This list describes both courses that have been taught in the past and those currently under development. All are three credits and open to upper-level undergraduate and graduate students.
Course Topics
Bible
Christian Theology
Comparative
Education
History
Jewish Studies
BIBLE
TH 437 Jewish & Christian Interpretations of the Bible
Although Jews and Christians share many of the same scriptural texts (the Christian "Old Testament," the Jewish Tanakh), they often understand them differently. This course explores the ways that Jews and Christians have interpreted key texts, separately and together, over two millennia of learning from and disputing with each other. Students will themselves engage in interreligious learning while learning about ancient Israel's scriptures and studying methods of biblical interpretation from late antiquity to today.
TH 479 New Testament Interpretation and Christian-Jewish Relations
Most of the New Testament books were composed when the Church was a Jewish eschatological movement, grappling with its relationship to other Jewish groups, with its understanding of the authority of the Torah, and with the conditions to admit Gentiles into its ranks. This course will examine the consequences of these dynamics for the New Testament itself and for subsequent and contemporary Christian-Jewish relations. Special attention will be devoted to the efforts of many Christian churches after the Holocaust to actualize the New Testament texts in ways that do not perpetuate past invective.
CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY
The Triune One and the God of Israel
The Jewish tradition stresses the absolute uniqueness of God, while the Christian tradition conceives of God as a triune unity. This course compares and contrasts the emphases and historical developments in both communities' understandings of God. A central question is the degree to which the distinct approaches are mutually exclusive or complementary.
TH 451 Christ and the Jewish People
In the wake of the groundbreaking conciliar declaration, Nostra Aetate, the Catholic Church now authoritatively teaches that the Jewish people remain in an eternal covenant with God. This course explores the unfolding implications of this recognition for the Christian conviction that Jesus Christ is universally significant for human salvation by considering relevant New Testament texts, the development of the church's christological tradition, the rise and demise of supersessionism, and various approaches being proposed today.
COMPARATIVE
TH 474 Jews and Christians: Understanding the Other
Interreligious dialogue requires interreligious understanding. This course will build a foundation for genuine dialogue between Jews and Christians by posing fundamental theological questions in a comparative context. Students will gain an understanding of the other tradition while also deepening their understanding of their own, discussing such matters as the human experience of God, the purpose of human existence, the nature of religious community, and the ways that communities respond to challenges, both contemporary and ancient.
TH 403 Liturgy, Seasons, Festivals: Jewish & Christian
The Jewish and Christian liturgical years dance around each other, interpreting the seasons and their biblical celebrations in ways that are both overlapping and oppositional. Beginning with the common Sabbath and Paschal seasons, this course will compare Jewish and Christian understandings and celebrations of the liturgical calendar. In the course of this comparison, we will explore the development of the celebrations, the ways that they form and inform their practitioners. Because Christianity grew out of Judaism and because Jews and Christians have lived in each othersà presence, we will also explore how this interaction itself shaped these liturgies.
EDUCATION
TH 475 Educating Toward the Other in Jewish and Christian Perspectives
This course seeks to explore the unique issues that arise when Christians and Jews, in the process of educating in the particularities of their own religious traditions, also convey attitudes toward the "other" who is outside their immediate community of faith. This is an especially crucial question for Christians who inevitably teach about Judaism when engaged in Christian religious education, in worship, and in doctrinal formation. Jewish approaches to difference will be considered in various contexts - psychological and intellectual, religious and cultural. Historical and spiritual, philosophical and existential directions encountered in our course of study will be engaged in relation to their possible pastoral and ritual, educational and ethico-political implications.
HISTORY
TH 485 From Diatribe to Dialogue: Studies in the Jewish-Christian Encounter
Christians and Jews, living together, have never ignored one another. Only in our times have these encounters begun to include positive affirmations of the other. To provide the student with a background for the contemporary situation, this course will explore various theological facets of this encounter, from the diatribes of earliest Christianity through the medieval disputations, concluding with the contemporary dialogue. Readings will be drawn from Jewish and Christian primary sources in translation.
TH 482 Hitler, the Churches and the Holocaust
This course will examine the anti-Semitism and nationalism that weakened the churches' response to Hitler's policies. It will also analyze the theological and institutional resistance that emerged in response to totalitarianism and to the Holocaust as well as consider the post-Holocaust paradigm shift in theology.
TH 572 Early Jewish-Christian Interactions
During the first four centuries CE/AD the churches of followers of Jesus and the Jewish communities within which they had come into being gradually separated themselves from one another. Study and discussion of a series of important texts and critical historical interactions and conflicts will illuminate the complex relations between Jews and Christians in late antiquity and in the present.
JEWISH STUDIES
TH 371, SL 331 Turning Points in Jewish History
Jewish history stretches from creation to today. This course will focus on the major turning points which shape today's Jewish world, focusing on major intellectual and theological trends, figures, and events from the development of rabbinic Judaism to the twentieth century. Through this, students will come to have a basic understanding of the outlines of Jewish religious and intellectual history, of the nature of the Jewish experience as a minority culture in the Christian and Muslim worlds, and of the shapes of contemporary Judaism.
TH 449 Jewish Liturgy: Its History and Theology
Embedded in rabbinic prayer is a concise statement of Jewish theology. After an examination of the precursors of rabbinic prayer and of the development of the synagogue as an institution, this course will examine the structures and ideas of the prayers themselves as they have been received from the medieval world. This will create a context for a deeper discussion of some key Jeiwsh theological concepts as well as a comparison of Jewish and Christian liturgical traditions.
TH 471 Judaism: Practice and Belief
Although Jews and Christians share a common heritage and have lived in close proximity for 2000 years, they have developed distinct ways of understanding and celebrating the world and its relationship to God. This course introduces defining aspects of Judaism's unique religious culture, exploring basic concepts of Jewish theology and practice and the modes of discourse with which Jewish texts discuss them. No prior knowledge of Judaism is required.
TH 487 Passover in Midrash and Talmud
Fundamental to any understanding of Judaism is an ability to enter into its formative literature, Midrash and Talmud, the primary texts of Jewish learning. Focusing on texts (in translation) relevant to the celebration of Passover, this course will introduce students to the rabbinic approaches to Scripture and their means of making it relevant in their (and our) world. This understanding will be heightened by comparisons to early Christian discourse on the same themes.
