This project demonstrates how a comparative framework can assist students read unfamiliar texts. Juxtaposing the ever-evocative “Biblezine” with the more apocryphal 4 Maccabees, I show how critical and comparative theories can enrich and enliven the student reading experience. This approach reminds students to keep in the fore the life and death implications that draw an audience to a text. And it helps classes reflect on how ancient and modern scriptures say about the human condition.
Versions of this paper have been presented during Claremont Graduate University’s 2011 Comparative Religions Colloquium and the Society of Biblical Literature’s 2011 Annual Meeting’s Academic Teaching and Biblical Studies section Program Unit themed “Best Practices for Teaching Intro to Hebrew Bible and New Testament Courses at Seminaries and Religious Colleges.”
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