TEOL4153 ¨C The Biblical Body

Course description

• Course content
• Learning outcome
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• Teaching

• Examination

Course content

The body is changing, or rather the discourse on and perception of bodies are evolving with lightning speed in contemporary societies, and therefore bodies are, in fact, changing.

Bodies are physical tangible objects, but bodies are also social and cultural constructs, and religious and theological traditions have been eager to define, monitor and tame bodies and to make them conform. In this course, the current focus on bodies in society is the starting point for an investigation of collective, individual, and symbolic bodies in the Bible.

The body is the medium through which human beings experience and interact with the world, and the body a person has, the body a person is, is a crucial determining factor to the ways in which people construct identities ¨C their own identity as well as that of the people around them. The Bible is packed full of presentations of bodies that in various ways way still influence our views on humanity, divinity, gender, sexuality, beauty, and our place and status as a species in the world.