Introduces the historical, cultural, and socio-religious backgrounds of the Torah through the study of genre, literary style, themes, and messages. It will analyze literary structure, problems of authorship, and the centrality of mission in the Torah. The foundational character of the Torah is emphasized, and its importance to subsequent divine revelation, mission motifs and salvific themes is also studied.
Through this course, the student will be able to interpret, study, teach, and preach from the Torah. Similarly, the student will also understand the world of the Torah and the enduring message of the Torah, particularly on the centrality of mission. The ministries of teachers, pastors, evangelists and missionaries will be greatly enriched and enhanced by the diligent study of God’s mission in each book of the Torah.
The course is committed to the study of God’s word through the diligent study of Hebrew prophets.
The study is missiologically-driven by its quest to read and understand the Torah from the perspective of mission.
The Torah is the foundational part of the Old Testament. Its message has contextual character. However, this context transcends the immediate context of the Torah to climaxes its message in the New Testament.
God’s message of salvation in the Torah has an intercultural dimension especially in its descriptions of ancient Israel’s relationship to the surrounding nations. The intercultural disposition of the course in this aspect fulfills the intercultural goal of Missional University.
The Torah has a practical core which directly reveals that the God of the Torah is a practical God with laws and instructions to guide the moral life of ancient Israel.
The Torah largely describes the experiential encounter of God and ancient Israel. This course seeks to reenact this experiential character of the Torah in the lives of the students, thus fulfilling the experiential goal of the University.
