet of reading consisting of extracts from the Church Fathers (Clement of Alexandria, Augustine, Ireneaus) and modern critics (Northrop Frye, Harold Bloom, Geoffrey Hartman)

Recommended texts

Bloom H Ruin the sacred truths
Frye N The great code
Hartman G and Budick S (eds) Midrash and literature
Pardes I Countertraditions in the Bible
Prickett S (ed.) Reading the text

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