Courses:

There will be three 5-page interpretive essays on suggested topics. I stress interpretive because, for reasons that I am sure you can understand, I cannot comment on personal statements of faith, much as I may respect their honesty. Please talk with me if you feel you will be unable to write about biblical texts from an interpretive or critical point of view.

I will mark late papers down a half grade each day (not class) that they are late, and I will accept no paper more than a week late.

Attendance at all classes (more than 3 unexcused absences will affect your grade). Lateness is a problem; sleeping in class is a major problem. Come to class—with your copy of the Bible—having read the assigned material closely, carefully, and ready to talk.

I will be using the following New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, with Apocrypha:

Metzger, Bruce M., and Roland E. Murphy, eds. The New Oxford Annotated Bible with Apocrypha: An Ecumenical Study Bible. Revised ed. New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1991. ISBN: 9780195283563.

If you already have a different edition or translation, it's probably fine; check with me just to be sure. Page references are obviously not an issue. You will regret the lack, however, of the explanatory notes and appended supplementary material in the Oxford edition. For those of you interested in secondary sources, please see a list of particularly illuminating works featured in study materials.

Although I just provided you with some excellent secondary sources, you do not have to consult any of outside works for your essays. If you choose to do so, you must, of course, cite them in your essay. Refer to the MLA Handbook for proper format. For your convenience, I am including the department's statement on plagiarism. Read it and take it to heart:

Plagiarism - use of another's intellectual work without acknowledgement - is a serious offense. It is the policy of the Literature Faculty that students who plagiarize will receive an F in the subject, and that the instructor will forward the case to the Committee on Discipline. Full acknowledgement for all information obtained from sources outside the classroom must be clearly stated in all written work submitted. All ideas, arguments, and direct phrasings taken from someone else's work must be identified and properly footnoted. Quotations from other sources must be clearly marked as distinct from the student's own work. For further guidance on the proper forms of attribution consult the style guides available at the MIT Online Writing and Communication Center and MIT Academic Integrity: Avoiding Plagiarism.

For any use or distribution of these materials, please cite as follows:

Ina Lipkowitz, course materials for 21L.458 The Bible, Spring 2007. MIT OpenCourseWare (http://ocw.mit.edu/), Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Downloaded on [DD Month YYYY].