Module description
This module invites students to explore the wide-ranging and diverse nature of the impact of religious texts upon the world, both today and over a period of more than two millennia: How were and are religious texts debated in diverse social, political and theological contexts? How are texts re-contextualised, re-interpreted and re-imagined to support diverse and competing social agendas and hopes for the future? What may be criteria for critically exploring productive and problematic aspects of reception and transmission? Themes will vary from year to year. Typical themes are: prophetical visions and liberation movements, religious texts and empire, Christian supersessionism, messianism in early modern and modern political contexts. Case studies will stimulate dialogue between very different perspectives.
Assessment details
4000 word essay
Educational aims & objectives
- To familiarise students with key aspects of the reception of selected religious texts
- To enable students to reflect on the power of religious texts to engender new meanings in new contexts, whether for good or ill
- To enable students to articulate the significance of context for interpretation
- To explore the role of religious texts in shaping communities of readers
- To reflect critically on key concepts of reception studies, such as transmission, authority, memory and nostalgia.
Learning outcomes
Generic skills:
- engage with primary and secondary sources analytically and imaginatively
- summarise and present arguments
- articulate one’s own arguments in oral and written form
- research, plan and present essays to specified deadlines
Module specific skills:
- Students will be familiar with key aspects of the reception of selected religious texts
- Students will be able to reflect on the power of religious texts to engender new meanings in new contexts, whether for good or ill
- Students will be able to articulate the significance of context for interpretation
- Students will be able to understand the role of religious texts in shaping communities of readers
- Students will be able to reflect critically on key concepts of reception studies, such as transmission, authority, memory and nostalgia.
Teaching pattern
Lectures
Suggested reading list
Charles Martindale, Redeeming the Text, 1993.
Carlo Ginzburg, Wooden Eyes: Nine Reflections on Distance (London: Verso, 2002).
Daniel Boyarin, Intertextuality and the Reading of Midrash (Indiana University Press, 1990/94).
Ellen F. Davis and Richard B. Hays eds., The Art of Reading Scripture (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003).
David F. Ford and Graham Stanton eds., Reading Texts, Seeking Wisdom: Scripture and Theology (London: SCM, 2003).
David F. Kelsey, The Uses of Scripture in Recent Theology (London, 1975).
Zvi Ben-Dor Benite, The Ten Lost Tribes: A World History (Oxford: OUP, 2009)
Allen Brent, A Political History of Early Christianity (London: T & T Clark, 2009).
Allen Brent, The Imperial Cult and the Development of Church Order: Concepts and Images of Authority in Paganism and Early Christianity Before the Age of Cyprian (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 1999).
Beate Dignas and R.R.R. Smith (eds), Historical and Religious Memory in the Ancient World (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2012)
Paul M. Blowers, and Peter W. Martens, (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Early Christian Biblical Interpretation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2021)
Shay Eshel, The Concept of the Elect Nation in Byzantium (Leiden; Boston: Brill, 2018)
Gilbert Dagron, Emperor and Priest: the Imperial Office in Byzantium (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)