Write an essay of 4-5 pp. (or 1200-1500 words) in which you trace an idea or theme through several passages drawn from the books of the Hebrew Bible that you have read for at least two different assignments this semester. To choose a topic you will need to identify:

(i) the idea or theme that will be your topic and

(ii) the passages you will discuss.

“Several passages” means at least two but, since this is a relatively short paper and you should really discuss (and not merely mention) the passages you consider, you should hesitate to choose more than three or four. The idea or theme might be a fairly specific one, such as that of the covenant or of an encounter with God, or it might be quite broad, such as leadership or relations between parents and children.

You should avoid passages that bear on your topic in the same way. Each passage you consider should add something new to the discussion and not merely replicate one you have already discussed. For example, a passage might help fill out a theme by illustrating a further aspect of it. Or it might qualify the view of an the idea that someone would get from the other passages you consider. There is no need for you to include all the different aspects of an idea or theme that appear in the material you have read; you should simply choose ones that seem to you to capture some key aspects or to provide a useful selection of views of it from different sides.

You should also have something to say about these passages as a group, some way of drawing together what they show about the idea or theme you have chosen so that your treatment of it is something more than the sum of your discussions of individual passages. This is something you should bear in mind when choosing the passages you will discuss, and trying to say to yourself why you are choosing a certain group of passages is one way to see how you might draw the individual discussions together.

The organization of this paper can vary considerably depending on the sort of idea or theme you are discussing and the ways it appears in the various passages. One approach that will be appropriate in many cases is to first introduce the idea or theme, then discuss the passages one by one, and finally conclude by drawing together these individual discussions and commenting on the group as a whole.

As always, be careful to give full references to the passages you consider; these references can be either by page number in the readings book or by book, chapter, and verse of the Hebrew Bible (though in the latter case you should at some point identify the specific edition that is reproduced in the readings book).

Wednesday 3/29 is a lecture day, so I won’t meet you in class. If you want to hand in a hard copy, you can catch me at the lecture or drop it off at my office (Center 200H) or in my box in Center 207. But I encourage you to turn in the paper electronically, either as an e-mail attachment or in the drop box of the Blackboard site for our section. (If you want a specific time for the deadline, you can count it as midnight.)