New Testament.pdf

The New Testament

Part I

Professor Bart D. Ehrman

T HE T EACHING C OMPANY ®

Bart D. Ehrman, Ph.D.

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Bart Ehrman is the Bowman and Gordon Gray Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at

Chapel Hill. With degrees from Wheaton College (B.A.) and Princeton Theological Seminary (M.Div. and Ph.D.,

magna cum laude ), he taught at Rutgers for four years before moving to UNC in 1988. During his tenure at UNC,

he has garnered numerous awards and prizes, including the Students’ Undergraduate Teaching Award (1993), the

Ruth and Philip Hettleman Prize for Artistic and Scholarly Achievement (1994), and now the Bowman and Gordon

Gray Award for excellence in teaching (1998).

With a focus on early Christianity in its Greco-Roman environment and a special expertise in the textual criticism of

the New Testament, Professor Ehrman has published dozens of book reviews and over twenty scholarly articles for

academic journals. He has also authored or edited eight books, including Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New

Millennium (Oxford University Press, 1999); The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian

Writings (Oxford, 1997; 2 nd ed. 1999); After the New Testament: A Reader in Early Christianity (Oxford, 1999 );

The New Testament and Other Early Christian Writings: A Reader (Oxford, 1998); The Orthodox Corruption of

Scripture (Oxford, 1993); and (as co-editor) The Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research (Eerdmans,

1996). He is currently at work on a new Greek-English edition of the Apostolic Fathers for the Loeb Classical

Library (Harvard University Press).

Professor Ehrman is a popular lecturer, giving numerous talks each year for such groups as the Carolina Speakers

Bureau, the UNC Program for the Humanities, the Biblical Archaeology Society, various civic groups, and

universities across the nation. He has served as the President of the Society of Biblical Literature, SE Region; book

review editor of the Journal of Biblical Literature ; editor of the Scholar’s Press Monograph Series The New

Testament in the Greek Fathers ; and co-editor of the E.J. Brill series New Testament Tools and Studies . Among his

administrative responsibilities, he has served on the executive committee of the Southeast Council for the Study of

Religion and has chaired the New Testament textual criticism section of the Society of Biblical Religion, as well as

serving as Director of Graduate Studies at the Department of Religious Studies at UNC.

Table of Contents

The New Testament

Part I

Professor Biography ............................................................................................i

Foreword .............................................................................................................1

Lecture One The Early Christians and Their Literature .................2

Lecture Two The Greco-Roman Context........................................5

Lecture Three Ancient Judaism ........................................................8

Lecture Four The Earliest Traditions about Jesus .........................12

Lecture Five MarkJesus the Suffering Son of God...................16

Lecture Six MatthewJesus the Jewish Messiah.......................20

Lecture Seven LukeJesus the Savior of the World ......................24

Lecture Eight JohnJesus the Man from Heaven .........................28

Lecture Nine Noncanonical Gospels .............................................32

Lecture Ten The Historical JesusSources and Problems .........36

Lecture Eleven The Historical JesusSolutions and Methods ........39

Lecture Twelve Jesus, the Apocalyptic Prophet ................................42

Glossary .............................................................................................................45

Biographical Notes ............................................................................................49

Timeline .................................................................................................. in Part II

Bibliography ........................................................................................... in Part II

The New Testament

Scope:

The New Testament is undoubtedly the single most important book in the history of Western civilization, whether

seen as a religious book of faith or as a cultural artifact. It is probably also the most widely disputed and

misunderstood. The twenty-four lectures of this course will approach the New Testament from a historical

perspective, bracketing questions of belief and theological truth to acquire a historically rich grounding for our

understanding of these foundational documents.

The course will begin with four lectures on the historical context in which the New Testament was written,

considering both the world of Greco-Roman pagan cults and the world of early Judaism—examining, that is, the

beliefs, sacred spaces, liturgical practices, and distinguishing features of the religions surrounding the birth of

Christianity.

In the second four lectures of Part I, we will examine the New Testament Gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and

John. These are our principal sources for knowing about the life and teachings of Jesus; they are also major literary

works in their own right, each with its own perspective on who Jesus was and why his life and death matter. A

major methodological concern will be to allow each of these books to speak for itself, rather than assume they all

portray Jesus in the same way. Individual lectures will be devoted to establishing the distinctive portrayals of Jesus

in each of the Gospels. An additional lecture will look at how Jesus is portrayed in two Gospels that did not make it

into the New Testament, the Gospels of Peter and Thomas.

Part I concludes with four lectures that will take the results of our discussions and, in a sense, move behind them to

see what we can learn about the historical Jesus himself and what he actually said and did. After considering what

noncanonical sources (e.g., Roman and Jewish authors) say about Jesus, we will discuss the kinds of criteria

historians have devised for using the Gospels not as literary texts but as historical sources for Jesus’ life. We will

then apply these criteria to reconstruct his actual words and deeds. We will see that the earliest records of Jesus are

probably right in portraying him as a kind of apocalyptic prophet who anticipated that God would soon intervene in

the course of history to overthrow the forces of evil and establish his good kingdom on earth and that people needed

to repent in preparation for it. We will also consider the circumstances that led to his death at the hands of the

Roman governor of Judea, Pontius Pilate.

In Part II of the course, we will move to consider the Book of Acts—the earliest surviving history of the early

Christian movement—then the twenty-one epistles of the New Testament. Because thirteen of these epistles claim to

be written by the apostle Paul, we will spend some time trying to understand his life and theology. Paul was a Jew

who converted to faith in Jesus after being a persecutor of the church. His letters are addressed to churches that he

had founded, principally among Gentiles. In them, he spells out his convictions that a person can be made right with

God only through the death and resurrection of Jesus (not, for example, through the Jewish Law) and draws

numerous ethical and theological implications. Following our discussion of Paul’s own letters, we will devote a

lecture to considering the relationship of Paul and Jesus, to see whether, as some people have claimed, Paul

transformed the religion of Jesus into a religion about Jesus.

We will then consider other New Testament books that claim Paul as their author that modern scholars have

concluded are, in fact, pseudonymous. Finally, we will move into a discussion of the remaining writings of the New

Testament, including the books of 1 Peter and Hebrews and ending with a discussion of the book of Revelation, a

book that continues to fascinate and intrigue modern readers. We will see that it, like all the other books of the New

Testament, is best understood when situated in its own historical context—rather than taken out of context.

In short, this will be a historical introduction to the twenty-seven books of the New Testament. The course will try

to address such significant questions as who wrote these books, under what circumstances, and for what audience;

we will consider what the books of the New Testament say, what they mean, and how historically accurate they are.

Our ultimate goal is to come to a fuller appreciation and understanding of these books that have made such an

enormous impact on the history of Western civilization and that continue to play such an important role for people

today.

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