Fall 2022

In Fall 2022 I’ll teach a new course, CLAS 375, an historical introduction to the New Testament.

Classicists don’t normally teach this sort of class, but the New Testament is, come to think of it, one of the more important books to emerge from the ancient world, isn’t it? And no one else at SIUC is teaching such a class. I found myself teaching the New Testament as part of a course that began with late antiquity, and am looking forward to studying it more intensively over the course of a semester.

In addition to reading much of the New Testament together, we’ll make use of Bart Ehrman’s Brief Introduction to the New Testament. Ehrman’s book will provide us with a lively account of how scholars study the New Testament today.

Our approach will be historical, as the course title implies; this means we’ll apply the same tools historians use to study other aspects of the ancient world to the New Testament texts and the questions they raise. The class isn’t designed to convert anyone to Christianity or undermine anyone’s faith–just to leave us all better informed about what the New Testament meant in its original context, as best we can recover that using contemporary historical techniques.

My use of “we” to describe what we’ll do and learn is intentional: I’m not an expert in the New Testament, though I can read it in the original and of course know a good deal about the Greco-Roman side of the context in which the New Testament circulated. But I’ve been fascinated in recent years by what I’ve started to learn about how these texts took shape, and ultimately shaped the world we still live in. A couple of trips to Israel in recent years (the photo at the top of this page is of Jerusalem) have also piqued my own interest.

I’m hoping the course will attract a wide range of students, from committed Christians (some of whom will have more detailed knowledge of what the New Testament says than I do) to people who’ve never read the Bible but have always wanted to know what it’s all about. I will aim to help us develop a respectful but informed and lively dialogue about the New Testament in its original historical context.

A draft of the syllabus can be found below. Note that this is not the final syllabus: I will tinker, but this will give you a basic sense of what you’d be getting into. I’m happy to answer any questions: write me at mjohnson@siu.edu.