THEO 425 - 001

Regular Academic Session

5984

Graduate

3 units

Graded

.

This course examines the material on the early church in the Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles from a historical and critical point of view.

Outcomes: A deep level of understanding and of critical thinking with respect to the subject matter of the course.

Restricted to Graduate School students.

Spirits, Shipwrecks, and Saints This course investigates the Acts of the Apostles, which tells the vivid story of the growing early Jesus movement. Organized around the topics of (1) spirits, (2) shipwrecks, and (3) saints, this seminar will engage in a close reading of Acts and compare it with three surrounding bodies of ancient literature: histories, novels, and non-canonical acts. In the first unit, we will consider the ways ancient Jewish, Christian, Greek, and Roman historians spoke about the past, through speechwriting and storytelling. We will also use Acts, with its numerous supernatural events, to interrogate the modern task of historiography¿describing, or redescribing, the past¿when the accounts we have about the past interweave the actions of human beings with those of cosmic forces, superhuman beings, or what we might call the numinous (here, `spirits¿). The second unit will read Acts of the Apostles alongside ancient Greek novels, considering the motifs of mistaken identities, arduous journeys, and disasters at sea. Tracking resemblances between novels and Acts will complicate our understanding of the genre of the book and our ability to identify it as `history.¿ Finally, the course will conclude with a unit locating the canonical book of Acts among other accounts of apostolic deeds (e.g., Acts of Paul and Thecla, Acts of Peter, Acts of Thomas, etc.). Gender will receive special attention in our reading of these canonical and non-canonical apostolic accounts. We will trace the roles these texts play in valorizing certain apostolic figures, women and men, over time, and the ways that early Christian cults of the saints develop in light of their portrayals. This course will familiarize students with the Acts of the Apostles and orient students to critical topics in the study of the Bible, early Christianity, and ancient religion more broadly.

Olivia Stewart Lester

We 10:25AM - 12:55PM

08/26/2019 - 12/07/2019

In person

Lake Shore Campus

Lake Shore Campus

Open

16

9

25

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