Humanities 110 Paper Topic #3

Due Date: Saturday, April 24th, 1999, 5 p.m. in the Faculty mailboxes in Eliot.

Length: 2500 words.

Write on one of the following questions:

1. How is martyrdom or asceticism seen to sustain and/or undermine community in 2 or 3 of the following texts: Matthew, John, The Jewish Wars, the Rule of the Community, Perpetua's journal, Athanasius' biography of Anthony?

2. Examine the possible appeal of Matthew's "Sermon on the Mount" to a Roman audience.

3. Discuss the formal and iconographic composition of the "Jonah sarcophagus" (Elsner, pp. 154-5). How is death addressed in a Christian context? How are the subjects from the Old Testament and the Gospels related?

4. How do you explain the literary and theological functions of the visual imagery of the fantastic in Revelations and The Golden Ass?

5. Compare the means by which knowledge of the divine is acquired in 3 of the following texts: Seneca, Daniel, the Pirke Avot, the Rule of Community, Romans, John, Revelation, The Golden Ass, Perpetua's journal, Athanasius' biography of Anthony.

6. Compare the understanding of law, including the contexts in which these understandings developed, in two or three of the following: Exodus, the Rule of the Community, the Pirke Avot, Romans, Matthew and John.

7. In consultation with your conference leader, write on a topic of your own devising.