Having successfully completed this course, students will have demonstrated that they

• Have read the Book of Ezekiel carefully and are familiar with its contents and themes;
• Can interpret passages within Ezekiel in their own right and in their socio-historical, literary, and canonical contexts;
• Have identified central issues in the critical study of Ezekiel;
• Can articulate the book's primary theological and ethical concerns;
• Can use appropriate scholarly interpretive tools; and
• Can recognize hermeneutical issues arising from the diverse contexts of contemporary readers.

The Book of Ezekiel is one of the most challenging books of the entire Hebrew Bible: it's awkward, offensive, embarrassing, irascible, and sometimes just plain incomprehensible. Although it is one of the most cohesive prophetic books--reflecting a remarkably coherent theological outlook, penned in a fairly consistent literary style--its contents pose significant challenges to its 21st century readers. It presents a destructive deity: a God whose patience has run out and is bent on inflicting expansive judgment on Israel. It depicts a prophet engaged in symbolic actions, ranging from the peculiar--lying on one side for days on end, then the other--to the disgusting--cooking his meals over dung. It contains fantastical visions of the temple: the one about to be destroyed as well as the one that will be restored in the future. It describes Israel's infidelity to YHWH in highly sexualised terms, using ancient profanity and triggering deep discomfort in an age of #MeToo.

That Ezekiel is a difficult book to read and to understand, for this and other reasons, has long been acknowledged by the communities that consider it sacred: Jewish tradition holds that the book should not be read alone, nor should it be read by anyone under 30. This course has no age requirement, but students will work together with the professor in a variety of ways in order to get to grips with the book and its contents: reading it section by section, examining the language and imagery it uses to communicate with its audience(s), analysing its message in conversation with the book's historical and religious contexts, and seeking to make (some) sense of its particular theological concerns.