Texts of Terror

Uitgebreide vaknaam	Texts of Terror
Leerdoelen	The students are able to understand the urgency of modern perceptions of the correlation between religion and violence, and able to assess this relation for themselves in early Jewish, early Christian, and early Islamic sources.
Omschrijving	Religiously motivated fanaticism and violence constitute a threat to human civilization. All religious traditions seem to have a violent potential. Often, however, the monotheism of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic religion is particularly suspected of an aggressive and intolerant potential. Leading figures in all three traditions have turned, at various times, to the exclusion and even violent persecution of people and ideas deemed alien. Sacred texts and ideas drawn from them can play a major role in motivating and justifying the actions of group members. Violent or intolerant behaviour can, from both insider and outside-observer perspectives, reduce the great tradition to a single essence, for which a few selected elements of the tradition are brought forward while many others are ignored. In this course we study selected texts from Judaism, Christianity, and Islam and contexts in which violence, power, and politics have exploited them. We focus on texts that have been used to justify violent actions in order to understand them better in their original contexts, as a basis for tracking later interpretations and exploring how appeals to these texts functioned in relation to political aims. Ultimately we ask whether monotheism necessarily has violent consequences, and how adherents handle the dangerous potentialities of claims to revealed truth. Historical and cultural factors other than monotheistic thought are given their full weight in this investigation.
Uren per week	variabel
Onderwijsvorm	hoor-/werkcollege
Toetsvorm	(Assignments (30%) and final paper (70%))
Vaksoort	master
Coördinator	prof. dr. G.H. van Kooten
Docent(en)	prof. dr. G.H. van Kooten ,prof. dr. J.T.A.G.M. van Ruiten , C.E. Wilde, PhD.
Verplichte literatuur	Titel Auteur ISBN Prijs See NESTOR
Entreevoorwaarden
Opmerkingen	Research master students, have a different course code:THRMTTE5. For these students there will be formulated an extra assignment.
Opgenomen in	Opleiding Jaar Periode Type Ma Programme Religion and Pluralism, Ancient and Modern 1 semester I a verplicht Ma Programme Theology and Religious Studies (Research) 1 semester I a keuzegroep Ma Programme Theology and Religious Studies (Research) 2 semester I a keuzegroep