The Bible: A Biography, Karen Armstrong, c. 2007 -- Overview

I remember taking "Religion 101" in my freshman year at Augustana College, Sioux Falls, SD, autumn of 1969. It was a blur. The instructor was mediocre at best. He jumped into his subject without providing any background, any scaffolding.

I am convinced that in almost any subject, the professor needs to provide an overview of the course, putting it into context, breaking it down into one page or two pages at most in outline format in which one sees how the subject at hand fits into the whole.

I can't think of a better way to introduce western religion (Judaeo-Christian) to a college freshman class than by having students read Armstrong's biography of the Bible. Most students know by the spring of their high school senior year where they will be attending college. If "Religion 101" is a requirement, the department should send a one- to two-page outline of the biography as well as the recommendation that prospective students read the book during the summer prior to coming to college.

It's a very small book and I easily could have carried it with me during the entire summer, no matter what I was doing. 

Chapters

• Introduction
• Chapter 1: Torah
• Chapter 2: Scripture
• Chapter 3: Gospel
• Chapter 4: Midrash
• Chapter 5: Charity
• Chapter 6: Lectio Divina
• Chapter 7: Sola Scriptura
• Chapter 8: Modernity
• Epilogue

Chapter 1: Torah

• center of faith: the temple 
• JEDP
• Deuteronomists

Chapter 2: Scripture

• Judahites establish their second temple on Mount Zion 
• Yahweh vs Wisdom
• Philo, exegesis of
• moving from temple to the scripture; the temple could be anywhere; no longer a physical place

Chapter 3: Gospel

• early Christians under the Romans; almost wiped out

Chapter 4: Midrash

• the Pharisees were making a revival; made the Christians very, very uncomfortable
• the Yavneh period
• the rise of the rabbis

Chapter 5: Charity

• conversion of Augustine in 312 AD probably "saved" Christianity
• the rise of the New Testament; new interpretations 

Chapter 6: Lectio Divina

• Augustine dies, 430 AD; Vandals take Hippo; Rome collapses
• Europe a pagan wilderness
• 5th to 9th centuries: Christianity confined to monasteries
• the crusades; first one, 1095 - 1099
• resurgence of Christianity during 11th - 15th century
• Jewish history during this time

Chapter 7: Sola Scriptura (see Sola Scriptura)

• "By the sixteenth century, a complex process was under way in Europe that would irrevocably change the way Western people experienced the world."
• Renaissance; exploration; 
• Dutch humanist Desiderius Erasmus (1466 - 1536)
• invention of the printing press
• Martin Luther, 1483 - 1546 -- educated in the scholastic philosophy of William of Ockham (1287 - 1347)
• various Christian sects; Calvinism, etc
• parallel history of the Jews at this time

Chapter 8: Modernity

• "By the late seventeenth century, Europeans had entered the age of reason. Instead of relying on sacred tradition, scientists, scholars and philosophers were becoming future-oriented, ready to jettison the past and start again. Truth, they were beginning to discover, was never absolute, since new discoveries habitually undermined old certainties."
• Francis Bacon, 1561 - 1626, counselor to King James I of England
• long list of humanists: 
• Rene Descartes, 1596 - 1650
• Isaac Newton, 1642 - 1727
• John Locke, 1632 - 1704 -- one of the founders of the Enlightenment
• Immanuel Kant, 1724 - 1804
• David Hume, 1711 - 1776
• Denis Diderot, 1713 - 1784
• Paul Heinrich, Baron of Holbach, 1723 - 1789
• transcendence: last word on page 185
• Baruch Spinoza, 1632 - 1677
• up through Charles Darwin and beyond