I found the readings to be very useful and very introspective. The reading about Feminist Criticism continues to be my favorite reading because it shows how the Bible is not authoritative in being the word of God. It is actually the word of man as a response to an encounter with God and unfortunately some men used the authoritative nature of the Bible to maintain male dominance. The voice of women was not heard in the Bible very much and if it was it was when they were supporting male dominance. The fact that this reading sought to uncover the truth behind the author\’s intentions shows that critical thinking is very much a part of it, which is why it is so useful for my project. Another reading that I found interesting was the Gospel of Thomas. It gave a different perspective of what a book like the Bible could be used for. The Gospel of Thomas was associated with Gnosticism, which is a faith centered around salvation through knowledge. You would be saved if you knew the Gospel of Thomas well and requires nothing else. Only knowing a the gospel is not enough and is also bad because it does not call for self analysis. If you know you are saved you can do what you want and allows for inhumanity to occur. This is apparent in the act of slavery where the slavemaster was a \”Christian\”, but yet could do such inhumane things to another human being. This was possible because the slavemaster knew he was saved and deteremined that the African was not a human, which is why he could sell, kill, and rape innocent people. The reading about the Gospel of Thomas shows the importance of having a critcal mind because a critcal mind would see how Gnosticism is not of God but of man\’s attempt to determine his own salvation. Being critical was an intricate part of Christianity and slavery would not work if the slaves knew the true nature of Christianity, which is to be in conflict with society. So the slavemaster had to adopt a type of Gnosticism that could allow the selling of human beings for purposes of profit. The Gospel of Thomas is useful for my project because it is a reading that is an example of a reading that needs to be analyzed and broken down with challenging thoughts. Apparently, people were dissecting the Gospel of Thomas thoroughly because it is not a widely published piece of literature.

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