Intro to the New Testament

A collection of papyrus fragments, excavated from Oxyrhynchus. Image by the Egypt Exploration Society, taken from the Variant Readings blog, which is written by Brent Nongbri.

Professor: Eric C. Smith

Here's an introductory video that will walk you through the course's design and some of the details of how it will all work!

https://youtu.be/DEekv11uOhs

Required Texts:

Bart Ehrman. The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings, 7 ^th edition. Oxford University Press, 2019.

Pamela Eisenbaum, Paul Was Not A Christian: The Original Message of a Misunderstood Apostle , HarperOne 2010.

Amy-Jill Levine; Marc Z. Brettler. The Jewish Annotated New Testament, second edition . Oxford University Press, 2017.

Yii-Jan Lin, The Erotic Lives of Manuscripts: New Testament Textual Criticism and the Biological Sciences, Oxford University Press, 2016. (THIS TEXT AVAILABLE VIA THE ILIFF LIBRARY IN E-BOOK FORMAT)

Justo González, The Story Luke Tells: Luke’s Unique Witness to the Gospel , Eerdmans 2015.

Nijay Gupta, A Beginner’s Guide to New Testament Studies: Understanding Key Debates , Baker, 2020.

Brent Nongbri, God’s Library: The Archaeology of the Earliest Christian Manuscripts , Yale University Press, 2018.

Course Overview

An introduction to the literature of Christian origins that begins with a look at the context out of which the New Testament emerged, then turns to the earliest extant texts, Paul's letters and covers the Gospels, Acts, and post-Pauline epistles.

Course Objectives

 

Goals and Outcomes:

Course Goals:

• To recognize that multiple forms of Christianity emerge in and from the texts of the New Testament;
• To learn to carefully read and analyze ancient texts;
• To understand the texts of the New Testament in the context of other contemporaneous texts;
• To understand the larger debates that have preoccupied scholars, faith communities, and other readers of the New Testament. 

Course Outcomes:

Upon successfully completing this course, students will be able to do the following:

• Navigate confidently and competently through the world of early Christian writings
• Identify and engage the concepts that have emerged from the study of the New Testament.
• Identify where significant New Testament passages reside.
• Read and interpret the New Testament for a variety of contexts.

This course offers tiered grading options, in the "contract grading" sense. Students may opt to commit to the choice that best suits their life circumstances and educational goals. Although you are asked to indicate a preference at the beginning of the quarter, you may change your selection at any point in the course. If you are pursuing ordination or licensure, please confirm the requirements for your tradition before you make a decision, as some denominations only accept grades of a certain quality for required courses. Your academic advisor may be able to help you find this information.

To receive a grade of Pass or C, students must complete the following:

Each week consists of three posts. These are worth 2 points each, for a total of 60 points for the course. These posts are “low-stakes” in that they are designed to provoke engagement and conversation, not to be formal academic writing, and they are generally graded on a credit/no credit basis. If a post is egregiously short, off-topic, or unreadable, the student may receive less than full credit. Failure to complete all of these posts will result in a grade of Fail or lower than C, which will not give you credit toward graduation. 

To receive a grade in the B range, students must complete the following:

To receive a grade in the B range, you must complete all the posts as listed in the top section. 

Additionally, you must complete the Canon Creation Laboratory, in which you a) fashion your own biblical canon from a list provided and any other works you wish to include, b) explain your choices, attending to what is at stake in the works you included and in your canon as a whole, and c) imagining what kind of critical apparatus (notes, introductions, textual annotations, appendices) might be needed to accompany your canon and make it intelligible to readers. The total length of this project is about 6-8 pages.

Students who complete this work adequately will receive a B. Students who complete it but exhibit deficiencies will receive a B-. Students who complete this work in an exemplary manner will receive a B+. 

To receive a grade in the A range, students must complete the following:

To receive a grade in the A range, you must complete all the posts listed in the top section, and the Canon Creation Laboratory (described above).

Additionally, you must complete an exegesis paper of 6-8 pages. For this assignment, you will choose a passage from the New Testament (typically between 5 and 25 verses) and a) provide an account of the ways the passage has been read by 5-10 different interpreters, and b) provide your own reading of the text, done with attention to the history of the text and its interpretation and the context in which you are interpreting it.

Students who complete this work in an adequate or exemplary way will receive an A (because Iliff does not allow for a grade of A+). Students who complete this work but exhibit deficiencies will receive an A-.