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Module 1 - Part
2: Explorations and Exercises
Other parts of this module include:
Index |
Part 1: Overview |
Part 3: Texts and Contexts |
Part 4: Web Resources
The Origins of Monotheism
To respond to these exercises, it helps to have some appreciation of
the cultural assumptions explored in them. Click on Web
Resources for further insights into the way ideas about the human
and divine in each culture colors the literary texts that we are
studying.
These questions are arranged into three color-coded categories.
Level A invites you to look closely at some specific aspects of
individual texts. Answering these questions shows that you have read
carefully and understand the significance of important words and ideas
as they appear in context.
Level B asks you to think more deeply about the implications of some of
the details that you have isolated.
Level C allows you to build on the findings of the first two categories
to theorize broadly about the relationship of the text to social and
historical forces beyond the work itself.
Topics in this module's Exploration and Exercises section include:
Focus on Akhenaten's "Hymn to the Sun"
Level A
- Outline the different activities described in each of
the 12 stanzas of Akhenaten's "Hymn to the Sun" and
consider whether the poem organizes its topics in a logical,
linear fashion. Does each stanza
lead directly into the next, or do the stanzas seem to
take new directions?
Level B
- The activities described in the "Hymn to the Sun" give us a good
deal of information about Akhenaten's interests
and priorities. What dangers threaten in the darkness,
for example (see stanza II)? What
kind of class structure is presumed (see stanza VIII)?
Try to construct a portrait of everyday life in fourteenth-century
b.c.
Egypt as it is imagined here.
Level C
- How does the beginning of the last stanza indicate the
nature of Akhenaten's relationship with the sun and
suggest the innovative nature of his religious understanding?
How do his views of his society and of
his own role break from the ancient traditions of Pharaonic
Egypt? Why would his ideas have provoked hostility from
the social and political
establishment?
Focus on the Leiden Hymns
Level A
-
How does the organization of the four Leiden Hymns compare
with the organization of the single "Hymn to the Sun"?
- What is the main focus of each poem?
- How many gods are mentioned in these poems?
- What two views of divine creativity are offered
in the two stanzas of "God is a master craftsman"?
Level B
-
Do you consider the Leiden Hymns to be an expression of a
monotheist view of the divine? Discuss the evidence that leads you to
your conclusion and relate it to your understanding of ancient Egyptian
society.
Level C
-
Compare the Leiden Hymns with the "Hymn
to the Sun."
- What difference does the announcement of the speaker's
name and position in the latter poem make to the
audience?
- What is the view of night in the two poems?
- How does the divine participate in the organic,
material world in the two poems?
Focus on Genesis 1–2
Level A
-
Compare the two versions of creation in these opening chapters of
the Bible.
-
Outline the different activities accomplished in each of the six
days of the first creation story in Genesis 1. In what order do they
occur? How does the order create a sense of priorities?
- Outline the sequence of events
in the second creation story in Genesis 2. What
is created last in this story? How does the sequence
create a different sense of what is at
stake in God's work?
Level B
-
Consider the conception of humanity in Genesis 1 and 2.
- What questions are raised by the
statement "Let us make man in our image"?
- What might "us" mean?
- What kinds of responsibilities accompany
a resemblance to God?
-
What materials are used to create the two human beings in Genesis 2?
- What are the psychological implications of Adam's
origination from dust on the one hand and from the
inspiration of divine breath on the
other?
- What psychological inferences might be drawn from
the description of the material that Eve is made
from? Is she inferior to Adam? How would
you explain the significance of the last sentences
of this chapter?
Level C
- Consider the role that human beings are given to play
in the world.
- What does it mean for man to
have dominion over the creatures?
- Is man equally empowered in each of these
two creation narratives?
- Why is he commanded to name the animals in Genesis
2?
- What have been the ecological consequences for
societies that believe in the biblical account of
creation?
- Does "dominion" include sexual and family
relations as well? What evidence can you cite for
your conclusion?
Focus on comparing the Egyptian and the Hebraic texts
Level A
- Compare and contrast the conception of the divine. How
are the gods imagined in the Egyptian texts? How much individual
personality is
ascribed to them? How would you compare the praise of
the sun with the role played by the Hebraic God in Genesis
1? What is God's role in
creation in Genesis 2–4? Which is more personal?
Level B
- Compare the biblical Psalm 19 (also in the anthology)
with the "Hymn
to the Sun" and the Leiden Hymns. What role does the sun play in
the Hebrew psalm? With what kind of imagery is it associated?
Level C
- Weave your responses to all of these points together
in an extended essay in which you discuss the description
of the sun in the Egyptian
hymns and in biblical writing. How does the distinction
in the way Akhenaten and the psalmist describe the sun
explain the difference
between Akhenaten's monotheistic ideas and the
full-blown monotheism of the Hebraic understanding
of the divine?
Compare the monotheistic ideas in these Egyptian and Hebraic readings
to ideas about divinity in other texts in NAWLEX
Level A
-
Compare and contrast the related Mesopotamian and Hebraic stories
about divine intervention in human affairs.
-
What are the causes of the flood in the Epic of Gilgamesh?
- Who is the lone survivor? Why? How is he rewarded?
- What are the causes of the flood in Genesis 6–9?
Who survives? What is his reward?
Level B
-
How do the gods behave in the Epic of Gilgamesh? How do they
involve themselves in the human world? Why is Utnapishtim saved?
-
Compare God's involvement
with human beings in the early chapters of Genesis that
lead up to the flood. Why is Noah saved?
Level C
-
Write an essay comparing the flood stories in the Epic of
Gilgamesh and in Genesis, and relate your findings
to the story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11, which
the critic and translator
Robert Alter has called "a monotheistic fable." In what ways can you
see evidence of earlier Mesopotamian influence in this story? God gives
Adam "dominion" over the animals. How does
the Tower of Babel show the limits of human dominion?
How is the attitude toward city life here
consistent with the social attitudes expressed in the
ways of life chosen by Cain (a tiller of the field) and
Abel (a shepherd)? Contrast
the reasons that the biblical God cites for multiplying
human languages with the reason that Enlil gives for
bringing the flood in theEpic
of Gilgamesh.
Focus on Greek and Hebraic attitudes toward divine power
-
Compare and contrast the effects of divine power in plays like
Oedipus the King and
Medea and the summary view of that power expressed
in the final choral statements in those plays with
the Hebrew God's exercise of
power in the narrative selections in Genesis, including
the story of the flood and the story of Joseph. How
does the biblical God deal with
human beings who are faithful to Him? What impact does
the Hebraic idea of monotheism have on the nature of
the covenant between God and his
people? What kind of contrasting religious vision permeates
tragedy (a genre that is foreign to Hebraic thought)?
Focus on Islamic reflections on the monotheistic tradition
Level A
-
Read Surah 19 of the Koran, Mary, and identify the figures and
events that relate
back to biblical writing. Discuss the treatment of idol worship in
Surah 10, Jonah.
Level B
- Compare and contrast the different interpretations of
those figures in the three monotheistic religions: Judaism,
Christianity, and Islam,
and discuss the view of God's power in the Islamic tradition. Look, for
example, at the story of Cain and Abel (who are called simply "Adam's
sons") in Surah 5, The Table, and discuss the availability
of mercy and repentance in the three spiritual traditions.
Level C
- Explain why the idea that "God has begotten a son" is
unacceptable in both Hebraic and Islamic thought. How does
the opening of the Gospel
According to St. John demonstrate the way in which Greek
thought allowed John to insert Jesus into the creation
story of Genesis?
Focus on literary appropriations of biblical characters that
reformulate ancient ideas of monotheism for later times
- Study Book IX of Milton's Paradise Lost as
an interpretation of Genesis. Why does Milton's Adam decide to die with Eve (ll.
896–914)? How does Milton suggest that the human
pair had something to teach the biblical God?
- How do later writers treat those whom the monotheistic
God rejects? For example, how does the Beowulf poet's description of Grendel and his
mother introduce a certain sympathy for Cain? How does Victor Hugo's
"Et nox facta est" view Satan?
Focus on ideas of the many and the one in early South Asian texts
-
The Sanskrit epics provide religious instruction as well as
entertainment. How does the idea of family in the Mahabharata
express the complex view toward the relationship of the many and the
one in Hindu thought? How many Kauravas are there, for example? How
many Pandavas? Do they function
as individuals?
- The Bhagavad-Gita explicitly
concerns itself with the fluid interaction of the many
and the one. What does the sound "om" signify
(see the Third Teaching)? What vision of Krishna is Arjuna
allowed to see in the Eleventh Teaching? Why does he
ask Krishna to change his form? How does this facility
in changing form express the most sacred ideas in the Hindu
tradition? Why is the
stringent monotheism of the Hebraic and the Islamic religions
incompatible with this belief in embodied souls?
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