Historical Introduction to the New Testament

3 units

What can be known -- from an historical perspective -- about the life and teachings of Jesus and his earliest followers? How did Jesus see himself and how did his followers see him? How did the lives, teachings, and deaths of Jesus and his followers come to form the heart of a new movement? If Jesus and the apostles were all Jews, how did Christianity emerge as a distinct religion? This course investigates these questions through a focus on the earliest sources for Jesus and his first followers, including and extending beyond the canonical books of the Christian New Testament. Our approach in this course is historical and literary, rather than theological or confessional: we ask what Jesus, his first followers, and their Jewish and pagan contemporaries did and believed, and we try to catch glimpses of the worlds in which they lived and the cultures which they took for granted.