COURSES ON THE HEBREW BIBLEÂ & ANCIENT WORLD
Bringing the Human Out
of the Dusty Past
Compelling and insightful courses on the Hebrew Bible and ancient world, made for everyone!Â
Every generation tells and retells stories.
Â
Untold numbers have been spoken, heard, and lost forever. But some were immortalized on stone, papyrus, parchment, and clay.
These are the raw materials that turn weightless words solid. Through them we encounter lives long past, from shepherds and laborers to scribes, priests, and royalty. They bear witness to searches for meaning and struggles for power, all the beauty and brutality that make up human experience.
Parchment & Clay brings those human stories to life in courses that balance cutting-edge academic rigor with engaging style. We bring the literatures, religions, histories, and societies of the ancient world to curious audiences in all of their complex and deeply human glory.
 The Ancient Middle East
Parchment & Clay covers the ancient histories of Mesopotamia and the eastern Mediterranean (the regions now in modern Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and Israel/Palestine).
The archaeological and textual legacies of these areas testify to diverse peoples and nations in stunning richness and detail. Clay tablets from Mesopotamia preserve everything from myths of the great gods and deeds of emperors to contracts for music lessons and receipts for beer.
Texts from the Syrian coast preserve vestiges of Canaanite myths, legends, and rituals. And, of course, the southern Levant has given us the anthology of texts known as the Hebrew Bible.
The Hebrew BibleÂ
The various texts that were eventually gathered together in the Hebrew Bible originated as and among other ancient texts like those mentioned above. They shared in an international literary culture that spanned their known world, echoing, adapting, or responding to other works that circulated widely. Yet the legacy of these texts in Jewish Tanakhs and Christian Old Testaments has given them special distinction.
At Parchment & Clay, we approach the Bible as an anthology of texts. It is not a single work with one simple message, but a collection of texts with very different styles, perspectives, and agendas. Attending to their rough edges and disagreements often reveals much about the diversity of thought in ancient Israel and the struggles that defined its communities, institutions, and historical trajectories.
We also treat biblical texts as open and generative. These Hebrew texts serve as the sacred scripture of multiple religions and sects—foundational sources that are continually interpreted, expanded, and retold in a stunning diversity of forms. This variety of interpretations should banish the idea that biblical texts have one simple and clear meaning. We know that they can be read and interpreted in multiple ways for the simple reason that they have been, all throughout history!
Our approach to biblical texts is historical, not religious. We trace how they originated and how they have been transmitted and engaged throughout their long histories. Our courses have no religious or theological agenda, and we hope that our study of the texts will be useful and enlightening to students of all faiths, or none!
Explore our foundational course: The Bible Against Kings!
Resisting tyranny is as old and evergreen as tyranny itself. Come explore the stunning critiques of monarchy and authoritarianism you never knew filled the pages of the Hebrew Bible!
Learn MoreMeet Eric Harvey, the head instructor
of Parchment & Clay!
Dr. Eric Harvey is a scholar and teacher who has spent more than 20 years immersed in the languages and literatures of the ancient Middle East. He brings the vibrant human reality out of the deep past—the everyday and the extraordinary, the brutal and the beautiful, and everything in-between!
Email Sign Up
Stay up to date with Parchment & Clay! Sign up for periodic updates and receive a free ten minute video introducing the Hebrew Bible as a gift!
