Course 1: The Gloss
Diploma Program · 3 Credits · Complete Course Preview
There is a text underneath two thousand years of packaging, and neither the believer nor the skeptic has read it. Both sides argue with the packaging instead of reading the primary source. The theologian saw a job opportunity and built a framework. The skeptic saw an insufficient explanation and founded a competing discipline. Both have been hiring ever since. Neither has, at any point, gone back and checked what the sentence might actually mean.
This course teaches the student how to see the gloss before they encounter four thousand years of it across the rest of the program. The Adler reading method, the architecture of the Hebrew language, and the configuration management argument that demonstrates the text's internal coherence. Before you can see the story, you have to learn to see what has been covering it up.
Below is the complete content of the first course in the Diploma program. The textbook. Every assignment. Free to read, free to work through at your own pace. The textbook is published on the ebook platform of your choice, and it is free there too.
We publish it this way because we think the best case for a program is the program itself. A brochure can promise anything. A curriculum has to hold up under a reader. If you want to know what the first course of the Diploma program looks like, you can find out by doing it, not by reading about it.
If the material reaches you, enroll. If it does not, you will have spent nothing and still come away with a book that names something most Christians have carried for years without a word for.
How this course is structured. Course 1 is built around one textbook and three assignments. You read The Gloss first. Then you complete Assignment 1, which asks you to perform the reading move the book has been teaching you, on a passage of Scripture you had inherited a gloss about. Assignment 2 asks you to explain what you have been studying to a friend, in the voice a real conversation would take. Assignment 3 asks you to take the same reading move outside of Scripture, into the wild, and demonstrate that the muscle the book built is yours. Three credits. Three assignments. One complete way of learning to read past the gloss.
The Textbook
The Gloss
Eleven chapters, one sustained move: before you can see the text of Scripture, you have to learn to see what has been covering it up. The book is published on the ebook platform of your choice — Amazon, Apple Books, Kobo, Barnes & Noble, and others — and is free on all of them. Download it on whichever reader you already use and begin. Also included at the below link is the audio book in free MP3 files.
The book is distributed through books2read.com/thegloss, which is a universal links page that will route you to the store you prefer. Pick whichever platform your library lives on. The price is zero on every one of them.
The Three Assignments
Each assignment is a complete work package: the reading that precedes it, the structure of the work, and the specification for the paper and videos the student produces. The three assignments build on each other. Assignment 1 gives you the move on the page. Assignment 2 gives you the move in conversation. Assignment 3 gives you the move outside of Scripture, in a domain the book did not touch.
The Gloss You Carried
Read the textbook. Choose one of three worked scenarios — Jeremiah 29:11, Genesis 1:1–2, or Philippians 4:13 — and perform the Adler close-read in your own voice. Produce a paper of roughly 800 to 1,000 words and a recorded video of ten minutes. Respond to three challenge questions in a second video.
Explain It to a Friend
The register changes. You are no longer writing to demonstrate a move to an instructor. You are writing as someone who has learned something and is telling another person what you have learned — a real friend, not a catechumen and not a skeptic. Roughly 1,000 to 1,200 words, a ten-minute video, and a challenge response.
The Transfer: Finding a Wellhausen in the Wild
The final assignment. Take the reasoning move the book uses against Julius Wellhausen in Chapter 5, and apply it somewhere the author did not. Somewhere outside of Scripture entirely. Find a self-referencing analytical model in the wild, walk it through the five diagnostic questions, and produce the paper, the video, and the response.
Ready to Enroll?
Course 1 of the Diploma program requires no formal application. You can register directly with the College administration and begin the work. Tuition is due at successful completion, not at enrollment, so there is no financial commitment to start.