Religion 262 Syllabus
The Life and Teachings of Jesus |
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Micheal W. Palmer Office: Joyner 210 Office Hours: Monday 3:00pm‹4:00; Tuesday and Thursday 2:00pm‹3:00 Home phone: 933-0259 (Chapel Hill) email: [will be announced in class] web resources: http://greek-language.com/jesus |
Printing this Syllabus If you use a color printer, make sure your color ink cartridge is not empty. Some parts of the text should print in red, others in blue. These are links to related resources. If your color cartridge is emply, these links may fail to print. |
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Feel free to contact me by telephone at any time before 10:00pm Monday through Saturday.
My home phone may be a long-distance call for you. Still, it is the surest way to contact me
in a hurry outside of office hours. Since I am not on campus every day, leaving a voicemail message at my office may mean a delay
of more than 24 hours before I can return your call. I check my email every night at about 10:00pm. |
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| Table of Contents |
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| Nature of the Course Goals Content GoalsTextbooks Course Requirements AttendanceGrading Potential Points PossibleStatement of Honor |
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| I. Nature of the Course |
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This course examines the person and ministry of Jesus of Nazareth.
Our main sources of information about Jesus are the four canonical gospels. Attention will be
given to critical questions related to these documents and to background issues which should
inform a competent reading of them. We will examine the gospels from historical, literary, and theological perspectives noting their relationship to one another and to other early christian writings. Many of you may have examined them from a theological perspective before, but may not have examined them as historical and literary productions. For this reason you may find some of the claims made in the textbooks, or questions asked in class to be strange, or even offensive. You should keep in mind that you are not required to agree with anything you read or hear as a part of this class. You are required to become familiar with the arguments of a wide range of modern scholars so that you may engage in fruitful dialogue with their proposals. We will discuss several modern reconstructions of the "life of Jesus" and will explore ways to evaluate them both in terms of their historical accuracy and in terms of their potential implications for a life of faith. |
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| II. Goals |
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I have two types of goals for this class. I have goals concerning the information you will
learn and the skills you will gain or sharpen (content goals) as well as goals concerning the way in
which you will learn that information and sharpen those skills (process goals). |
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I hope that by the end of this term you will be able to
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| Our activities in class will often consist
of discussions rather than lectures. This format requires that you read the assignments carefully in
order to participate meaningfully in the class. In addition to covering the relevant material, I hope we will be able to talk about the issues that the readings raise for you personally, for others you know, and for our culture(s). In order for us to do so meaningfully, we must maintain an atmosphere of mutual respect not only between teacher and students, but between you and your classmates. This respect should also cover our comments about the authors of the textbooks and any visitors to our class. While you may disagree strongly with some of their perspectives, it is important for you to treat them as respected scholars. I will expect you and your classmates to refrain from making comments which could offend or intimidate anyone else in the class. I want everyone to feel free to express opinions which seem relevant to the class material even if those opinions may be viewed as unpopular. I will take the initiative to stop comments which I feel to be designed to silence a classmate or belittle her views. At the same time, if our discussions are to be productive, they must go beyond simply stating our opinions (as though all opinions have the same value). We must be able to support our views with appropriate arguments. For this reason I may sometimes challenge a view which is being expressed and ask that the proponent of that view offer some support for her reasoning. I will attempt at all times to maintain an atmosphere of openness where your views may be expressed without fear of reprisal or peer pressure and where you are encouraged to express those views intelligently with appropriate support. |
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| III. Textbooks |
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| You will need three books for this class. Readings from these books are listed in the
Tentative course schedule distributed on the same day as this syllabus. These readings must be
completed before the day for which they are scheduled. |
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Aland, Kurt, ed. Synopsis of the Four Gospels. United Bible Societies, 1982. |
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Stanton, Graham. The Gospels and Jesus. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989. |
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The New Testament in the New Revised Standard Version. |
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| Both the New Oxford Annotated Bible and the Harper Collins Study Bible
are available with the NRSV text. While it is not necessary for you to buy
one of these study bibles, they are both well researched and provide reliable
information on the history and literature of the Gospels. |
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| IV. Course Requirements | ||||||||||||||||||||
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Your presence is both required and desired for every meeting of this class. The nature of
the course includes discussions of issues which can sometimes be sensitive and need to be
processed in a group setting. Copying someone else's notes will not make up for this experience. Excessive absences or tardiness may result in the lowering of your final grade. Please be on time to class. It is disruptive (and, therefore, inconsiderate to the other students) for some people to arrive late. |
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The assigned readings for this course are listed in the tentative course schedule
distributed with this syllabus. You are expected to complete all reading assignments before the day
for which they are assigned. The lectures, discussions, and exams will assume that you have done
so. |
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| Each student will write a ten-to-fifteen-page paper that will serve as one chapter in a
small book produced by that student's "reading group". The reading groups will consist of four to
five students each and will each produce a fifty-to-seventy-five page 'book.' Details for this project
are included in the document "Semester Project Guide." Your chapter in the reading group's book will have a potential value of 100 points. The parts of the book produced jointly by the entire group will have a potential value of 50 points for each participant in the group. Each member of a reading group, then, may earn up to 150 points for her participation in the semester project. |
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| On the days indicated in the tentative course schedule you will turn in a set of five
potential exam questions developed from your reading of the book by Graham Stanton. Questions that are irrelevant to the reading materials will not be accepted. All five of your exam questions should be turned in on a single sheet of paper with your name in the upper right-hand corner. The questions should be numbered from one to five, and each one must include the following: the page number(s) in Stanton's book where the answer may be foundEach question is worth 1 point toward your final grade, but no more than 75 points may be earned on Chapter Assignments for the semester. If you were to turn in every question for each chapter, you would turn in a total of 85 questions, but you would receive only 75 points. That means that you may miss up to 10 questions over the course of the semester without hurting your grade. This assignment serves three purposes. First, it allows you to suggest questions for the next exam. I will take your suggestions seriously. Second, it allows you to show me what you find to be the most important information in each chapter of the readings. Third, it is one way for me to see that you are understanding the readings. Your potential test questions will not be returned to you, so if you want to keep them, please make a copy before you give them to me. |
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| You will take four exams in this class. The dates are listed in the Tentative course
schedule. Two of the exams are mini-exams worth only 50 points each. For each of these mini exams you will have thirty (30) minutes of class time to complete the exam. The other two exams will take an entire class period and will have a value of 100 points each. Each exam will include a combination of objective (multiple choice, matching) questions and some written work (short answer questions and perhaps an essay). Before each exam I will give specific information about the content and form of the exam. For all written work I will grade for both content and form. That is, in addition to looking for the relevant information, I will expect your answers to be written coherently using standard English grammar and a clear development of the assigned theme. |
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V. Grading |
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| You have the possibility of earning up to 525 points this semester through four exams and
one class project. No kind of extra credit assignments will be given. The point value for each
activity is stated below. |
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| VI. Statement of Honor
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| Every student in this class is expected to affirm and abide by the Meredith College Statement of Honor printed below. | ||||||||||||||||||||
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