User talk:Inawe/DTC-AP/BibLit I

Historical identity and tradition is only possible with a writing system. Cultures who developed a writing

system were capable to survive many generations. One written testimony of that fact is the Old Testament.

Module 1 introduces in five lessons first essentials you need to understand to go deeper into human existence

and struggle for life.

In module 1 we are confronted with the spoken and later written word that powerfully shapes life.

Before we go into the vast collection of Old Testament texts we need to understand what words are,

and how they work, spoken and written down.

Lesson 1-5 research how the Hebrew community over centuries through all possible good and bad

changes created a kind of national identity that was strengthened and secured by written tradition.

These texts were actually the backbone of the intellectuals, the scribes who told their contemporaries

who they were.


 * unit 01: Written Words in Daily Life
 * unit 02: Introduction Old Testament
 * unit 03: The Pentateuch
 * unit 04: The Historical Books
 * unit 05: Tragedy and Shalom in Collective Memory

Prophecy and poetry are ways to verbalize important messages about life and death. Module 2 goes deeper into

character and comprehension of Old Testament prophecy. It also introduces biblical poetry that belongs to the

most beautiful and meaningful literature that has ever been written.

On the background of the so-called historical texts we come now to the prophetical and poetic texts of the Old

Testament. All three have a lot in common and the lines between them are floating. The more we need to deeply

understand what biblical prophecy is and what biblical poetry contains. Theology defines in all of them divine

revelation, God's speaking through a historian, prophet or poet.


 * unit 06: Phenomenon of Prophecy
 * unit 07: Major Prophets
 * unit 08: Minor Prophets
 * unit 09: Poetry and Job
 * unit 10: Prophecy and Prognosis in Modernity

Module 3 researches the influence that the OT has been having through 2000 years. Even today many values in daily

life can be tracked back to the Old Testament teachings.

Theology and philosophy of the eighteenth and nineteenth century taught us to keep critical distance to human tradition when

we want to deeper understand their complex message. Whether critical distance is at all possible is another very important

question that would have all power to question above mentioned positions of Enlightenment and Rationalism.

In Module 3 we ask critical questions with only one honest and upright motive: We want to better understand biblical

literature and its meaning for us today. Whether our goal will reached successfully depends on many factors that are not all in

our control.


 * unit 11: The Process of Canonization
 * unit 12: Myth and Authenticity
 * unit 13: The Time Between Last OT and First NT Authorship
 * unit 14: Influence of the OT in Christianity
 * unit 15: Influence of the OT in Islam

In awe  06:01, 26 February 2015 (UTC)