Text, Canon, Tradition: Scriptures and Their Emergence in World Religions

Text, Canon, Tradition: Scriptures and Their Emergence in World Religions is a Humanities, Arts and Cultural Studies class taught by Alan Hodder.

Course Description
This course is designed to introduce students to several religious traditions of the world through a selective study of their chief canonical texts. In part our concern will be with fundamental thematic issues: what do these records seek to reveal about the nature of life and death, sin and suffering, the transcendent and the mundane, morality and liberation? In addition, we will address wider questions of meaning, authority, and context. Why do human communities privilege particular expressions as "sacred" or "classic"? How do these traditions understand the origin, nature, and inspiration of these writings? Were these "texts" meant to be written down and seen, or recited and heard? How are scriptural canons formed and by whom interpreted? To help us grapple with these questions we will examine some traditional and scholarly commentaries, but our principal reading in this course will be drawn from the Veda, Bhagavad Gita, Buddhacarita, Lotus Sutra, Confucian Analects, Chuang Tzu, Torah, New Testament, and Qur'an.

Learning Goals

 * Multi-Cultural
 * Project-based
 * Reading
 * Writing