Università Roma Tre

From Gilgamesh to Qumran: Introduction to Hebrew Scriptures in Context

According to Church's Fathers the Bible can be read with the help of the Bible: it is like a house full of closed doors (i.e. difficult passages or words), each door with the key of another room hanging on one side. Modern critics learned that the keys for the comprehension of a biblical book or passage can be found, in a manner of speaking, also in other houses (the literatures of the eastern civilizations) or in the basement of the house (all those works that did not find place in the canon of the Scriptures). The course will illustrate the story and problems of the Scripture in the larger context of religious and wisdom text of Ancient Near East and the Apocripha and Pseudoepigrapha, transmitted by Christian tradition or found by archeology in the XX century, like the letters from Elephantine or the scrolls from Qumran.

The course offers the opportunity to learn Biblical Hebrew (1/3 out of the teaching hours): to complete the study of Hebrew grammar students are recommended to attend the course also in the second semester (Ebraico LM). Students not attending Hebrew lessons will study an additional part of program.

The course will begin on october 2 at 10:00 am: during this lesson students and teacher will discuss course's schedule to meet students' needs.

For students attending course:

G. Deiana – A. Spreafico, Guida allo studio dell'ebraico biblico, Roma 1997 (e ristampe).
Notes and texts suggested/distributed during course sessions.
Students attending the course "From Gilgamesh to Qumran" without attending Hebrew grammar lessons must contact Prof. Moro for more texts.

For students not attending course:

Please contact Prof. Moro (caterina.moro@uniroma3.it).