Biblical and Classical Literature

Course Description 8G:2 Biblical and Classical Literature 3 s.h.

Western literature and culture has been, for millennia, enormously influenced by myths, stories, poems, and drama of the biblical and classical ages.  This course will examine some of the ancient texts of Jewish, early Christian, Greek, and Roman civilizations.  We will discover common themes like the concept of fate, and the interactions between the human and divine worlds.  Our studies will also be enhanced by considering modern reworkings of these foundational stories in both textual and visual formats.  While we will always be thinking critically about biblical and classical texts, we will also discuss their immense cultural and historical value. 

Specific Course Description and texts used in recent versions of this course

Texts that have been used in recent years for this course.  (This is a comprehensive list.  During any particular semester, only a few of these texts or similar ones will be used for a specific section of 8G:2)

I. The Bible

• Oxford Study Bible: Revised English Bible with Apocrypha (Oxford Univ. Press) (An ecumenical British translation into smooth modern idiom with some attempt towards gender-neutral language.)
• Holy Bible: King James Version (NAL) (A monument of English style, but the text has been rendered obsolete by modern scholarship and the early modern English may be difficult for many students.)
• Holy Bible: Revised Standard Version (NAL) (An updated version of the King James version, probably the closest translation to the idiom of the original.)

Additional Biblical Texts:

• Genesis, tr. Robert Alter (Norton) (A masterly new translation with one of the most extensive editorial apparatus ever; peppered with footnotes connecting biblical passages to their historical and mythological antecedents.)
• Genesis, tr. Stephen Mitchell (Harper Collins) (Mitchell's recent translation demonstrates a sensitivity to the original Hebrew language, and the history of biblical scholarship is evident. But it is his overwhelming concern with contemporary relevance that marks this translation.)
• New Testament, tr. Lattimore (N Point Press) (Translation done from a literary, rather than a theological, perspective.)
• Song of Songs, tr. Ariel Bloch and Chana Bloch (Univ. of California Press)
• Psalms (Concordia)
• Merlin Stone, When God Was a Woman (Harcourt Brace) (An archaeologically documented story of the religion of the Goddess. Known by many names, she reigned supreme in the Near and Middle East. Stone details the wholesale rewriting of myth and religious dogmas that laid the foundation for the legend of Adam and fallen Eve.)
• The Book of J, tr. David Rosenberg, ed. Harold Bloom (Random House) (Scholars agree that the first strand in Genesis, Exodus, and Numbers was written by an author whom they call J, who lived in the tenth century before Christ. Accompanying David Rosenberg's new translation, Bloom asserts that J was a writer of the stature of Homer, Shakespeare, and Tolstoy and puts forth the revolutionary idea that J was very likely a woman.)

II. Greek Literature

Classical Myth, 3rd edition, ed. Barry Powell (Prentice Hall) (Puts the myths and legends contained in the text within their multiple contexts: anthropological, historical, religious, sociological and economic; interspersed are short essays on the later history of myths and their importance.)
Epic:

• Homer, Iliad, tr. Lattimore (Univ. of Chicago Press) (Close to the idiom of the Greek original in English hexameter verse.)
• Homer, Iliad, tr. Fitzgerald (Doubleday) (A freer translation into blank verse that reads more smoothly than Lattimore's, but somewhat anachronistic.)
• Homer, Iliad, tr. Fagles (Penguin) (A compromise between the literal and anachronistic styles.)
• Homer, Odyssey, tr. Lattimore (Harper Collins)
• Homer, Odyssey, tr. Fitzgerald (Random House)
• Homer, Odyssey, tr. Mandelbaum (Bantam)

Archaic Greek Poetry:

1. Hesiod, tr. Martin West (Oxford University Press)
2. Greek Lyric: An Anthology in Translation, tr. Andrew Miller (Hackett Publishing) (Includes Sappho and Theognis as well as a variety of other poets.)

Greek Drama:

• Greek Tragedies, Vol. 1, ed. Grene and Lattimore (Univ. of Chicago Press) (Contains Aeschylus' Agamemnon and Prometheus Bound, Sophocles' Oedipus the King and Antigone, and Euripides' Hippolytus.)
• Aeschylus One, Vol. 1, Oresteia, tr. Lattimore (Univ. of Chicago Press) (Contains Agamemnon, Libation Bearers, and Eumenides.)
• Aeschylus, Oresteia, tr. Fagles (Penguin) (Contains Agamemnon, Libation Bearers, and Eumenides.)
• Sophocles One, Vol. 1, ed. Grene and Lattimore (Univ. of Chicago Press) (Contains Oedipus the King, Oedipus at Colonus, and Antigone.)
• Sophocles, Three Theban Plays, tr. Fagles (Penguin) (Contains Antigone, Oedipus the King, and Oedipus at Colonus.)
• Euripides, Vol. 1, ed. Grene and Lattimore (Univ. of Chicago Press) (Contains Alcestis, Medea, Heracleidae, and Hippolytus.)
• Euripides, Vol. 5, ed. Grene and Lattimore (Univ. of Chicago Press) (Contains Electra, Phoenician Women, and Bacchae.)
• Euripides, Bacchae and Other Plays, tr. Vellacott (Penguin) (Contains Bacchae, Ion, Helen, and Trojan Women.)
• Aristophanes, Three Comedies, tr. Arrowsmith (Univ. of Michigan Press) (Contains Birds, Clouds, and Wasps.)
• Aristophanes, Four Comedies, tr. Arrowsmith (Univ. of Michigan Press) (Contains Lysistrata, Acharnians, Congresswomen, and Frogs.)

Greek Philosophy:

• Plato, Last Days of Socrates, tr. Tredennick (Penguin) (Contains Euthyphro, Apology, Crito, and Phaedo.)
• Plato, Symposium, tr. Gill (Penguin)
• Plato, Phaedrus and Letters VII and VIII, tr. Walter Hamilton (Penguin)

III. Roman Literature

Epic:

• Virgil, Aeneid, tr. Mandelbaum (Bantam)
• Ovid, Metamorphoses, tr. Humphries (Indiana Univ. Press)

IV. Erotic Literature, Fiction and Satire

• Apuleius, Golden Ass, tr. Lindsay (Indiana Univ. Press)
• Collected Ancient Greek Novels, ed. Reardon (Univ. of California Pr., 1989)
• Juvenal's Satires, tr. Rudd (Oxford Univ. Press)
• Ovid, Art of Love, tr. Humphries (Indiana Univ. Press)
• Petronius, Satyricon, tr. Arrowsmith (NAL)

V. Religion and Philosophy in the Roman World

• The Other Bible, ed. Barnstone (Harper Collins)
• Talmud: Selected Writings, ed. Bosker (Paulist Press)
• Augustine, Confessions (Penguin)
• Josephus, The Jewish War, tr. Williamson (Penguin)
• Seneca, Letters from a Stoic, ed. Campbell (Penguin