Four Tuesday Nights
7 - 8:30 PM ET
November 7, 14, 21, 28

Early Jewish and Christian tradition believed that Moses received the Torah at Sinai, and that the Torah was literally given by God. Therefore its text has divine authority reflecting God’s wishes and expectations for human behavior. However, scholars suggest that the Torah is a composition of a number of sources redacted around the Babylonian exile (ca. 550 BCE).

In this course we will study the different approaches to the text and reflect on the question of the authority of the Torah… if it was actually written by human beings and not God given.

ENROLL

Instructor: Gideon Amir
Location: Zoom Classroom
The Zoom link will be sent to all registrants prior to the first session.
Registration: $65

Gideon Amir was born in Holland to Holocaust survivors who went to Israel in 1947. He grew up in Jerusalem and served in the IDF as a Paratrooper.

Gideon received his Bachelor’s degree in Mathematics from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem and a Master’s degree in Computer Science from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rechovot. In 1980, he moved to the United States, where he worked as a manager in several companies including Sperry Univac, British Telecom, and Cisco Systems.

In 1999, he pursued his interest in Judaic Studies and enrolled in a full-time graduate program at Baltimore Hebrew University, where, in May 2001, he received his master’s degree (with honors) and completed further studies.

As such, he re-directed his passion for teaching from computer science to the teaching of Jewish and Bible subjects at various adult education programs including the Haberman Institute for Jewish Studies.

The Documentary Hypothesis and the Issue of Authority