This is my second class with Professor Smoak and I loved it just as much if not more than his Jerusalem class. This is a brand new class, and it is just so unique and innovative and frankly some of the most compelling material I have ever studied. It is almost entirely a course about the Old Testament since that is Smoak's specialty and because UCLA is a public school and teaching NT and theology is a sticky business (as of 2021 there are no theology scholars here). The course looks at the methodologies of Hebrew Bible scholarship and the implications of biblical interpretation both in antiquity and in our contemporary 19th-21st century scholarship of the bible. I'd say half the class is learning about Kugel's four assumptions and the beginnings of biblical criticism, archeology, and research (documentary hypothesis and so on) and the other half is discussing politics and different schools of biblical thought in the current field of biblical studies.
The class has weekly in-focus assignments (you're allowed to miss 2), midterm, final, and an 8-page final paper. The midterm was much harder than the final, but Smoak is a really understanding professor who I think is quite a lenient grader. I only took this P/NP b/c I started the quarter knowing I was going to have my hands tied with family matters and I knew that my time would be limited for this course, so indicated that immediately when I enrolled in it.
Smoak does a wonderful job with this material. His lectures are informative and legitimately interesting if you like "the history of the bible". I learned awesome bits of information. There's also a fair amount of discussion in this class unlike his lower divs, which is incredible because I think Smoak is the perfect guy to moderate discussion, not being too assertive but speaking when necessary. We had a couple of senior citizens in the class which was rather fun. Shouts out to Holly for always having a question or three. What I thought was probably the most profound was Smoak who sort of introduced the class to his school of biblical thought, taught that no reading of the bible is free from ideological influence or social location, and that interpreters of the bible (whether scholars, theologians, or preachers) have a moral obligation to be aware of the political and social interests and that the interpretive task is in favor of liberating marginalized groups. That take on the bible was very new to me and comes to show how Smoak grounds his work on ancient history and literature with the effects/importance it has on the present and vice versa.

Professor Smoak and TA Bryan are really clear and helful in teaching, and lectures and class materials are well-organized. I took this class as W2 as freshmen and foreigner, and I was literally struggling with papers and understanding of the religious texts. The writing requirement for this class is really high. However, if you are good in writing and have the capability to handle a bunch of English religious readings, please take this class since it will provide with a good opportunity to get to know histroy of Judais, Christianity, and Islam.

This class was hands down my favorite class at UCLA. Smoak is an engaging lecturer and the material synthesizes different subjects (space and religion) in a way I hadn't seen before. I have never felt like I learned more than in this class. That said, if you have no interest in the material, this class might not be worth it for you. Lastly, if you notice your TA is a hard grader, switch sections. My TA would take-off points and not elaborate why, so I never got the opportunity to improve on later papers. I would suggest if you have this issue, go to Smoak's office hours because Smoak was more helpful than my TA for paper revisions.

Professor Smoak is amazing. He is kind, sweet, helpful, and humorous. I really enjoyed his class and he was so helpful in explaining the material. There were five vocab quizzes and two midterms; one in the middle of the quarter and one at the end. He also had homework assignments from a textbook. His class could get a little boring but he is amazing and makes the class enjoyable.

I would recommend taking this class. The topics discussed are very interesting if you have any remote interest in Jerusalem or its history - however, it does not dive into its modern day dilemmas. Smoak keeps lectures interesting and going to class is not miserable at all. The workload is a lot - a one page "essay" every week, 2 6-8 page essays, a midterm and a final. Its doable - you do not need to read the assigned reading to get a good grade. Grading depends a lot on your TA, I had Bryan and I liked him.

Don’t take it! Especially if you are looking for an upper division course to fulfill minimum unit requirements and is not a history major like myself.
Extremely hard content, slides don’t contain much information, not recorded. Bruin learn page is very messy, around 70 pages of reading per week (including Torah reading and textbook)
Professor is extremely nice and helpful, but can be hard to understand most of the time during lecture.
2 exams in person (multiple choice, writing and connecting), not open note or cheat sheet allowed. He curves the exam if the mean is low (1 exam mean was around 75%)
1 final paper - 10 pages minimum - sources need to be mainly books and some articles are allowed.

Professor Smoak was a great lecturer but his slides weren't the most helpful. It is also rather hard to take notes that will be comprehensible later when studying for the midterm/final. You should also go to every lecture and pay close attention if you don't have time for all the readings assigned every week. I went into this class with little to no knowledge of Jerusalem and I was too busy to do the readings, but I found that the information he goes over in class was super helpful when writing my papers.
There are two papers for this class, one with a pretty strict topic and a second where you can work more freely. The grading for these papers depends on your TA, but in my case, they weren't too bad. The papers are graded pretty fairly, but a lot of people do end up scoring in the low B to high C range.
Overall, the class is very interesting but if you do not consider yourself to be a strong writer and you are looking to score an A, I would reconsider taking it.

Professor Smoak is so amazing and passionate about the content covered in his lectures! I seriously can't recommend this enough as a writing 2 class. He was very invested in our success and very accommodating if you ever stopped to talk to him after class. The content was entirely new to me like I had never read the bible so I was learning everything for the first time but it was presented in a really interesting way. He doesn't post lecture slides so you do have to show up to lectures in order to follow and prep for the midterm. TA's are super helpful for midterm prep though!! My TA did review with us and really set everyone up for success (it was also a online midterm and you had all day to start it with a time limit once started). For the final he was the absolute best prof ever and hosted a review session that made the final SO GOOD. Go seriously, if you're busy cancel plans and go to his final review session lol. As long as you communicate with your TA about your paper you will get an A! They help so much and even help with thesis crafting / structural help. There were also weekly one page essays but they were related to lecture and not difficult at all, they also helped prepare for the final paper so definitely worth putting in the effort! This was an amazing class to take for a writing 2 requirement, highly recommend with professor Smoak!

I rarely write reviews for classes, but I had to for this one. This class was easily my favorite of all that I have taken at UCLA. Every class was genuinely engaging and so interesting that I would never find that my attention was wandering during lecture. As someone who grew up reading many of the texts from the class, I never realized how much was going over my head until I took the course. The class grade consisted of 10 short reading responses (which help to study later for the midterm), a midterm, attendance, a final essay, and a final exam. None of the exams were unreasonable (I just took the final, so don't know my final grade yet) but they definitely required attending the lectures. I would absolutely recommend this class.

Since its Writing 2, its definitely writing intensive. He didn't post the lecture slides, so you need to come to lecture. Participation in discussions are graded. You're practically guaranteed an A though. Only 1 midterm which was completely online (which he gave you a study guide of the exact vocab and locations that would be on the exam). At his final exam review, he read us all the exact questions he would have on the final exam. There's one big 10 page essay due at the end of the quarter as well, but if you get a lot of feedback from the TAs, you'll land an A easy.