Analyze how the different obligations that Abraham is subject to in the biblical parable of the Binding of Isaac (the Akedah) can or cannot ultimately be harmonized.
Pick 1-2 Hassidic stories from Martin Buber’s collection and respond to the following statement by carefully analyzing the text(s) you select: Hassidic tales frequently strive to overcome the distinction between religious experience and real (or everyday) life.
Analyze how Jesus’s parable “The Good Samaritan” would have been a provocation to its original audience. Be sure to consider the possibilities for—and challenges to— identification with various figures in the parable that its first hearers likely would have experienced.
Analyze the role of violence in Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave.” Do you see it as centrally important or as relatively unimportant to the allegory as a whole? Explain why.
Compare and contrast the views of beauty, truth, justice (/right and wrong), and ultimate understanding (feel free to focus on just some or even one of these!) articulated in the following passages, the first spoken by Socrates to Glaucon in Plato’s “Allegory of the Cave”; the second by Wang Ni to Yeh Chueh in The Book of Chuang Tzu:
