BACK TO SCHOOL

Just a shot of a course I'm following on the Old Testament - one of many in the Open Yale Courses as Yale's contribution to a growing resource of on-line courses. This particular one consists of 12 lectures about 45 minutes each and given by Professor Christine Hayes who is very clear and lucid. She is speaking to a real class (students' heads appear sometimes) but it's very much at an introductory level. The programs are recorded so can be watched at any time and they're more or less complete in themselves although the students themselves have extra reading and tasks with an examination. I'm at the end of lecture 7 and I contented myself with downloading just some brief background hand-outs and also bought a copy of the Jewish Study Bible which Prof Hayes insisted that all the class buy. It's an English language edition of the Tanakh which she says is an acronym of T for Torah (teaching), N for Neviim (prophets) and KH (writings). She took pains at the start to say this is secular, not religious, course and I notice that some of the instructions for examination essays stress that the answers must be based on the text and not on any religious ideas picked up in church. Or, I suppose, from the teachings of Richard Dawkins and his ilk for all that matter. I'm pretty much an apostate myself but have found the course quite stimulating. There's a link here and from the target you can find lots of other topics. Something for everyone.