Theology and Religious Studies: Research

The Master’s programme Biblical Studies and Digital Humanities, specialization of the Theology and Religious Studies: Research, focuses on the study of the Hebrew Scriptures by means of computational tools that have entered the field of “Digital Humanities”. The application of these tools to texts and traditions challenges the traditional disciplinary boundaries between the Humanities and the Sciences. It has a great potential for interdisciplinary research, addressing pertinent questions in the biblical scholarship, as well as new questions that arise with the new possibilities of corpus analysis one could only dream of in the pre-digital era.

In your studies, you will deepen your knowledge of biblical texts and languages, acquire basic programming skills in the Python language, and will learn how to apply these skills for textual analysis of the Bible or other ancient sources. Depending on your own interests, you can specialise further in biblical studies, programming for linguistics, or Bible translation.

This research programme is offered by the Eep Talstra Centre for Bible and Computer (ETCBC), an internationally renowned research group that combines the meticulous analysis of biblical texts and languages with innovative state-of-the-art methods of digital analysis. Students of this programme participate in the research meetings of this centre and are offered the possibility to do an internship with one of the ETCBC researchers.

Are you interested in deepening your expertise in Biblical Studies, in crossing borders between disciplines and to enter unexplored paths of innovative research, this programme will be a perfect choice.

The Bible is the world’s most influential book. The specialization “Contextual Biblical Interpretation” trains you to understand how the Bible is being used, what kind of effect the use of the Bible has on its readers, and how that is (and isn’t) related to the origins of the Biblical books. How can the same book be used to advocate human dignity and be claimed by populist politicians? What role does the Bible play in times of crises (such as the Corona crisis) and what is the role of the Bible in the arts? How does the Bible relate to issues such as gender, race and class across the world and throughout history?

Through courses on both Hebrew Bible/Old Testament and New Testament case studies, you gain a broad overview of the role that the Bible plays in different contexts. The relationship between text and context is of particular interest: contextuality is a catalyst for interpretation. Each context invites new and unique interpretations, showing how inexhaustible the Bible is, both as a sacred text and as a cultural classic. Students can combine courses on biblical subjects with courses in the history of religions or church history and disciplines such as systematic theology, missiology or Bible translation.

The Centre for Contextual Biblical Interpretation in Amsterdam is a hub for research on the use of the Bible. Its academic colloquium offers a great opportunity for exploring cutting edge research with the researchers themselves. Ongoing research includes topic such as ecological hermeneutics, intercultural hermeneutics, biblical interpretation in church plants, autobiographical criticism, masculinities and queer studies and beyond. Also, the Centre hosts the exchange program Bridging Gaps, creating an intercultural community of learners with students from all over the globe in the fall. Annually, a senior scholar delivers the Dom Hélder Câmara lecture in contextual biblical interpretation in November. Uniquely, the Centre is a collaborative effort of both the Protestant Theological University and the Faculty of Religion and the Theology of the Vrije Universiteit, giving members access to both academic communities.

Ever since the 6th century BC the sacred writings have been translated and are now collected in our Bibles. The processes of Bible translation overlapped and interacted significantly with the processes of Bible formation and will continue to do so, especially through modern-day technology.

These technological changes, from scroll to codex, print and digital media, had and will have a deep impact on the way the sacred texts of Jewish and Christian communities will be understood, translated, distributed, performed and received in the future.

The Research Master's specialization Bible Translation gives you a unique opportunity:
exploring the principles and practices of Bible translation from a cross-disciplinary perspective.

The questions that drive this programme are both fundamental and applied in nature:

• How can we understand the interplay of historical, hermeneutical, linguistic, cultural and exegetical conditions that shape Bible translations?
• What is the relationship between Bible translation, cultural contexts and biblical scholarship, what are the best practices in modern Bible translation projects?
• How can we integrate the powerful tools of digital humanities in present and future practices of Bible translation?
• What is the role of power, inequality and gender in Bible translation?

This thematic specialization combines hands-on modules from our interfaculty programme with relevant modules offered by the Centre for Contextual Biblical Interpretation and by the research master specialization Biblical Studies and Digital Humanities.

The Research Master’s programme Church History, specialization of Theology & Religious Studies: Research, focuses on themes such as exile and identity, and on philosophical interplay with religious topics.

Christians who were forced to leave their homelands, kept opposing to the predominant culture. Thus they felt like strangers or pilgrims, looking for a sense of belonging. Ever since the days of Augustine believers saw themselves as foreigners on earth, on their way to the heavenly fatherland. This called for a specific sense of identity, a notion which can only be studied when relevant social and philosophical ideas are taken into account.

This idea of being a foreigner was a heritage of the days of Homer and so Christian motives need to be seen from different angles. Therefore this Research Master’s programme focuses on different aspects of the notion of exile, identity, and cultural currents.

The Research Master's programme Interreligious Studies is a relatively new, but growing specialization of the Research Master's Theology & Religious Studies. The focal point of this specialization are the multiple dimensions of how individuals and groups who orient around religion interact differently with one another, along with the implications of this interaction for communities, civil society and global politics.

Drawing upon a variety of disciplinary perspectives (hermeneutics, sociology, theology, ritual/spatial studies, genealogy a.o.) this programme is unique in its kind.

Are you interested in deepening your expertise in Christian theology, especially from a Reformed and Evangelical perspective? Do you want to learn how to cross borders between disciplines and to enter unexplored paths of innovative research?

Following the lead of great theologians such as Calvin and Edwards, Wesley and McClendon, Bavinck and Berkouwer, the Research Master’s programme Reformed and Evangelical Theology challenges you to reconsider your theological convictions.

Contemporary developments in society raise new theological questions, and this programme trains students to take these questions seriously. For example, how can our churches and ecclesiology adapt to an ever more flexible and digital world? How should Christian theologians conceptualize God’s wrath in a time of religious extremism and violence? Depending on your own interests, you can specialize in a specific theological tradition, thinker or topic.

This specialization of the Theology and Religious Studies Research Master is offered by the Herman Bavinck Centre for Reformed and Evangelical Theology (HBCRET). Students of this programme will be invited to participate in the research meetings of this centre and are offered the possibility to do an internship with one of the HBCRET researchers.

In this Research Master’s programme Islamic Studies and Theology, specialization of Theology & Religious Studies: Research, you will expand your knowledge and research skills within a broad interdisciplinary framework and prepare yourself for further graduate studies in Islam.

Within the programme you can focus on a specialized area within Theology or Religious Studies. It encourages you to pursue your own interests. You will develop knowledge and skills on topics and debates concerning Islam within contemporary contexts. Furthermore, you will examine materials that are at the forefront of academic research in Islamic Studies and that provide a foundation for future research.

This Research Master’s programme is connected to the VU Amsterdam’s Centre for Islamic Theology, that offers several courses on Islam in the modern world. Among others, you can choose for extra-courses in Islamic hermeneutics, religious transmission and Islam in context.

Early Christianity was never a single phenomenon. Instead, the label refers to a wide variety of groups that held diverging ideas and practiced their beliefs in just as wide a variety of settings. The Early Christianity track of the Research Master’s programme will introduce you into this variety of early Christianity, but also into their rootedness in early Judaism and the Greco-Roman world. You can choose your own specialisation and decide which focus your own research will have. 

Questions to be addressed in this programme are:

• How should we weigh current scholarship on the Greek text of the New Testament?
• What can we say about the historical Jesus?
• How should we understand Paul’s contribution to the growth of what would become Christianity?
• What dynamics characterise the process of growth from proto-orthodoxy into the orthodox Catholic church of the 4th century?
• How do early Christian rituals relate to e.g. the practices of Hellenistic mystery cults?
• Did the first generations of Christians lead completely different lives from their pagan and Jewish neighbours?

Religion is a pivotal phenomenon in the modern world, including the West: it inspires, it motivates, it consoles, but at times it can also obstruct or even harm. Consequently, it is highly contested: its truth-claims, its attitude towards reality, its societal consequences, and its relation to contemporary science. The Philosophy & Religion track of the Research Master’s programme will introduce you into some of the core issues surrounding religion in Western democracies and it will do so from an empirically informed philosophical and theological perspective. You can choose your own specialisation and decide which focus your own research will have. 

Questions to be addressed in this programme are:

• What is the nature and value of religious faith?
• What ethical and meta-ethical challenges does religion face?
• What are the main arguments for and against belief in God?
• How should we construe and assess naturalism and atheism in our modern world?
• How does religious faith relate to science?
• How can we conceptualize the nature of God in Abrahamic religions?