My goals for this class is to help students:
- learn to find Bible passages
- learn to recognize Old Testament references in art and literature
- understand that the Bible is a collection of texts based on particular historical realities. This doesn't meant that the Bible's stories about history are true, but rather that the events and struggles the people were facing influenced what they wrote. For example, some sections of the Bible come out of the Jerusalem elite's experience of being taken into exile by the Babylonians.
- recognize similarities between the Biblical texts and the other ancient texts.

I was raised within the United Church of Canada to view the Bible as a historical and literary document. I attended a year of theological studies at McGill University, in Montreal, Quebec. I'm currently agnostic or even atheist, but fascinated by Biblical history.