The virtual course "The prehistory, purpose and political future of the Bible - Virtual Course - Coursera", is a course with different contents and offers video classes from . Explore its essential features, and click the orange button for detailed information on the Coursera e-Learning platform.
With its walls razed to the ground by the armies of Babylon, Jerusalem joined a long line of vanquished ancient cities, from Ur and Nineveh and Persepolis to Babylon itself. While some recovered from the destruction, others did not. But none responded to the political catastrophe by creating the kind of elaborate and enduring monument to their own downfall that we find in the Bible. Most of the conquered populations viewed their subjugation as a source of shame. They consigned it to oblivion, choosing instead to exalt the golden ages of the past. Biblical authors, by contrast, reacted to loss by composing lengthy writings that acknowledge collective failure, reflect deeply on its causes, and thus discover a basis for collective hope. Working through colorful biblical and ancient Near Eastern texts, and drawing on a series of comparative examples, the course illustrates the painstaking way in which biblical authors responded to defeat by advancing a demotic agenda that places the community in the middle. The goal of the biblical authors was to create a nation, and they sought to realize this goal through a shared text, including stories and songs, wisdom and laws. This corpus of writings belongs, without a doubt, to the greatest achievements of humanity. While the great civilizations of the Near East invested their energies and resources in stone monuments that could be destroyed by invading armies, the biblical authors left behind a literary legacy that has been intensively studied to this day. More importantly, these authors' visionary response to defeat unearthed a radical new wisdom: the notion that a people is greater than the state that rules it,
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