In teaching this course, I have a number of presuppositions which affect my way of teaching, my selection of books and readings, and my objectives for the course. I presuppose that, as with all literature, the writings in this collection are to some extent and in some way communications between human beings. The Hebrew Bible, made up of stories, prophecy, poetry and law, can be thought of as a single, continuously growing story -- the story of the Jewish people. Inasmuch as Christianity began as a Jewish sect, this literature is also part of the story of Christianity, and inasmuch as Islam originated in the prophecy of Muhammed who in the Islamic view continued and culminated the Prophetic tradition, this literature is also part of the story of Islam. The older stories embedded in it conveyed ancestral traditions and beliefs which shaped the lives of later generations, and the later generations in turn retold the story, enriched and extended by their own experience, for those who would follow.
On that basis, I conclude that we should study these works using the same methods that we would use with other similar genres of literature, ancient and modern, and that modern understanding of folklore and oral tradition should also be useful here. I also conclude that, as with any communication, these writings usually have more than one intent inherent in them. The law which was meant to deter one kind of person or prevent one kind of action established another person's rights and still another's guilt. The story that justified one person's possession of land meant deprivation to another, and to each implied different things about divine justice. Psalms of praise intended to be sung to God in the temple festivals were at the same time intended to exalt and inspire Israelite celebrants and to guide and explain the ritualistic and symbolic activities of the priests officiating in the same celebration. There never was a single, "right" meaning of the Bible or any of its writings, and any study of the Bible aimed at trying to prove one is the pursuit of an illusion.
I also recognize that an enormous gulf of time and space, of changing languages and changing human experience, separates the world of the ancient Near East from that of the modern West. Recognizing this gulf reinforces the idea that there is not and never will be a single right interpretation of these works, for on our side of this gulf the angle of vision is constantly changing as the edge is eroded away by time. Recognizing this gulf means recognizing that we cannot assume that what we take for granted about ourselves and our world even remotely resembles what was taken for granted by these ancient authors. The words intended to convey ancient ideas to us widen the very gulf they seem to bridge. The range of meanings and emotional associations of the ancient Hebrew or Aramaic words cannot correspond very precisely to meanings and associations which the words of our English translation have for us. The questions which we ask as we read, and which are grounded in our world of high technology, of sociological and psychological sophistication, do not correspond to the purposes or experience of the ancient thinkers and writers. The popular modern idea that divine truth must be consistent (i.e., with human concepts of logic) flies in the face of ancient assertions of paradox and seeming contradictions, and stories in which God "changes his mind." We are compelled to realize that we cannot impose modern presuppositions on this literature without violating it, and in the process blinding ourselves to the different kinds of truth expressed in it.
As in the study of any ancient literature, then, much of the effort devoted to this course will be spent in learning to be sensitive to those very different ways of thinking and that different experience of the ancient authors. The challenge we face in trying to understand the "otherness" of this literature, however, is not essentially so different from that which some new students face when they meet their roommates for the first time, or which hopefully many students at Bates will face when they live in a foreign country for the first time. It is mainly the enormity of the gulf which distinguishes it.
This introduction to the Hebrew Bible is therefore not only intended to offer an opportunity to become familiar with the Bible, but also to suggest ways of reading it that do justice to its diversity and its historical, psychological and sociological "otherness" from our own world.
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