Sacred Texts And Religious Traditions

This course offers an introduction to the study of religion through the sacred texts, concepts, and practices of four religious traditions: Hinduism, Buddhism, Judaism, and Christianity. The major goals of the course are: 1) to explore the distinctive features of several sacred texts of each religious tradition; 2) to develop skills in the critical analysis of sacred texts and religious traditions; 3) to achieve a fuller understanding of the relation of sacred texts to the ideas, symbols, practices, and lived experience of religious communities; 4) to gain an understanding of how religious movements develop and change and how religious texts, symbols, and rituals help constitute communities and cultures.This course, like others in the Religion Department, is designed to help students develop a coherent set of academic skills in the study of religion, as well as an interdisciplinary approach to work in the Humanities and Social Sciences, with a special emphasis on literary, historical, and anthropological methods of study