Almost Famous: Books that Didn’t Make the Biblical Cut
Aaron Kachuck
Description
Gaining admission to the Bible was a hard-fought, tooth-and-nail process in antiquity, and many fine, upstanding, and spirited candidates were unfortunately forced to take their business elsewhere. This course will laugh and cry with books that didn’t get the Jewish canonical stamp of approval. We will be looking in particular at Judith, Susanna, Bel and the Dragon, III Maccabees, and Tobit. Discussion ranging from the transcendentally existential to the humorously mundane will focus on the texts themselves and on a range of issues they bring up, particularly the process of canonization, and the nature of heroism, especially female heroism.
Aaron Kachuck studies Classics as the Mellon Fellow at Clare College, Cambridge, where he meditates on bards in ancient epic, funny Jews in Roman satire, speaking divinatory oak trees in northern Greece, and the crazy contradictions of the Dionysiac cult.
Notes
Categories
- Arts and Literature
- Intermediate Text
- Morning Course