This is my current version of the introduction to the course:
Objective: This course offers a comparative cultural anthropology study of the unique intellectual approach from which the Christian Bible is written. It presumes the student is Western and is not wholly aware of what it means to be Western, nor how radically different it is from the culture promoted by Scripture.
Structure: The material is presented in a standard academic Western approach. The course first summarizes the meaning of Western cultural identity. We will review seminal literary sources that help to reveal the formation of Western intellectual assumptions. Then we will turn to the contrasting approach from the people who gave us the Bible. This approach assumes the biblical identity is profoundly alien to Westerners. This course presumes familiarity with typical Western academics on at least a baccalaureate level of education.
It is not necessary to actually read whole libraries. There is nothing wrong with reading good summaries as a review of previous surveys. Some of that material will be summarized here, but the reader will cheat himself if he has never read the sources.
Those with a purely academic interest in the subject can benefit from this survey. However, let the reader make no mistake: This course is a weapon aimed at the very heart of Western Civilization. The West is a battered and leaky vessel, and passengers would do well to disembark at the earliest opportunity. Such a departure requires a conscious choice for some other means of moving through life. This course assumes consciously and without debate that the biblical civilization is both different and better.
All the more so is this true of readers who claim to follow Christ. If you aren’t a biblical mystic, you are not following Christ.
I would love to hear some feedback.
Interesting suggestion. Let’s begin.