Arabic and Biblical Studies

Arabic and Biblical Studies is a pairing that brings together two of the world's most significant linguistic and textual traditions. Arabic is the most widely spoken language of the Middle East and North Africa, used daily by hundreds of millions of people and serving as a major working language for international organisations, commerce, and diplomacy. Biblical studies examines the texts of the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament in their original languages and contexts, asking how these texts were composed, how they have been interpreted, and how they have shaped the religious, cultural, and intellectual traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and, indirectly, Islam.

At the University of St Andrews, this four-year full-time programme develops your Arabic language skills from the level you bring to the programme, working towards genuine communicative and reading proficiency, alongside serious scholarly engagement with biblical texts and their worlds. Arabic is by far the most commonly used language of the Middle East, and studying it alongside almost any subject, including biblical studies, offers the opportunity for comparative analyses across different languages, literatures, cultures, histories, and religious traditions. The year abroad gives you the opportunity to immerse yourself in an Arabic-speaking environment, which is transformative for language acquisition.

Graduates of this unusual combination are well placed for careers in religious education, scholarship, interfaith dialogue, journalism, international relations, diplomacy, translation, humanitarian work, and organisations engaged with the Middle East and North Africa. The combination of Arabic and deep textual and theological knowledge is particularly distinctive in religious and interfaith contexts and in academic research. Postgraduate study in Arabic, Semitic languages, biblical studies, theology, or Middle Eastern studies is a natural route for those who wish to develop their expertise further.