Why do bad things happen to good people? This course examines how the Bible confronts some of the most complex and confounding questions humans can ask regarding the relationship between actions and their inevitable outcomes. Through close readings of biblical texts and contemporaneous examples from the ancient Middle East and North Africa, students will be introduced to key theories and methods in biblical studies as tools for examining how the dynamic relationship between behaviors and their results shape the biblical understanding of justice, divine retribution, rewards, and moral order.

We will compare (1) punishment and reward in biblical narrative and law and their reverberations in both prophetic literature and more esoteric texts like the books of Proverbs, Ecclesiastes/Qohelet, and Job, to both (2) relevant contemporaneous examples from the ancient Middle East and North Africa, and (3) contemporary examples from popular culture (e.g., Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Wicked, KPop Demon Hunters, The Good Place, Hamilton, and Spirited Away) in order to ask how thinking about reward and punishment has changed over time and, especially, how modern thinking both adheres to and diverges from biblical and other ancient models.

This class has no prerequisites; no previous knowledge of the Bible or ancient history is presumed.