Exactly What Will I Be Doing In Jerusalem?

I am enrolled in the sabbatical program at the Tantur Ecumenical Institute For Theological Studies in Jerusalem. This is a six day a week program of study and renewal.

What characterizes this program of continuing education and spiritual renewal is the context of the Holy Land—"the fifth gospel." To read the story of Jesus and the first Christians in the context of this "fifth gospel" shapes not only our understanding of the Scriptures and their history of salvation, but also of how our Christian faith is embodied in concrete, complex reality. While we do many guided excursions (among them, a five-day trip to Galilee) to get to know the land where this faith originated, we focus not only on the stones of archeological remains, but also on the "living stones," the local Christian communities We study Eastern and Western churches in their difficult situation as minorities in the Holy Land. They share land and life with the Jewish and Muslim communities, whose faith and spirituality are also part of our study.

Specifically, the program examines....

• Ecumenism and the biblical foundations for Christian unity work, the development of the ecumenical movement, and where it is now.
• Local Churches where ecumenism is rooted in the local reality, which leads to a study of the Church’s history in the Holy Land, and of differing Eastern and Western spiritualities. This course also includes contact with the local Christian communities.
• Biblical Geography concentrates on the guided field trips, prepared by lectures, with maps and diagrams. Starting with Jerusalem and Bethlehem and their environs, we visit also the Negev and the Judean Deserts and the Dead Sea area. We also devote detailed attention to the Jerusalem of Jesus, as well as a five-day trip to the Galilee of the gospels. The study combines geography and archaeology with the biblical texts, aiming at a deeper understanding of their message.
• Scripture with a focus on "Jesus in his Cultural Milieu," reviews the concrete realities of family life, honour-and-shame culture and other dimensions of Jewish life and Middle Eastern life at the time of Jesus.
• Judaism in a study that presents the fundamental tenets of Jewish faith and Jewish living, its Covenant, Torah, Talmud; family and gender relations; prayer life, the role of the great festivals, the Land; Jewish-Christian dialogue.
• Islam through an examination that offers the faith and history of Islam, its encounters with the West, its social organization (family, gender relations), how it faces modernity and change.