Scripture

The programs read scripture as literature and as argument, which is not how it was written but is how the tradition received it: Augustine, Aquinas, Dante, Milton, Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky are all readers of these books first, and their own books cannot be read without them.

The Hebrew Bible is assigned in parts. Genesis is on four lists and Exodus on three; Job, the Psalms, Deuteronomy, the prophets, Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs are assigned at one or two programs each. The New Testament is assigned by Gospel, Matthew and John most, Luke and Mark less, with Paul’s letter to the Romans and First Corinthians as the theology. St. John’s reads the whole Bible in the sophomore year; Thomas Aquinas College reads it across four years in a theology tutorial.

The other traditions are here where a program assigns them: the Quran at Notre Dame and St. John’s, the Bhagavad Gita, the Analects, the Tao Te Ching and Shantideva at Notre Dame’s second seminar, which is the one place on the nine lists where the Western canon deliberately reads outside itself. Read Genesis first, and read it slowly; it is shorter than it seems and nothing in it is filler.