RS-155-1 Geography, History, and Religions of the Holy Land
June 2008
Instructor:
The Rev. William B. Nelson, Ph.D.
Professor of Religious Studies
Office Hours:
By appointment. PC 9; Ph x6167; Fax x7101. E-mail:
nelson@westmont.edu
Time and Place:
June 2-6: (on campus); 8-29 (in Israel and Jordan): TBA
Textbooks:
Aharoni, Yohanan, Michael Avi-Yonah, Anson F. Rainey, and Ze’ev
Safrai. The Carta Bible Atlas. 4th ed. Jerusalem: Carta, 2002.
Bickerton, Ian J. and Carla L. Klausner. A History of the Arab-Israeli
Conflict. 5th ed. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2007.
Coogan, Michael, ed. The New Oxford Annotated Bible. 3rd ed. New
Revised Standard Version. New York: Oxford University Press,
2001.
Lancaster, Steven P. and James M. Monson. Regional Study Guide:
Introductory Map Studies in the Land of the Bible. Rockford:
Biblical Backgrounds, 2000.
Monson, James M. Regional Study Maps. Rockford: Biblical
Backgrounds, 1999.
Monson, James M. Regions on the Run: Introductory Map Studies in
the Land of the Bible. Rockford: Biblical Backgrounds, 1998.
Required Readings:
There will be required readings in various sources:
Biblical Archaeology Review
Brown, Raymond E., Joseph A. Fitzmyer, and Roland E. Murphy, eds.
The New Jerome Biblical Commentary. Englewood Cliffs: PrenticeHall, 1990.
Colbi, Saul. The Christian Churches in the State of Israel. Jerusalem:
The Israel Economist, 1974.
The Jerusalem Post
Matthews, Warren. World Religions. 4th ed. Belmont:
Wadsworth/Thomson, 2004.
Murphy-O’Connor, Jerome. The Holy Land: An Archaeological Guide
from Earliest Times to 1700. 3rd ed. Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1992.
Newsweek
Pritchard, James B. Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old
Testament. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969.
Stern, Ephraim, Ayelet Lewinson-Gilboa, and Joseph Aviram, eds. The
New Encyclopedia of Archaeological Excavations in the Holy Land.
4 vols. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1993.
2
Time
Video:
Students will be required to watch: Richards, Dai, Norma Percy, and
Will Lyman. The 50 Years War: Israel and the Arabs. Boston: Brian
Lapping Associates, 1998. This was produced in conjunction with
WGBH (a Boston public television station), PBS, and the BBC. It is 5
hours long.
Course Description:
This course introduces students to Syro-Palestinian archaeology, the
historical geography of Israel and Jordan, and the history of Israel from
ancient times to the Byzantine period. Important regions and sites will
be visited and the relevant archaeological, historical, and biblical
material will be correlated with those places. Readings, preparatory
map studies, and lectures provide the background for the field trips.
Regions studied and visited include Galilee, the Golan Heights, Judah,
Samaria, the Negev, the Shephelah, the Jordan and Jezreel Valleys,
Benjamin, the Sharon Plain, Philistia, and in Transjordan, Gilead,
Ammon, the Medaba Plateau, Moab, and Edom. The course will also
explore the modern states of Israel and Jordan, the nascent state
administered by the Palestinian Authority, the Arab-Israeli conflict, and
the religious traditions of Judaism, Islam, and Christianity in the Holy
Land.
Evaluation:
6 Unit Exams on History, Historical Geography, Archaeology, and
Biblical Studies (Introductory Material; Jerusalem; Benjamin;
Judah/Shephelah/Philistia; Samaria/Galilee; Negev/Dead
Sea/Jordan)—50%
1 Exam on Judaism, Islam, and Eastern Christianity—10%
1 Exam on the Modern Scene (Israel, Jordan, PA, and Middle East
Crisis)—10%
Journal, Essays, and Class Participation—10%
Written and Oral Report on One Historical Site—20%
Grading Scale:
95-100=A
90 - 94=A-
Academic Honesty:
86-89=B+
83-85=B
80-82=B-
76-79=C+
73-75=C
70-72=C-
66-69=D+
63-65=D
60-62=D0-59=F
The penalty for cheating will be a grade of “F” for the course without
possibility of withdrawal.
Attendance:
Expected of all students; missing class may result in a lowered grade.
Tardiness:
Students are expected to be on time to class. Two tardies will be
counted as one absence.
3
Classroom Behavior:
Students are expected to pay attention to the lectures and discussion.
This includes those on the bus and at the ancient sites as well as those
in class. During such times, music players will be turned off. Free
thinking and expression are encouraged; disrespectful attitudes and
expressions are not. Inappropriate behavior may result in a lowered
grade.
The Place of RS 155 in the General Education Curriculum
Thinking Historically
One popular notion of history is that events from the past are known and can be passed on
as facts. In such an understanding, the student’s task is simply to memorize the information.
This view is seriously deficient. Thinking historically involves studying texts and cultural
artifacts from the past and learning to interpret them. Students must use their critical faculties to
analyze and synthesize the historical data in order to draw warranted conclusions about what
really happened and what the causes were behind the reconstructed events. Scholars must be
content with greater or lesser probability rather than with certainty. It is important to read
primary sources and to situate them in their proper geographical, historical, sociological, and
political contexts. Since students in this course will not have the language background necessary
to allow reading the primary sources in their original languages, they will read them in English
translations. For the ancient history of Israel and the history of early Christianity, we will largely
rely on the Bible, with some reference to ancient Near Eastern texts. We will also pay careful
attention to the archaeological remains to help us reconstruct our picture of Israel and the church
in the Old and New Testament periods. It is also important to study the geography, topography,
geology, and weather patterns of the land because these disciplines help us to frame questions
relevant to the life of the people in this region:





How did they travel given the existing mountains and valleys?
Where were the roads?
What kinds of soil resulted from the geological formations and what crops would
they support?
What was the rainfall in a given area and how did that determine settlement
patterns?
What were the sources of water?
This course will also survey the modern history of the region from the 19th century to the
present, emphasizing key events, such as the rise of Zionism, the creation of the state of Israel,
the wars of 1956, 1967, and 1973, and various attempts at peacemaking (e.g. the Camp David
accords, Oslo I, Madrid, Oslo II, Road Map). Care will be taken to hear all sides (various Arab,
Israeli, and U.S. viewpoints) of the conflict.
Thinking Globally
4
Almost every aspect of this course confronts the student with otherness. When one studies
the Old Testament, one becomes aware that the world in which it originated was quite different
from ours. It was ancient not modern. It was Eastern, not Western. Its culture was Semitic, not
Indo-European. The ancient Israelites were aware of the geography and history of their own land
and that of their neighbors (Egypt, Syria, Phoenicia, Ammon, Moab, Edom, Assyria, Babylon,
etc.); we often are not. Furthermore, they were aware of the religions and mytho-poeic world
views of their neighbors. Although Israelite religion was unique in being monotheistic, it also
shared some similarities with other religions. This course will consider a) how ancient Israel’s
culture was alike and different from its neighbors, and b) how it was alike and different from our
own.
Although the New Testament is perhaps not as foreign, since it is more recent and was
written in Greek, an Indo-European language, it still comes out of a matrix different from ours:
Greco-Roman, Jewish, Middle Eastern, Mediterranean, 1st Century A.D. This course will also
compare and contrast the developing mentality the early Christians with a) that of the GrecoRoman and Jewish environment, and b) that of ours today.
By studying Judaism, Islam, and Christianity in the Middle East, students will become
familiar with global perspectives on faith which are foreign to them. They will grapple with
similarities and differences between these three monotheistic religions. They will be exposed to
the historical development and to the key beliefs and practices of each tradition. Perhaps most
challenging will be engaging with other Christian traditions, such as Roman Catholic, Eastern
Orthodox (Greek, Russian, Romanian), Maronite, Ethiopic, and Coptic, to see how Christianity
has been contextualized in the Holy Land. Some attention will also be paid to local expressions
of Protestantism.
By examining the modern states of Israel and Jordan, students will explore the history of
Jews and Arabs in the region, the multi-party political system of Israel’s government, the
Palestinian Authority and the various Palestinian Arab factions (such as the PLO, Fatah, PFLP,
Hamas), the kingdom of Jordan, and the Arab-Israeli crisis. We will have four guest lectures by
1) a Muslim Arab, 2) a Christian Arab, 3) a Jew, and 4) a Messianic Jew. These will help us to
hear the perspectives of other traditions by people who live there, in their own voices.