COURSES > LIFELONG

Although “Christianity” is often thought to have been part of God’s plan from the beginning of time, the historical emergence of religions centered on Jesus Christ looks in hindsight to have been anything but foreordained.  On the contrary, the emergence of “Christian Judaism” and its transformation into “Jewish Christianity” and beyond entailed several hundred years of creative and contentious development by a number of schools of proto-Christian thought.  In this course, we will examine the formation of what we know today as Christianity through a close reading of early Christian texts — some of which made it into the victors’ New Testament and some of which did not.

Texts

• New Testament
• Ehrman, Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture & the Faiths We Never Knew
• Ehrman, Lost Scriptures: Books that Did Not Make It into the New Testament.

TAUGHT: SPRING 2005