'It is quite true that the Seventh Day is meant to teach the power of the Unoriginate and the non-action of created beings. But let us not for this reason abrogate the laws laid down for its observance, and light fires or till the ground or carry loads or institute proceedings in court...'

'If we keep and observe these, we shall gain a clearer conception of those things of which these are the symbols...'

Quoted in Yehoshua Amir, 'Authority and Interpretation of Scripture in Philo' in Mikra (ed. Mulder, M.J. and Sysling, H. [Peabody: Hendrickson, 2004])

Interesting, huh? So understanding the meaning of the symbol doesn't negate the need for the symbol. And understanding the spiritual meaning of the Sabbath doesn't constitute an excuse for disobedience.

Did you know it's the earliest known alphabetic language?  Me either.

Sadly, most of our work will be from transliterated texts not the original cuneiform script.  Which is a shame since I quite liked the idea of being able to wander round the British Museum reading stuff.

If you're not sure what cuneiform looks like there are some nice pictures here.

I've now had the first lecture for all my courses. One of the things that seems very different is the way work is assessed. There seems to be a lot more fluidity and discretion on the part of the lecturer. Part of which depends on their assessment of your contribution to class discussions. So for those of us who'd rather sit round chatting about what we think than write essays on it where you have to actually read stuff and check footnotes and all that, this seems ideal.

No word limits either. Just '20-25 pages' or 'a major paper'... So that makes life easier.