Lecturer: Piero Capelli, professor of Hebrew language and literature, Università Ca’ Foscari Venezia
At the Museo Ebraico di Bologna
Every Monday from 7 March to 4 April 2016, 17
Information on the page of the Museum website
Registrations by 3 March 2016
cost € 70,00; students and pensioners € 60,00
Calendar of lessons
- Monday 7 March
- Monday 14 March
- Monday 21 March
- Monday 4 April
Right from the beginning, with the fall of Adam and Eve and the fratricide of Cain, the religious history of Judaism opens with the irruption of human sin into a universe otherwise perfectly ordered by God. But man is not the only one responsible for the presence of evil in the world: many of the angels, servants of God, will also rebel against Him and transgress His orders, eventually becoming the army of a malignant anti-God who contends with God for dominion over the world, and who will be the archetype of the Devil.
The idea of evil and sin is one of the decisive themes of Jewish thought since antiquity: a complex of ideas that will be continually reworked in response to the cultures with which the Jews will find themselves living in contact. Soon the idea of evil overlaps with the Jewish vision of sexuality, in an inextricable tangle that will be inherited by the Christian tradition and will become one of the most problematic and painful knots in the history of thought and custom in the West. But the mystical tradition of Judaism recovers and carries with it a more integrated and serene vision of sex; the influence of this thought will make itself felt right up to Freud.
In this course we will follow the evolution of thought on evil, on sin and on their multiple personifications (from the Serpent to Satan) in the different Jewish traditions from antiquity to the modern era, both canonical (Bible and rabbinic thought) and non-canonical (Dead Sea texts, apocryphal literature, mysticism and qabbalah), including early Christianity.