IT'S LIKE STEPPING INTO A UNIVERSITY CLASSROOOM—UNLOCK ELITE INSIGHTS INTO THE NEW TESTAMENT!

The New Testament is a collection of ancient Greek religious texts. But for Christians, the New Testament is also scripture—the primary touchstone of Christian faith, theology, spirituality, ritual, and art. This class orients students to this remarkable literary collection. It also probes the most critical question of this course: what does it mean to study the New Testament in an academic frame? How does it contrast with religious or devotional approaches to the same text?

The twenty-seven texts of the New Testament we possess today were written two millennia ago. But what did writing and publishing look like in antiquity? And how were these texts passed down through the ensuing centuries?  Can we even determine whether the texts we hold in our hands are faithful copies of those penned millennia ago? How do we do this? Our journey begins with a look at the first discipline of biblical studies: textual criticism.

Jesus was Jewish. His family was Jewish. His followers were Jewish. To understand Jesus, then, we need to understand the shape of Judaism in the first century CE. How were Jews different from other ethnic groups in the Roman Empire? What beliefs and practices characterized their ancient religion? And how does Jesus fit into this picture?

In the first century CE, a single writer decided to pen an engaging, fast-paced narrate of Jesus’ life. This book—the Gospel we now know as Mark—portrays a Jesus who is shockingly secretive, powerful, even (on some level) divine. But who wrote this text? When did this person write it? Where did they write it? In this first lecture on a specific New Testament text, we will become acquainted with the tools scholars use to answer these and other historical questions.

The Gospels are historical sources. But they are also, crucially, literary sources as well, each crafted with distinctive themes, motifs, and plot elements. How can contemporary literary methods illuminate our study of the New Testament? And what hidden and deeper layers will we find beneath each of these texts? In this lesson, we will capture Mark's literary genius.

The Gospel of Mark is not the only account of Jesus’ life in the New Testament. There are others, including the first and, arguably, best known: Matthew. But why do we have multiple gospels? Why wasn’t one enough? Examining Matthew closely, we will uncover the forgotten and surprising reasons why ancient writers might have wanted to write more gospels. We will also become acquainted with perhaps the most influential narrative in the entire New Testament.

The third gospel in the New Testament, the gospel of Luke, contains many of the same stories as Matthew and Mark. But it also offers us something the other works do not give us: a direct glimpse, however faint, of its author’s aims. In this lesson, we look at Luke's unique framing. What will we learn about the text’s author? And how do these insights help us further understand why he and other authors decided to write texts that narrate the words and deeds of Jesus?

Mark, Matthew, and Luke tell many of the same stories. But in many of these stories—in hundreds of verses—they tell that story in almost identical language. Why are these texts so astoundingly similar? Did these gospels all inherit a common stream of tradition? Did they all copy the same source? Did they copy one another? Together, we will unravel one of the greatest mysteries in the history of the New Testament and unmask the first gospel.

Although Matthew and Luke took elements from the Gospel of Mark, the two also contain stories and sentences in common that do not appear in Mark—material that could not have come from that first gospel. These include some of the most inspiring and critical teachings of Jesus: the Our Father/Lord’s Prayer, the Beatitudes, and others. Did these iconic sayings come from another ancient source—a lost gospel? And if so, what would this gospel look like? Did it even exist?

The author of Luke wrote a monumental account of the life of Jesus. But scholars believe he also wrote a second work, a sequel to his Gospel: the book we now call “the Acts of the Apostles.” Why did the author of Luke decide to pen a second book? How does this book continue or extend the ideas of his Gospel? And what can this second book tell us about the agenda of that author and his place in Christian literature?

The Gospel of John is profoundly different than the Synoptic Gospels in style, language, and themes. It is also as subtle a literary work as any in the New Testament. Although it presents as a simple account of Jesus’ life, it is pervaded with cryptic, confusing sayings and hidden symbols. In this class, we explore this rich and enigmatic text—a gospel that has captivated believers and scholars for centuries.

The Gospel of John stands apart from the other New Testament gospels. But surprisingly, the very feature that makes it different from other gospels also links it to a set of three smaller works nestled near the end of the New Testament: the epistles, or letters, now known as 1 John, 2 John, and 3 John. Why are these texts so similar? Were they written by the same author? Where do they come from? And what can we learn about the landscape of ancient Christianity from them?

Christians are acquainted with the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. But dozens of other accounts of Jesus’ life survive from antiquity, some whole, some fragmentary. What do these other gospels teach? How do they portray Jesus? And, most importantly, why don’t they appear in contemporary Bibles? In this lesson, we explore the vibrant, bizarre, and intriguing images of Jesus constructed by the many so-called “apocryphal” gospels.

If Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John were only some of the dozens of gospels circulating in the second century CE, how did these (and only these) texts become folded into the Christian Bible? And if these texts were originally anonymous, how did they get the specific names now affixed to them? Together, we’ll follow an intriguing trail of clues to understand how Christians made one faith out of four gospels.

The dozens of surviving gospels offer tensive, if not contradictory, images of Jesus. Are any of these texts reliable? Can we separate fact from fiction, history from invention? And if so, what tools can we use to recover the historical Jesus from so many literary portraits? In this lesson, we will become acquainted with the “criteria” used by most scholars to develop a consistent reconstruction of Jesus.

Who was Jesus? What did he teach? Why did he die? Applying the criteria discussed in our last class, scholars have developed a relatively consistent understanding of the figure behind the many fluid and clashing portraits in our early gospels. This Jesus was an apocalyptic preacher—a figure who preached an imminent “kingdom of God”—before his sudden and shocking death. And yet, the cross did not mark the end of Jesus’ messianic aspirations; unexpectedly, it inaugurated that hope in his followers, family members, and new converts such as Paul.

Most of the texts in the New Testament aren’t narratives. They are (more or less) letters—private letters, open letters, long letters, short letters. But reading letters imposes a different set of challenges than reading narratives such as the Gospels. How do scholars grapple with this very different genre of literary works? How can we make sense of works that were not originally addressed to us? Is there a way to recover their lost contexts?

Because letters can be difficult to contextualize, readers can miss key clues as to their original meaning. In this lesson, we will ask an uncomfortable question. Have Christians misunderstood or distorted the words of the greatest Christian letter-writer of them all: Paul? What was Paul’s actual message? In this lesson, we will dive headlong into one of the most intense debates in the field of New Testament studies.

What do Paul’s letters reveal about the shape of early Christian gatherings? What do we know about the early Christian practices they hosted? And what do the letters tell us about the demographics, aspirations, and anxieties of the earliest believers in Jesus? In this lecture, we mine the letters of Paul—and some other early Christian documents—to bring the earliest Jesus movement to life.

Paul’s letters are addressed to other parties—to individual churches and persons in the first century CE. How, then, do we have copies of them today? Who made these copies, and who assembled them into a single collection? And—uncomfortable as it may be to ask: did editors and scribes alter the letters in any way? Discover the process by which Paul’s letters were gathered, altered, merged, and canonized.

Paul’s letters were eventually gathered into a single collection, ensuring they would be read widely. But ancient letter collections were vulnerable to tampering, up to and including the introduction of forged or falsely authored letters (“pseudepigrapha”). Could the same tampering have happened to Paul's letters? Are some of the letters of Paul in our own New Testament forged? How could we even tell? The detective game is on!

This lecture examines the disputed—probably pseudonymous—letters of Paul in the New Testament. We will delve into the literary and theological features that distinguish these texts from Paul’s undisputed letters. In turn, we will ask the critical question: why did the authors of the works write these letters? And why did they use Paul's name to do so?

In this lecture, we complete our survey of the disputed letters of Paul. We will also explore the most elusive of all the epistles traditionally attributed to Paul: the anonymous text known as Hebrews. Who wrote this text? Was it Paul? Was it someone else? And why did they write it? And what can we learn about the anxieties and agenda of its enigmatic author?

Paul is not the only figure remembered as a letter-writer. According to tradition, other early Christians wrote letters as well, including some contemporaries of Paul who might have clashed with Paul’s essential teachings: James and Jude, the brothers of Jesus. But are these letters authentic? What do they say? And what do they tell us about the conflicts and controversies of early Christianity?

Among the New Testament’s so-called “Catholic Epistles” are two letters that bear the name of Jesus’ best-known disciple: Peter. In this lecture, we examine the authorship, contents, and dating of these works. And through this exploration, we’ll ask: how did these writings shape early Christian thought and contribute to the developing New Testament canon?

Revelation is unlike any other text in the New Testament. It is filled with cryptic and bizarre images, from four horsemen who bring judgment upon humans, to a multiheaded, hideous beast that cannot be killed and a prostitute who drinks human blood. In this lesson, we unravel the layers of this mysterious and dramatic book. Along the way, we will ask: Where does the book come from? What do its unusual images mean? And how has this book imprinted itself on the Christian imagination?

The twenty-seven texts of the New Testament are an eclectic collection. They were drafted as independent documents. And they espouse different, even competing or conflicting, views. How, then, did they become a single collection? Who chose those books over other potential candidates? In this final, exciting lecture, we complete the story of the New Testament. And as we will see, nothing about the collection’s emergence was inevitable. The idea of organizing these texts in a single collection was not an obvious one to many Christians. Other combinations of these texts existed in antiquity. And even as the idea of a single collection was taking shape, Christians continued to debate which books should be included in it, developing alternative versions of the collection.