Professor Smoak is fantastic! He's truly a master lecturer in my book. He brings up some of the most interesting themes and intersections of religion, sacred space, and history. To be clear this class is 12W, not 10W, they are different. The former has 20 people and the latter is 150 people, but the material is exactly the same. I've heard that TA's are harsh graders, but Professor Smoak I think was super lenient and understanding. I loved talking to him after class and receiving extremely thorough and thoughtful answers to my questions. If you think religious history is interesting this is the class for you.

I took this class thinking it would be a great elective to get me to my 12 units for the quarter. BOY WAS I WORNG! This professor assigns dense readings of 80 pages per week minimum if you're lucky. It was more like 100 pages per week which typically entailed 60 pages out of a textbook and 40 pages from the Jewish Bible. In terms of grading, he is definitely not an easy grader. If you avoid doing the readings and don't listen to lecture on top of not taking notes throughout the quarter, YOU WILL NOT DO WELL! Regarding finals week, he will slap you with a dense research paper and a final exam which will both be graded harshly. If you do not have to take him, DON'T TAKE HIM! This was the only A- on my transcript throughout my UCLA career which messed up my 4.0. I would tell you to go to his office hours, but he doesn't even go to them himself! On top of that, he is very terrible with responding to emails especially if you need something urgent [took 5-6 weeks to respond to urgent personal matter]! If you need an easier elective as a random major or a history class as history major, there are plenty of other way better courses and professors you can find. Overall, he's a nice guy, but this entails an unreasonable course and professor which will be toxic towards your course load during a quarter and most probably tarnish your GPA...

Absolutely loved this class! Fascinating subject and wonderful lecturer. I took two classes with Professor Smoak and I think he was the best professor I had at UCLA, truly knowledgable and passionate about the subject matter.

I will say, however, this class knocks out a lot of GE requirements but its also super work intensive. At this same time...I think I learned how to write college essays from this class. Definitely hard work but in my opinion it was worth it - at least if you are interested in the subject and ready to learn.

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.

I previously took the Bible class and really liked it so it prompted me to take this class. Professor Smoak is a great professor who's really passionate about this subject and makes himself available after class and tries to help students the best he can. While this class may not be an easy A it's still really fun and if you're interested in ancient Israel, you'll do good and succeed so long as you put in the effort. One of the best professors I've had at UCLA.

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.