Genesis as Ritual?
September 21, 2010
I’ve been kicking around a new pedagogical method for the general humanities class I teach at Temple. Most of the texts in the class were originally performed. A few other texts could be swapped out to replace with a more performance-friendly choice. The major problem that I have been left with is the book of Genesis. How can I teach Genesis as a performative text?
If this were a class at a confessional school, I could address the issue of personal devotion to the text. In what ritual context(s) do students read the text? (devotionally, liturgically, etc.) But, in the sort of class I am teaching, this is not an option.
Thoughts?
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Ketuvim: the Writings of James R. Getz Jr. 
Maybe work with the idea of the book as a publicly-read piece? We know that Ezra read from the “Book of the Law of Moses” and that creation epics like the Enuma Elish were read to the community at large….
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