Università Roma Tre

The texts of the Hebrew Bible want to trace a path in the memory of a people and the world they inhabit: recent research indicates the creation of this "story" as a point of arrival and not a starting point of the ancient Jewish literary tradition; different literary genres and different currents of thought have contributed to this creative process. In the course we will start from the relationship between biblical narrative and the history of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah (as can be reconstructed from sources and archeology) to touch on other essential questions in the study of scriptures: the canonical text in the light of parallel traditions, the myth in the Bible and what functions it performs, the comparison with the historiographical traditions of Mediterranean civilizations, both oriental and classical.