Term project ideas part 1: Biblical criticism

I thought it would be a good idea to post some ideas for possible term projects. These can be used as inspiration or clarification of the project, to give you ideas for how to make a term project according to your own interests, or -- if you feel uninspired or stuck -- you can just adopt or adapt one of these for your term project. On the whole I'm going to stick to the most basic outline for term projects on here: read one book not on the syllabus, think about it in the context of the class, apply it to your own thoughts in some way. You can do something more complex, like comparing two books, and I'll probably outline a sample project like that sometime in the future.

For the unit on Biblical criticism, I'm going to outline two possible term projects. There are many, many books you could read on Biblical criticism, and if you're interested in doing a project on Biblical criticism but not on one of the two books I'm going to discuss today, just come talk to me and we will talk about it.

Old Testament Biblical Criticism and Theology: The Mighty From Their Thrones, J. P. M. Walsh, S.J.

This book is an extended theological study of justified power (that is, the power of God, but examined politically) in the Old Testament, with a brief examination of how this provides the background for understanding Jesus. The book is easy to read, interesting, and comprehensive.

Walsh offers a historical reconstruction of the probable origins of the people of Israel. He believes the origin to be a rebellious group of oppressed, underprivileged, and desperate Canaanites who find resources in their own religious roots to understand the plight of the poor as central to the idea of justice. These people's alienation from the political power in their homeland came to be complemented by the faith of a group of escaped slaves from Egypt, whose experiences of Yahweh, their liberator, deliverer, and protector, came to inspire the marginalized Canaanites to become worshipers of Yahweh and accept his justice, which placed liberation and trust above all else.

He supports this reconstruction through an examination of Canaanite religious texts from a couple centuries before the establishment of the nation of Israel as well as through a tradition-historical and form critical (in other words, oral history layer) examination of the Old Testament. He then follows the idea of Yahweh's distinctive sense of justice through the early establishment of the nation ("Conquest", Judges), the monarchy and prophets, and later developments in the history of Israel, concluding with a look at New Testament adaptations of justice theology.

If you enjoyed looking at "what really happened" in the Old Testament establishment of Israel you will probably like this book. It summarizes more comprehensively the whole history of Israel as far as that can be known (but there is not much on Genesis in this book at all -- his reconstruction starts with Exodus). He especially examines the political implications of Israel's "covenant" (treaty) with God, which we touched on briefly in class.

One idea using this book would be: (1) read the book, (2) find a wikipedia article you can contribute about a paragraph to based on the ideas in the book. Contribute by March 31. (3) Find a Biblical passage (Old Testament or New Testament) and apply the theological/political ideas Walsh discusses to work out its meaning. For example, you could choose to examine the Abraham/Isaac sacrifice story we talked about in class in the context of its oral tradition according to Walsh (that is, a story told by dissatisfied Canaanite peasants about the alternative justice of their real God) and see if you see any new meanings in it. Or you could pick the conquest of Jericho, or the crossing of the Jordan river, or something else. You would then write a paper that had (a) a summary of the book, (b) an examination of your passage in the light of the book, and (c) your conclusions based on the project. This would be your long paper, which you'd turn in by April 8. Then (4) you'd revise that paper into your short paper based on my comments, and turn it in again by April 22.

New Testament Biblical Criticism and Theology: The Community of the Beloved Disciple, Raymond E. Brown

This book is written by the same eminent New Testament scholar who wrote our textbook Christ in the Gospels of the Ordinary Sundays. It is a parallel project to the first book: Brown is attempting to do a historical reconstruction of the "Johannine community": that is, the community in which the Gospel According to John, the letters 1, 2, and 3 John, and the book of Revelation were first considered authoritative. As this description implies, his main tools are redaction criticism and canonical criticism. It's been a while since I read this book (whereas I just reread the other one to write this post), but I really loved it and found Brown's ideas about the early church enlightening and intriguing. Your overall project based on this book would likely be very similar to that outlined for The Mighty From Their Thrones: read, write wikipedia article, choose a passage, examine it in light of the book's historical reconstruction, write paper, revise paper.

If you're interested in one of these projects you can email me to start planning or if you have any questions, leave a comment.