Humanities 110
Paper Topic # 3
Spring 2006
Your conference leader will determine the format and length of this paper.

Due Saturday, April 22nd, 5 P.M. in your conference leader's Eliot Hall mailbox.

Choose one of the following:

1. Compare the structure and decoration of the Jewish synagogue at Dura-Europos to the Second Temple in Jerusalem as described in Exodus and Josephus’s The Jewish War.  How do the changes in the architecture and decoration of these places of worship reflect larger shifts in Jewish culture after the fall of the Second Temple in Jerusalem?
   
   Images of the Second Temple in Jerusalem and the synagogue at Dura-Europos are available online at http://academic.reed.edu/humanities/Hum110/PaperImages.html
    
2. Saints Perpetua and Felicitas are depicted in Late Antiquity mosaics from the Eufrasiana Basilica in Porec (6th Century CE) and from the Archiepiscopal Chapel in Ravenna (494-495 CE).  What meanings are conveyed by the representation of the saints? You may want to consider elements such as status, skin color, hair, jewelry, and clothing.
   
   Images of the mosaics depicting Saints Perpetua and Felicitas are available online at http://academic.reed.edu/humanities/Hum110/PaperImages.html
    
3. Why does Apuleius’s Golden Ass end with the depiction of Lucius’s “tonsured crown”?  Be sure to address how the hair motif is developed throughout Apuleius’s work.
    
4. Compare the representations and significance of the crucifixion scene in the Gospels of Matthew and John.
    
5. Analyze God’s relationship with two major female figures in the Hebrew Bible (such as Eve, Sarah, Leah, Rebecca, Rachel).  How do these feminine relationships with God compare to masculine relationships with God in the Torah?  What is the significance of the variations and/or similarities?
    
6. Compare the representations of evil in two of the following: The Gospel of Matthew, The Tractate Avot, The Gospel of John, The Letters of St. Paul.
    
7. Scholars have argued that one of the major themes of the Bible is the development of the covenant between man and God. Drawing on specific examples of covenants in the Torah (such as just after the binding of Isaac, the rainbow after the flood, the giving of the commandments), argue whether God’s edict to Adam and Eve not to eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil constitutes a covenant.
    
8. In consultation with your instructor, devise a topic of your own.

Free tutoring! Reed College Writing Center, ETC 112. Hours: Sunday-Thursday 7-9 pm. Extended Hours: Thursday & Friday 7-10 pm before Hum 110 Papers are due.