Study Guide for Reading Ancient Sources

It may be useful for you to keep a file for this course in which you answer as many questions as possible for each ancient text we read. (We may never know the answers to some of these questions!) Answering these questions will help you to read with focus and will provide you with good notes to which to return during and after the course. 1) When and where was this text written? Does it contain any direct historical information that could be used to date the text—political, geographical, chronological? How do date and location contribute to your understanding of the work? 2) What is the genre of the text? What sort of text is it—e.g., sayings source, inscription, novel, hymn? Does it combine multiple genres? To what effect? 3) Who is the author? How does the author present herself/himself? (That is, discuss the inscribed author—the author as s/he constructs herself/himself in the text.) What do we know about the actual author? 4) What do you learn about the audience from the text? (That is, what is the inscribed audience—the audience as the author constructs it?) Is the audience male? Female? Jew? Gentile? Rich? Poor? High status? Do we know anything about the actual audience of this text? 5) What is the rhetorical situation of the text? What events may have occasioned its writing? 6) What does the text reveal about sociopolitical setting? Are any religious or other associations mentioned? People of different status? Females? How are they characterized? Are any political hierarchies mentioned? How do they seem to work? Are other authorities or hierarchies mentioned? How is power conceived of and configured in this text? 7) What literary sources and intertextual allusions do we find in the text—direct citations, e.g. from l from the Jewish Bible; allusions to stories or literary tropes and figures? Why are these used? What does this tell us about the communities that produced and used this text? 8) What words are used particularly frequently, and what do they seem to mean (consult a concordance to find all uses and to compare with other contemporaneous texts)? Overall, what might the rhetorical purpose of the text be—whom does it try to persuade? To what end?