Judaism, Christianity and Islam (RELG 181)

This course introduces students to the comparative study of the three major monotheistic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. The purpose of the course is not to explain everything about these religions but to provide students with a place to begin to understand for themselves why Jews, Christians, and Muslims have interacted with one another in the various ways that they have over time. As a first step in that direction, we focus our attention in this course on a specific topic: how Jews, Christians, and Muslims read and appropriate their own and each other’s sacred scriptures.

Through group discussions based on close readings of selected passages from the Tanakh, the New Testament, and the Qur’an, we seek to understand what it is like to read scripture as a Jew, as a Christian, as a Muslim—what is similar, what is different, what promotes constructive interfaith dialogue, and what prevents it. Because the course models dialogical learning, the syllabus is open-ended: new readings are assigned as our conversations about previous readings progress in directions determined as much by the students as by the instructor.

View the Judaism, Christianity and Islam course flyer!