Note: This course is out of print with The Great Courses, but you can view all 16 lectures from the course by Professor Michael Sugrue on his official YouTube channel. It is 12 hours out of 18 hours of the course. The lectures by the other professors are not available.
This course is a scholarly treatment of the Bible as literature that examines the many literary and cultural themes that originate in the Bible. Michael Sugrue and three other Princeton University professors take an analytical rather than a spiritual approach.
The initial focus is on the Bible itself—a focus that extends back before Genesis by discussing the Gilgamesh epic. You then study a selection of books from the Old and New Testaments with an appreciation for literary forms.
The balance of the course explores biblical themes in St. Augustine, Meister Eckhart, Dante, Thomas More, Martin Luther, Shakespeare, Milton, David Hume, Jonathon Swift, Kierkegaard, Dostoyevsky, Nietzsche, and James Joyce.