HIS 101 WEEK 3: JUDAISM
Reading Assignment for the week:
- Read the appropriate chapter in the
textbook (chapter 2 in the 7th or 6th ed. of Perry).
- Read the Genesis
excerpt (You may wish to participate in an Online Discussion of this reading.).
-
Listen to some further information about Judaism
as a Realaudio file
or as a wav file. You can also read the information as
a txt file.
Questions to
Consider while studying this week's material:
- What is ethical behavior?
- How did the prophets shape
the new religion?
Key Terms to study
while reading the textbook:
- Prophet
- Israel
- Ethical monotheism
Suggested Websites for further study:
- Crosswalk.com. This
is a useful website that allows you to search different versions of the Bible. Extra tools,
such as lexicons, concordances and dictionaries are also.
- For extra credit please suggest to your instructor a
relevant website for this unit of the course. Send the title of the site, the url and a
brief explanation why you find the information interesting and applicable to
the material being studied this week.
Submit the Genesis Paragraph:
Read the Genesis
excerpt (along with the document background notes
and the questions to consider). Before you read the Genesis document, please
read the Sample Historical Document Analysis,
if you have not already done so. The sample illustrates some of the questions
that a historian asks as he/she reads a historical document.
Answer the following
question in a paragraph: Did Genesis describe
an ethical religion, i.e. a religion that demanded moral behavior?
Your paragraph should be about
one-half page in length, double-spaced with one-inch margins, font size 10 or 12; it should
contain a concise topic sentence that directly responds to the assigned
question (no need to define terms or cite a dictionary) and use
direct, quoted material to support your points. Do not spend time repeating
what happened in the document; spend your time providing analysis to
answer the assigned question.
This assignment should be sent by e-mail according to the Electronic Submission
Information instructions.
Please remember to consult
Charlie's History Writing Center for
specific information on the writing requirements of this course.
You may also wish to post or respond in the
Blackboard online discussion forum
for this assignment. Please review the instructions for
Using the Blackboard
Discussion Forums, if necessary.
The Genesis Paragraph is worth a maximum of
25 points.
Notes:
The ancient Hebrews, who migrated from
Mesopotamia to Palestine--the origins of the
word "Hebrew" mean nomad or migrant--never achieved importance as a political state. In
fact, the people existed as an independent kingdom (and a rather small one at that)
for only a very brief time in the tenth century bce. The Hebrew development
of an ethical, monotheistic religion, however, proved to be of lasting importance
to the course of Western history, as Judaism proved to be
the seedbed for the later emergence of Christianity and Islam. Judaism, along with the
other two monotheistic religions, helped to provide an ethical basis for civilization
in the West.
In addition to the development of a religion
based on ethical monotheism, which later became the basis of the Western
religious experience, the Hebrews also succeeded in shifting the emphasis
from the "community" to the "individual." In the new religion, the
"individual" himself was responsible for his behavior and his later judgment
at the hands of God; it was not the community that had to worry about a collective
sacrifice to appease the gods.
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