Moral Provocations: Job, Abraham, Moses

4 credits · Undergraduate

How do we know what the “moral” of a story is? We will focus on three biblical narratives that have frequently been interpreted as teaching moral lessons: the story of Job, the story of Abraham and the binding of Isaac, and the story of Moses giving the law. These stories have been interpreted variously in moral terms--e.g. as demonstrating the virtues of faith, obedience, mercy, and forgiveness, and as teaching us about guilt, punishment, reward, and human frailty. They have also been analyzed as existential parables, psychological dramas, and political allegories. The goal of this class is to examine how a range of different, and often provocative, interpretations of these stories’ moral lessons rest on particular ways of reading.