Ancient Israelite History, Society and Religion, The Hebrew Bible, Classical Hebrew, and Biblical and Early Aramaic.
Brian regularly offers topical lectures and ancient language courses on a semester-by-semester basis to Michigan’s undergraduate student community. He was nominated in 2014 for the University of Michigan’s Gold Apple Undergraduate Teaching Award. He has also served as lead instructor and adviser for the PhD program in Hebrew Bible-Ancient Israel (HBAI). With the collaboration of faculty from his department and across the university, as well external colleagues who have served as instructors, committee members or professional referees in support of HBAI graduate students, Brian has chaired (and in one case, co-chaired) fourteen PhDs in the Department of Near Eastern Studies.
Recent and Upcoming Course Offerings
FALL 2016
NEAR EAST LANGUAGES 101: Elementary Classical Hebrew I
NEAR EAST 590: Prolegomena to the Study of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament
WINTER 2017
NEAR EAST LANGUAGES 102: Elementary Classical Hebrew II
NEAR EAST 339: Israel Before the Exile (587 BCE): Its History and Religion
SPRING 2017
NEAR EAST 235: Introduction to the Tanakh / Old Testament
This course is designed to introduce the student to the modern study of the Tanakh or Old Testament (also referred to as the Hebrew Bible) within the context of a contemporary, public university liberal arts curriculum. This collection of texts will be studied both as a cultural vestige of the ancient Near East and as a foundational document of western civilization. Lectures and readings focus on the development of ancient Israel’s literature, religion and history as well as on the roles of those central to the formation and maintenance of early Israelite traditions of which the Bible only represents a part; the priests, kings, prophets, and sages.
The focus of 235 is primarily literary, but historical and critical approaches using methods that are recognized and practiced by scholars of various modern religious and ideological persuasions are also assessed. The course thus presents the student with the opportunity to give serious attention to current issues in the scholarly study of the Bible and to think about a series of questions and issues that are often ignored, neglected or dismissed in spite of the widespread use of the Bible today. [There are no prerequisites for this course].
