On Sunday, April 12, the Yale University Bible Center’s “Reading Bible” class will begin in the basement of Yale’s Trinity Episcopal Church, and will offer a guided Bible study course that is meant to be an opportunity for students to engage in “deep Bible study,” the church’s president said in a statement.
The first class of students will begin on April 14, said Dean David B. Woodson, in a phone interview on Sunday.
“I am so excited for the future of the Reading Bible,” Woodson said.
“This class will provide a welcome new way to study the Bible, and I know that it will inspire a great deal of curiosity among those who are interested in learning more about the Bible.”
The first reading of the new Bible class will be April 13.
The program is part of the church, which has been hosting Bible studies since 2015.
The university’s Bible Center has a mission to provide a “spiritual and social context for the Scriptures” by “encouraging the use of the Bible in the study of theology, history, ethics, and the study and practice of art and culture.”
It also “provides a platform for scholars and students of theology to collaborate, share, and discuss the texts in a variety of contexts.”
“Through these events, we hope to help advance the understanding of the Scriptures and the biblical worldview,” Wood said.
The church’s first Bible class was offered at Harvard Divinity School in 2011, Wood said, and “the number of students attending has increased substantially.”
The Yale Bible Center, which is located in New Haven, has received hundreds of applications since the class began in 2015, and has enrolled more than 100 students in the classes.
“The goal of the program is to teach the Word of God, to explore the Scriptures, and to deepen our understanding of Christianity and its foundational texts,” Wood wrote in an email to The Washington Post.
“We encourage students to share their own readings of the texts, and encourage them to seek out their peers to study with.”
The New Haven Bible Center also offers a “biblical language and vocabulary” course, and is working with other Bible centers around the country to develop a Bible study curriculum.
The Reading Bible program is intended to provide an introduction to the Bible for students of all ages, and it includes a study guide and a Bible dictionary.
The readings of “the Bible and the Bible studies” that are offered are intended to be “exchange-oriented,” Wood added.
“At the end of the day, we are trying to bring together the best texts from different traditions and to offer a new way of looking at the Bible,” he said.
