Bible and Western Culture (Audiobook - TTC) (Repost)

The Bible has had an incalculable effect on all of Western culture. In this course you explore the Bible's impact as literature—both in the study of the literary qualities of the Bible itself and in the analysis of the Bible's influence on subsequent works of literature and philosophy. Under the guidance of four professors from Princeton University, you encounter such masterpieces of narrative as the Book of Exodus; of philosophy as Thomas More's Utopia; of poetry as Milton's Paradise Lost; and of fiction as Dostoyevsky's The Idiot—along with dozens of other works. The first 10 lectures are devoted to the Bible itself—a focus that extends back before Genesis by discussing the ancient epic tradition and the influences of the oldest epic, Gilgamesh, on the Hebrew Bible. You study a selection of books from the Old and New Testaments at length with an appreciation for the numerous and varied biblical literary forms: poetry, prose, old verse, victory songs, lamentations, folk tales, and tales of ancestral law, to name just a few. The remaining 14 lectures focus on the biblical associations in many of the greatest works of Western literature. From St. Augustine to Nietzsche, Dante to Joyce, countless authors and philosophers have found inspiration in biblical texts. Appropriately, three full lectures are devoted to Dante's Divine Comedy, and new windows of understanding are opened on a variety of classic works.