Anderson Email: [email protected] Office: Wells 222A Office Hours: Monday and Wednesday 11:15-12:45
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Myth and Religion in the Ancient Near East INTD 105-11 Spring 2017 SUNY College at Geneseo Mon., Wed. – 10:00-11:15 AM Integrated Science Center 325 Instructor: Christopher D. Anderson Email: [email protected] Office: Wells 222A Office Hours: Monday and Wednesday 11:15-12:45. Other times may also be arranged on those days. In either case, it is best to inform me ahead of time that you would like to meet. Course Description: The ancient Near East was the birthplace of writing and home to the first literate urban civilization. The invention of writing made history possible by allowing humans to record their thoughts, stories, and everyday activities. This course will explore a number of mythic and other texts from several cultures of the ancient Near Eastern world, most prominently Mesopotamia and Canaan (present-day Iraq, Syria, Palestine, and Israel, ca. 3200 BCE to 323 BCE). The literature of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament will also be discussed within this context, but will be treated the same as any of the other texts. The texts covered will treat such themes as creation and order, the flood, death and the afterlife, ritual and magic, prophecy and divination, kingship, and the relation between human and divine. In addition to reading primary source material, we will read modern secondary literature that discusses various approaches to these texts. Of course, we will always want to ask how these texts illuminate the cultures from which they come, but we will also ask what they say about human creativity and experience more broadly. The goal of this course is also to develop critical reading and writing skills such as forming opinions, formulating arguments in support of those opinions, and expressing them in written academic form. Student Learning Outcomes: All sections of INTD 105 Writing Seminar share these learning outcomes. Students who have taken INTD 105 will demonstrate: 1) The ability to read significant texts carefully and critically, recognizing and responding to argumentative positions. 2) The ability to write sustained, coherent, and persuasive arguments on significant issues that arise from the texts. 3) The ability to write clearly, following the conventions of Standard English. 4) The ability to develop research skills, including the ability to search databases, evaluate published materials, and incorporate information from secondary source materials into a research paper. 5) The oral ability to present ideas to the class and discuss the complexity of the texts. 1 Course Reading: 1) Books to Acquire: Foster, Benjamin R. From Distant Days: Myths, Tales, and Poetry of Ancient Mesopotamia. Bethesda: CDL, 1995. George, Andrew. The Epic of Gilgamesh: The Babylonian Epic Poem and Other Texts in Akkadian and Sumerian. Revised Edition. New York: Penguin Books, 2003. (It is important to obtain the most recent edition of the Gilgamesh Epic by Andrew George, as new manuscripts have been discovered that have enhanced our knowledge of the text.) Coogan, Michael D. and Mark S. Smith. Stories from Ancient Canaan. Second Edition. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2012. (Please be sure to purchase the second edition) Graff, Gerald and Cathy Birkenstein. They Say/I Say: Moves that Matter in Academic Writing. Third Edition. New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 2014. 2) Recommended: Strunk, William and E.B. White. The Elements of Style. Fourth Edition. Boston: Pearson Education, 2000. (A timeless, inexpensive book. Especially useful is section IV: “words and expressions commonly misused.”) 3) Other required readings will be posted on myCourses. 4) Some Books in the Library Related to the Subject Matter of this Course: Coogan, Michael D. ed. The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha. Fourth Edition. Oxford University Press, 2010. Meeks, Wayne A., ed. The Harper Collins Study Bible. New Revised Standard Version with the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books. New York: Harper Collins, 1993. Jacobsen, Thorkild. The Harps that Once…Sumerian Poetry in Translation. New Haven: Yale University, 1987. Foster, Benjamin R. Before the Muses: An Anthology of Akkadian Literature. Third Edition. Bethesda: CDL, 2005. Leick, Gwendolyn. Who’s Who in the Ancient Near East. New York: Routledge, 1999. Leick, Gwendolyn, ed. The Babylonian World. New York: Routledge, 2009. van der Toorn, Karel, Bob Becking, and Pieter W. van der Horst, eds. Dictionary of Deities and Demons in the Bible. Second Extensively Revised Edition. Leiden: Brill, 1999. Black, Jeremy and Anthony Green. Gods, Demons, and Symbols of Ancient Mesopotamia. An Illustrated Dictionary. London: British Museum, 1992. Freedman, David Noel, ed. The Anchor Bible Dictionary. Six Volumes. New York: Doubleday, 1992. Sasson, Jack M., ed. Civilizations of the Ancient Near East. Two Volumes. Peabody: Hendrickson, 2000. Bienkowski, Piotr and A. R. Millard. Dictionary of the Ancient Near East. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 2000. Metzger, Bruce and Michael D. Coogan, eds. The Oxford Companion to the Bible. Oxford: University, 1993. 2 Johnston, Sarah Iles ed., Religions of the Ancient World: A Guide. Cambridge: Belknap, 2003. Jacobsen, Thorkild. The Treasures of Darkness: A History of Mesopotamian Religion. New Haven: Yale University, 1976. Oppenheim, A. Leo. Ancient Mesopotamia: Portrait of a Dead Civilization. Revised Edition Completed by Erica Reiner. Chicago: The University of Chicago, 1977. Bottéro, Jean. Mesopotamia: Writing, Reasoning, and the Gods. Translated by Zainab Bahrani and Marc van de Mieroop. Chicago: The University of Chicago, 1992. Smith, Mark S. The Early History of God: Yahweh and the Other Deities in Ancient Israel. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1990. Smith, Mark S. Poetic Heroes: Literary Commemorations of Warriors and Warrior Culture in the Early Biblical World. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2014. Tigay, Jeffrey H. The Evolution of the Gilgamesh Epic. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1982. Finkel, Irving L. The Ark Before Noah: Decoding the Story of the Flood. London: Hodder and Stoughton, 2014. Roaf, Michael. Cultural Atlas of Mesopotamia and the Ancient Near East. New York: Facts on File, 1990. Course Requirements: 1) Class Participation. This includes attendance, general preparedness, class discussion, and group work. You may be called on to answer questions about the assigned reading for that day. (15%) 2) Attending the Plagiarism Workshop (This is part of your class participation grade). (0%) 3) In Class Study Questions. Ten times this semester you will be given a question at the beginning of class on the reading for that day. These will be unannounced, but you may use your class readings and notes. With the materials that you used to prepare for class that day, you will then write about that question for ca. 10 minutes. We will then discuss that question at some point during the class. At the end of class you will turn in what you have written. Each question will be worth two percent. I suggest purchasing a Blue Book to keep these organized and all in the same place. (20%) 4) Reverse Outline and Summary of one Article (1-1.5 pages double-spaced). (10%) 5) Evaluative Article Review (1-1.5 pages double-spaced). (10%) 6) Annotated Bibliography. (10%) 7) Introduction to the Final Paper (ca. 3/4 of a page double-spaced. This, then, will be revised for the final paper). (10%) 8) Final Paper (This will be ca. 6-8 pages in length, utilizing at least 5 modern treatments/secondary sources. Specific guidelines and suggestions for paper topics will be disseminated.). (25%) N.B.: The primary goal of this course is for you to develop the ability to write a college level research paper. If you fail to demonstrate this ability with your final paper, you will not pass the course. General Comments: 1) Additional readings are indicated for some classes. These consist of primary sources, journal articles, and other modern treatments of primary texts, which will be posted in pdf form on myCourses. 3 2) All readings are to be completed before class meets on that date. Likewise, writing and other assignments are also indicated and are to be completed before class meets on that date. Always bring the assigned reading to class in paper or electronic form. 3) Some of the primary texts we will be reading begin in medias res and/or contain unfamiliar and confusing notions and references. Please read the introductions to the primary sources carefully in order to orient yourself. 4) The recommended minimum standard is 2-3 hours a week of out-of-class work time for each semester hour of classes on one’s schedule. Since this is a 3-credit course, you should plan to spend 6-9 hours per week reading, re-reading, note-taking, researching, and writing. 5) There are rules to email etiquette. See: https://medium.com/@lportwoodstacer/how-to- email-your-professor-without-being-annoying-af-cf64ae0e4087. It is a genre with rules that you need to learn for college and for the professional world outside of college. Some professors are friendlier than others, and the more familiar you are with a professor, the less formal they may be in email exchanges; however, let the level of formality be set by them and do not be less formal than they are. Remember also that there are two steps that you should take before asking a professor a question: 1) look in the syllabus and 2) ask a friend in the class. 6) Please turn your mobile phones on vibrate during class, and do not use them for any purpose except in the case of emergency. I will leave my phone on for security reasons. 7) Laptop or tablet use in class is limited to note-taking and consultation of primary sources. Please use your electronic devices effectively and courteously. Use for other purposes will result in suspension of the right to use a computer in class for the remainder of the semester.