For course related materials please visit www.nyu.edu/academics/open-education/coursesnew/cultures-contexts-ancient-israel.html

1. Introduction to Ancient Israel
2. Where to Begin: Israel in the Bible and Without it
3. Israel's Roots
4. Another World Out There
5. What to do with Genesis
6. God and Us
7. What to do with the Bible
8. Israel Arrives
9. The Good Life: No Sovereign in Site
10. Women and Power
11. And then there were Kings
12. Love and Marriage
13. Archaeology's 10th Century Solution
14. Israel and Judah: The Period of Two Kingdoms
15. The House of David
16. How the Other Side Lives (or, Israel in the East)
17. What if God was Married
18. Judah Alone
19. Yellow Journalism and Purple Prose: Writing Like a Prophet
20. Judah the Ideal and the End of Judah
21. Empires, in the Biblical Context
22. Judah's Bible
23. A World with One Power: The Impact of Empire
24. Away from Home: Jewish Refugees and Resettlement
25. When You Talk About Sex
26. We Need a Bible, Don't We? The Work of the Early Jewish Community
27. Ancient Hebrew Psychology

You may think you know ancient Israel quite well, or you may be sure you know nothing. In either case, this course is designed to make the acquaintance from scratch. My ancient Israel is strange, sometimes shocking, diverse, and mostly hidden. It can be approached from archaeology and non-biblical writing as well as from the Bible as its most famous artifact. I am a biblical scholar and student of ancient literature, so this class will lean toward what is written, embracing the Bible as a source. In a broadly chronological framework, we will ask what I hope to be unfamiliar questions, trying to get you to see things you had not considered before. The course assumes no prior knowledge, and all knowledge is built from the ground up based on “primary evidence,” the actual material from the ancient world – including the Bible. Every full-class meeting will involve conversation in response to some piece of primary evidence, with expectation that students have as much right as any scholar to figure out who these people are for themselves.