Note: A placement exam will be required when you arrive on site.

High Intermediate

This course is designed for students who have completed or tested out of a minimum of three semesters (or five quarters) of college-level Spanish. However, students must take a placement exam to determine the course level into which they will be able to enroll.

Description

This course familiarizes students with the most famous poetic compilation of Psalms from Israel that represent meaningful prayer. Born in the most diverse moments of life, Psalms poeticize the religious experience of men and women who sang the glories of Jehovah or grieved over his absence during personal crisis and collective catastrophes.

Contextualization

Due to its characteristics, content, and objectives, this course will complement and explore the depths and processes of biblical formation

General Objectives

• Understand Psalms as dialogues between God and his believers.
• Value Psalms as corporal expressions, as they compromise the totality of the person
• Learn the language of Psalms and appreciate their musicality
• Understand them as a live vision of the human being
• Understand them as prayers of conflict that express the totality of the essential outcry of man, “Help me!” “Hallelujah!”

Contents

Unit I
• Study the different “families” of Psalms and the specificities of each literary genre.
o Hymns
o Pleas
o Actions of Grace
o Royal Psalms

Unit II
• Students will then take on a thorough exegesis of several Psalms representative of each genre.

Unit III
• Transposition into the Christian context

Methodology

• Lectures
• Reading sessions
• Analysis and interpretation of different Psalms
• Teacher/student exercises: transposition into a Christian context

Evaluation

• A quiz during the semester on the contents of Unit I
• Classroom participation
• Analysis and transposition of Psalms.
• A monographic paper about a Psalm of choice