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Research
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- In the second and third Texting God papers, you'll take a major biblical story, such as the exodus or the life of Christ, or a major biblical genre like apocalyptic literature, and then write:
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- a three page, double-spaced paper in which you analyze the story or genre in its original historical context (Texting God Paper #2, due Monday, November 5), and
- an eight-page, double-spaced paper in which you analyze two contemporary interpretations of your story/genre, one religious and one secular, and compare the social context, artistic choices in that context, and affordances of the modes with those of the original author (Texting God Paper #3, due on the date of, and in lieu of, your final exam)
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- Complete directions for the assignment, video tutorials for how to pick a topic and find sources, and a grading rubric for the assignment, are available from the Assignments tab to the left (and the assignment prompt on the Camino page). What you'll find below are some ideas for stories and genres and associated adaptations in various modes and technologies. You don't have to choose from the following options; they are only meant to help prompt your own interests and give you some ideas.
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- Some Ideas
- [Click on the links to go to specific suggestions on that story/genre]
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- Primeval Mythology
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The biblical creation stories are found in Genesis 1–2. |
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The contradiction between the first and second creation stories, with man and woman created simultaneously in the first (Priestly) but separately in the second (Yahwist) led some later Jews to imagine that the first wife of Adam was Lilith, who dared to speak the divine name and was cast out of the garden of Eden as punishment. Associated with all kinds of evil, Jewish feminists have rehabilitated her as a symbol of what can go wrong when men get to write the story. |
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The two sons of Adam and Eve—Cain the farmer and Abel the shepherd—both offer their gifts to God. When God accepts only Abel's sacrifice, Cain is overcome by envy and kills his brother. Thus begins a murderous cycle spawned by the disobedience of their parents and only ending with the recreation of the flood. |
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The biblical story of the flood is found in Genesis 6–9 (with follow-up stories in chapters 10–11). |
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After the flood, the dystopia returns as the people of Babylon aspire to reach the heights of the gods with their man-made tower, only to be dispersed for their arrogance and divided into different, mutually incomprehensible languages. |
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- Patriarchs & Matriarchs
- Most of the book of Genesis deals with the stories of the patriarchs and matriarchs of the Jewish tradition, from the first man to enter into a covenant with God, Abraham, to his son Isaac, his son Jacob, and his twelve sons—the ancestors of the twelve tribes of the Jewish nation.
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The founding patriarch of Jewish tradition, the first to enter into a covenant with God, is featured in the biblical narrative in Genesis 12–25. |
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Abraham's nephew Lot settles on the plain of Canaan and marries a woman from Sodom, and pretty soon all hell breaks loose. The narrative begins in Genesis 12 and ends in Genesis 19 with the "fire and brimstone" that would become the staple of hellfire preaching centuries later. And Lot's daughters, convinced they and their father are the sole survivors, get Lot drunk and have sex with him in order to jump start the human race. |
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Jacob is the grandson of Abraham and father of twelve sons via two wives and two servants. These twelve sons, including Joseph (see below), are regarded as ancestors of the "twelve tribes of Israel." The story of Jacob begins in Genesis 25 and continues through the end of the book.
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Joseph was the eleventh and favorite son of Jacob. His brothers were jealous and sold Joseph into slavery, and he ended up a slave in Egypt and soon imprisoned on a trumped up charge. His fortunes changed when he interpreted the Pharaoh's troubling dreams as signs of a coming famine, and he ends up saving Egypt, and his own family, when the famine finally comes. His story begins in Genesis 37–50. |
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- Moses, Exodus & the Ten Commandments
- The story of the liberation of Hebrew slaves from Egypt is one of the most dramatic and focal narratives in Tanak. From Moses' confrontations with Pharaoh to the ten commandments, the story has shaped Jewish and Christian rituals and ethics, as well as the legal tradition in the United States and the civil rights movement.
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- Judges
- The book of Judges is part of the Deuteronomistic history, set in the period just after the Israelite "conquest" of Canaan but before the rise of a monarchy. Instead of kings, Israel is ruled by "judges," including:
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Prophet, judge, and counselor, this leader of the Israelites prophesies God's command to attack King Jabin of Hazor in Canaan (Judges 4–5). After the Israelite victory, another woman, Jael, lures Jabin's general Sisera into her tent and drives a tent peg through his head as he sleeps. The song attributed to Deborah in Judges 5 is considered one of the oldest passages in the Bible. |
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Forty years of peace follow Deborah's victory, but then the Midianites and Amalekites begin to harass Israel. God chooses Gideon to battle the Midianites and condemn their worship of Baal Judg 6–8). He ends up having 70 sons from the many captive women he took as wives, including the next judge in our list. |
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Abimelech, one of Gideon's sons by a captive woman from Shechem in Samaria, slaughters all but one of his step-brothers and claims a "kingship" over the region of Shechem (Judges 9). He is successful in battle until the siege of Thebaz, when a woman throws a millstone from the rampart of the city onto his head. Rather than die at the hand of a woman, he commands his armor-bearer to stab him with a sword. |
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The Ammonites and the Philistines began to harry the Israelites, so the elders of Gilead promise Jephthah the chieftainship if he can defeat their enemies. Jephthah vows rashly to immolate the first thing he sees after battle if God grants him the victory. The first thing he sees is his only child, his daughter. She realizes the vow cannot be retracted, and asks for two months to seclude in the mountains with her friends and "weep for her virginity" (Judg 11–12). |
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Samson was the last judge of the Israelites and a man of enormous strength (Judg 13–16). He killed a lion with his hands and slew a Philistine army with the jawbone of an ass. But he had an "Achilles heel"—if his hair was cut, he would lose his strength (the strength was God's "gift" for taking the vow not to cut his hair or drink). The Philistines use a woman, Delilah, to discover Samson's secret and cut his hair off, but he gets revenge when they gather in their Temple to gloat over their captive. |
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- Kings & Prophets
- The two books of Kings in the Deuteronomistic history, along with the prophetic books of Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and most of the twelve minor prophets, are set in the period of the united and then the divided monarchy (1000–587 BCE).
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The first king of the united monarchy, David was the first to receive the promise that an anointed one from his line would always sit on the throne in Jerusalem. While he is a hero in the tradition, he was also criticized by prophets and writers for his sins. |
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Solomon has a reputation for unparalleled wisdom and as the king who built the first Jerusalem Temple, but unfortunately his appetite for power alienated the northern tribes, so that when he died, they broke off and founded a rival dynasty. |
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The foreign wife of the northern King Ahab introduces to the north the alien gods and traditions that the Deuteronomistic authors despise. She becomes a symbol of a kind of "spiritual" adultery and a very real nemesis of the prophet Elijah. |
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The great miracle-working prophet of the Jewish tradition, who opposed the idolatry of King Ahab of the northern kingdom and his foreign wife Jezebel (1 Kings 17:1–2 Kings 2:13). After passing his prophetic mantle to Elisha, he is taken up to heaven in a fiery chariot, an account that would inspire everything from future end-time hopes (Mal 3:5-6; Mark 1:1-8) to the place left for Elijah at the Passover seder to the African American spiritual, "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot." |
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One of the most eloquent of the classical prophets, Isaiah of Jerusalem lived in the southern Kingdom of Judea during the 8th century BCE, before and during the Assyrian onslaught. His disciples continued to add to his original oracles (chapter 1–39) during the Babylonian Exile (chapters 40–55) and after the return (chapters 56–66). With Deuteronomy and Psalms, this is the most heavily represented book in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the most heavily cited book in the New Testament. |
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The "weeping prophet" who lives before and during the Babylonian catastrophe, Jeremiah began his career in 626 BCE. His prediction of doom for violations of the covenant led to his persecution by leading Judeans who preferred to listen to predictions of success. Released from prison by the Babylonians, he died in Egypt. It looks like the Deuteronomists had a hand in editing his oracles. |
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Ezekiel's hallucinogenic first vision of four composite creatures and wheels rimmed with eyeballs came to him in Babylon, as a captive in the first deportation. He foresaw the destruction of Jerusalem and acted it out in bizarre but evocative gestures. His book is full of trauma, from the image of him being commanded to eat a scroll (or divine message) that makes him vomit to his vision of the dry bones that one day will reconstitute into the people of Israel. Some see his visions as an early precursor to apocalyptic imagery. |
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- Babylonian Captivity & Imperial Subjugation
- The Neo-Babylonian Empire destroyed the reunited monarchy in 587 BCE, and carted the leading citizens into a 50-year exile in Babylon. When Persia defeated the Babylonians, the Persian King Cyrus allowed the Jews to return, and some did. Several additions to the prophetic books are written during this period, and the stories of Daniel and Esther are set in the Babylonian and Persian periods (though the books are written much later).
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The catastrophe of the Babylonian exile and captivity, though it only affected perhaps 10% of the population, had a long afterlife in the imagination of Jews and Christians. |
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The Book of Daniel can be studied as an apocalyptic work (see below), but in the context of captivity it can also be analyzed as a wisdom book instructing the Jews how to survive and maintain their traditions under foreign control. |
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This heroine of the Jewish imagination saved her people by joining the harem of Persian King Ahasuerus (Xerxes I) and becoming his queen. This story of salvation by seduction spawned the Jewish holiday of Purim. |
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Judith appears in the apocryphal book bearing her name, set in the time of the Babylonian exile but likely written during the Greco-Roman period. Like Esther, she saves the Jews by seducing their enemy, but in her case, she beheads rather than marries her victim. |
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- Wisdom Traditions
- The Wisdom traditions in the Jewish Bible are collated in the Ketuvim or Writings. While the genres are diverse and include proverbs and psalms or songs, the Ketuvim also contain some famous stories, including the following (for Daniel, see the apocalyptic topic below):
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The famous foreigner whose fidelity to her Jewish mother-in-law led three generations later to the birth of King David (and in Christian tradition, to Jesus). |
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Blessed with children, herds, health and wealth, he had it all taken away. His "friends" told him he must have done something wrong to deserve it, but he proclaimed he was righteous and challenged God to explain why he suffered so much. |
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This is not a person but a book—a book of 150 pryaers used at liturgies in the temple, synagogue and church. These poems were originally set to music, and are a good genre to study if you are interested in musical interpretation of biblical themes. |
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- Jesus
- The story of Jesus lies at the heart of the New Testament, and for the past 2000 years has therefore been subject to reconstruction not only in western art, but around the globe.
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Only two of the canonical gospels have stories of Jesus' infancy, but there were at least three known additional infancy gospels. All of these present traditions that would play a major role in western art, as Christians reflected on the mystery of the incarnation (God becoming flesh/ human). |
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The stories of Jesus in the four canonical gospels have been been mainstays in the history of western art and film. |
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Because the canonical gospels focus on the passion narrative (the story of Jesus final supper with his followers, his arrest, execution and resurrection), several treatments of his life focus here as well. |
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- Peter, Paul and Mary: The Early Church
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The canonical gospels indicate this follower of Jesus was regarded by many as his chief disciple. The Catholic custom of a central bishop or pope in Rome traces to this tradition. |
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Though he never knew the man Jesus, Paul (or Saul) claimed to have had an experience of the risen Jesus. From there he became a leading apostle to the non-Jews or Gentiles in Turkey and Greece. |
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Mary Magdalene is singled out as one of Jesus' disciples in all four canonical gospels and in a Gnostic gospel named for her. She is the first follower to hear the news of the resurrection, and in three gospels, to experience the risen Jesus. |
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The followers of Jesus quickly spread throughout the eastern Mdediterranean to India in the East and to Rome in the West. The Acts of the Apostles in the Bible chronicles the story, and apocryphal accounts develop other traditions. |
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- Apocalypse
- The apocalyptic genre is not heavily represented in the biblical canon, apart from the Books of Daniel and Revelation, but apocalyptic works were common in Jewish antiquity outside the Bible, and parts of the gospel and Paul's letters reference early Christian apocalyptic beliefs. In our own time, the genre has proven popular particularly in cinema, either in a Christian literalist context (e.g., the Left Behind series) or in secular dystopian fiction (particularly science fiction).
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