Baylor students are required to take six hours of religion courses to graduate. Most students decide to take Christian Scriptures for their first freshman semester and Christian Heritage for their second. I didn’t have any more room in my schedule last semester, so I’ve decided to take Scriptures this semester.

On the first day of Scriptures, we had a light in-class discussion with the professor about the class. One of the questions that popped up was, “Why are you taking this class?” Most of us just sat and grinned because we all knew (including the professor) that most of the students were taking the class “because we have to”. After some discussion of other reasons and explanations of the syllabus, I learned that this class might actually be really interesting.

I’ve heard disparaging stories from my classmates who have taken the class before me, so I wasn’t really looking forward to it. I dreaded the idea of reading hundreds of pages a night. Perhaps my classmates were exaggerating or I just got lucky with a cool professor because, so far, it’s not that bad.

The readings are light enough, and the topics we discuss in class are very thought-provoking. We’ve discussed problems with transmitting copies of scripture, conflict with translation, and the validity of the Bible. As a Christian, I think this will be a nice scholarly way to examine many aspects of scripture and the different opinions about it. I imagine that it would still be an interesting class to take for non-Christians, so they can get a better understanding of what the many Christians in this world are about.