Yale Old Testament course
I am currently working through an incredible course published online by Yale University. It appears to be mostly the efforts of Christine Hayes who demonstrates a vast understanding of the culture within which our western religions grew up and matured. She balances many different views concerning the origins of biblical texts and presents views that many religious zealots avoid. These views often seem potentially heretic or deviating from standardized Judaism and Christianity but they are views based more on archaeological discovery than most other forms of religious doctrine.
So far with this course I have discovered the incredible similarities between the paganism of the near east, its literature and the content of the bible. The incredible similarities between Akkadian gods such as Baal and El when considered next to the god of Abraham as represented in the bible appear to reveal much of the demonstration of monotheism for the pagan masses which was going on at the time.
We have even explored multiple source theory for the bible and I reviewed the possible difference between these sources and the doctrines upon which they are based. I am somewhat sceptical about the ability of scholars to distringuish completely between different sources where E sources use the name Jahweh and J sources use the name Elohim (which is contrary to their respective definitions).
This course is incredible in its content and I can't believe it is available for free online. I wish I could afford to buy all the books for the accompanying reading for this course but I can't afford the money or the time and yet have determined to spend a substantial amount of time working through the material as what I learn is reward enough for the efforts of this endeavour.
For anyone who is interested in this material, click here : http://oyc.yale.edu/religious-studies/rlst-145#overview
Graeme