Introduction à la Bible : Ancien Testament

Teacher(s)

Richelle Matthieu;

Language

French

Prerequisites

No prerequisites are required, but adequate preparation may consist in (re) reading the Pentateuch or/and Josh'''2Kings in the order of its presentation.

Main themes

This course is divided into two parts, or rather, solicits alternately two complementary approaches: 1) exposure of prolegomena and provision of some 'keys' to enter into the Old Testament; 2) reading of texts (of bigger collections/sets rather than precise pericopes) of the Old Testament.

Learning outcomes

At the end of this learning unit, the student is able to :
1	- to situate the essential benchmarks of the Old Testament within its geographical and historical framework;
2	- to describe the background of the narrative books of the Old Testament;
3	- to describe the major characteristics of the prophetic and wisdom literature of the Old Testament.

Content

This course does not aim to present each of the (numerous) books that compose the Old Testament ; it would be fastidious and could not be done well in the time given. Rather, this course deals with the main sections of this corpus, while taking a few representative biblical books as illustrations, and it explains how the Old Testament emerged. In addition, this course trains students to be able to find for themselves information on a given book of the Old Testament, to filter and assimilate knowledge to the point that they are able to make a presentation of this book to the general public.

Teaching methods

For this introductory course to an often little-known subject, the teaching method is based on a combination of presentations by the teacher and active pedagogy:

• presentations by the teacher, illustrated by slides, and/or documents to read;
• small assignments to actively familiarize students with the subject;
• a more substantial, formative homework assignment: rather than storing up knowledge, the idea is that each student should acquire the skills to be able to present an Old Testament book in the form of a Wikipedia-style entry.

Evaluation methods

• Summaries of readings from biblical texts. [20% of final grade]
• An encyclopedic article on an Old Testament book. [80% of final grade]

Other information

It is highly recommanded to acquire a French translation of the Bible, and obligatory to read such a translation for some texts. Here are three good translations: TOB (Traduction Œcuménique de la Bible), BJ (Bible de Jérusalem) and NBS (Nouvelle Bible Segond). The ideal would be to acquire a « study version » of one of these Bibles, although this is not compulsory. In English, the JPS Study Bible is excellent.

Bibliography

Th. Römer, L’Ancien Testament, Que sais-je ?, Paris, PUF, 2019.
J.-D. Macchi, La Bible à l'épreuve des sciences humaines, Genève, Labor et Fides, 2022.

Faculty or entity

TEBI