A thousand years in the editing, the Hebrew Bible is an anthology of literary genres, an historical digest, an ethical law collection, and a record of one people's experience of their deity. In this course, students read the myths of Genesis, the narratives of slavery and liberation, the Joseph novella, the short stories of Ruth and Esther, selections from the prophets, and from the political epic of Kings.The Bible's methods of characterization, elliptical storytelling techniques, and poetic parallelism are explored.The literary emphasis of the course is grounded by discussions of ancient near eastern history, archaeology, and anthropology. Biblical conceptions of monotheism, prophecy, mortality, human failure and redemption, creation, and humankind's interaction with "mother" earth are discussed, along with modern "problems" with the Bible, such as the flattened fairytale quality of its early stories, and the anti-literary tendencies of fundamentalism.