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Religious Studies Department, SCU
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Research Topics
The following topics are not meant to be exhaustive, but rather are offered to indicate the nature of the assignment and to stimulate your own interests. You are encouraged to consider a topic more aligned with your own interests and to submit a topic statement and sources. The professor will work with you to be certain that the topic suits the course.  As students choose topics, their names and e-mail addresses will be accessible from this page so that you can contact them to share resources and ideas.

 Exegetical PaperThematic Paper Historical Paper 

Exegetical Paper
Historical Analysis of a Passage
Select a passage from the canonical or non-canonical gospels that has at least one parallel text in another gospel, and analyze the historicity of that passage in terms of the criteria developed in this course.
 
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Redaction-critical and Historical Analysis of a Passage
Select a passage that is present in either the double or the triple tradition. Lay the related passages out alongside each other (or better yet, use a Gospel Synopsis that already does this for you), and analyze the changes made by the later source. What can you discern about the theological perspective of one of those gospels based on your exegesis? Redaction criticism is critical inquiry that tries to build a picture of an evangelist's theological perspective based on editorial (="redactional") changes.
 
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The Messianic Secret in Mark
Even more than any of the other canonical gospels, Mark emphasizes the secrecy of Jesus' messianic identity. How and why does he do this?
 
Researchers: Tessa Peralta
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Thematic Paper
The Messiahs at the Turn of the Era
Christians were not the only Jews to speculate that a messiah would return. In the Dead Sea Scrolls, we hear of two and maybe even three messiahs, and in 132 CE a man named Simon bar Kosiba, who led a Jewish Revolt against Rome, was acknowledged as messiah by many contemporary Jews. What are the origins of messianism, and how did Christians work within but also expand the title?
 
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The Kingdom of God
Jesus in the Gospel of Matthew preaches the advent of the Kingdom of God. Is it something we can trace to the historical Jesus? If so, what did he mean by this topic, and how did he teach it?
 
Researchers: Meagan Williams
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Jesus in Q
Study "Q" in The Complete Gospels, as well as secondary sources, to determine the portrait of Jesus in this list of sayings. Since Q appears to be so early, does this portrait appear more historical to you? Why or why not?
 
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The Gnostic Jesus
The Jesus in the Gnostic gospels appears quite different from the Jesus of the synoptic gospels. Research how this Jesus differs in the context of gnosticism, and assess the historicity of the Gnostic Jesus.
 
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Jesus as...
Select one of the portraits of Jesus we are discussing in class during the second half of the quarter (but not the one your dialogue group will discuss). Analyze the texts that ground this portrait, and assess whether the portrait makes historical sense.
 
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Historical Paper
Jesus and Jewish Culture
Select some aspect of the culture of Jesus and analyze it. Then, using at least two gospels, determine whether Jesus was consistent or inconsistent with his culture's view of that institution. Possible topics include the treatment of women, taxation, purity laws, views of children, views of the afterlife, perspectives on Jewish law, or the view of the Temple.
 
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Jesus' Interaction with Women
Was Jesus a feminist? Can we answer this question? For this paper, examine Christian feminist reconstructions of Jesus and Jewish feminist responses, or select a female figure with whom Jesus interacts and trace the development of the tradition.
 
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Jesus and the Dead Sea Scrolls
Some people contend that Jesus was mentioned in the Dead Sea Scrolls or somehow involved with the community that wrote them. Analyze these arguments in conjunction with the gospels to determine their historical plausibility.
 
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Jesus: The First Thirty Years
The canonical gospels do not tell us much about the first thirty years of Jesus' life, but later gospels fill in the gaps. Study the developing traditions about Jesus' early life and trace the sociological and theological pressures prompting these developments.
 
Researchers: Preston Graham, Can Turkmen
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Jesus in the Qur'an
Jesus is viewed as a prophet in the Qur'an, and so he is mentioned frequently. But the Qur'an has its own themes that govern the presentation of Jesus. Analyze the Qur'anic reference to Jesus to discover the traditions that influenced Muhammad's portrait of the man.
 
Researchers: David Addison, Ronnie Alvarado, Laura Martin
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The Reconstruction of Christian Origins in the Third Reich
Hitler's Third Reich was founded on a principle of racial purity that demanded the removal of those races and peoples presumed to be inferior to Aryans -- namely Jews, homosexuals, the mentally retarded and the disabled.  While his program was nominally "scientific" rather than religious, its utopian impulse and its focus on the Jews depended to great extent on a long history of Christian idealism and anti-Judaism in Europe.  Nor was that dependence altogether in the past, for Germany housed some of the great Christian theological schools, and many of its leading theologians were actively involved in Hitler's anti-Semitic agenda.  Your task in this paper is to explore how some of Germany's biblical scholars and scholars of Christian origins constructed a version of the historical Jesus that supported Hitler's murderous program, and how other Christian scholars resisted conforming to this view.
 
Researchers: Kelly Esrey, Kevin Schmitt, Ben Thompson
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The Celluloid vs. the Historical Jesus
Jesus is frequently portrayed in contemporary film, both in pieced that document his actual life in some way (e.g., "The Last Temptation of Christ") and in interpretations of his life through contemporary characters ("Live Flesh"). View at least five of these movies and analyze their relationship to the historical Jesus and to the gospels. Try to set each film in its own cultural context.
 
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Other Topics
 
Jewish Views of Jesus - Bill Kennedy

Jesus and Socialism - Scott Ahlstrom


 
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