Understanding the New Testament

By: The Great Courses

Narrated by: Professor David Brakke

Length: 12 hrs and 5 mins

Publisher's summary

The New Testament is a fascinating book - the canonical root of Christian history and theology. Yet the book is also a paradox, because this single “book” is comprised of 27 different books by more than a dozen authors, each of whom has a different perspective and is responding to a different set of historical circumstances. How do you reconcile this diversity of voices into a single, unified belief system? And should you even try?

For a historian, the diversity of authors is not a challenge to be reckoned with, but rather an exciting opportunity. In the New Testament, we have 27 primary sources that offer a doorway to the extraordinary history of the early Christian communities. In these books, you can discover how:

• Christian practices developed;
• Conflicts of belief were debated and addressed;
• The institution of the Church evolved; and
• A man named Jesus of Nazareth was transformed into the Messiah.

Join Professor David Brakke, an award-winning Professor of History at The Ohio State University, for Understanding the New Testament. In these 24 eye-opening lectures, he takes you behind the scenes to study not only the text of the New Testament, but also the authors and the world in which it was created. You will explore Jewish lives under Roman occupation, reflect on the apocalyptic mood of the first and second centuries AD, witness the early Christians’ evangelism beyond the Jewish communities, and witness the birth of a faith that continues to shape our world today.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2019 The Teaching Company, LLC (P)2019 The Great Courses

The Best GC Overview of the NT

Professor Brakke is a wonderful lecturer, with a soothing cadence and consistent delivery. His lectures follow a clear path and are rich with insight. While I’ve listened to pretty much all of Professor Ehrman’s lectures - I prefer Brakke. If you’re doing a Great Courses dive on Christian history, highly recommend.

introduction to critical/historical secular view

there are some areas where he makes the bible look contradictory where other biblical scholars have resolutions...

Familiar but Worthwhile

It’s tempting to complain that the material in this lecture series is already available in Bart Ehrman’s many courses for The Teaching Company, but Professor Brakke is such a genial and accomplished instructor that I found myself admiring his rehearsal of familiar New Testament historical criticism anyway. Believers may prefer Brakke’s less threatening take on the perspective, methods and findings of this particular brand of biblical scholarship, while skeptics will have their doubts confirmed by the many questions that are raised. To summarize: Brakke does a fine job explaining how Christianity emerged from a Jewish apocalyptic tradition and then evolved into the faith we know today when the end times failed to arrive – an evolution he traces through a close, critical reading of the books of the New Testament.

Highly Informative and worth your time.

Very interesting to hear how the New Testament could have possibly been assembled. I never felt like I was being pushed to the right or left of a topic. Just informed to make up my own mind.

Brakke (PhD) offers well-rounded New Testament 101

I read a review that seemed to dislike Brakke's personal views, which he sometimes offers as a matter of his own expert opinion, but what I appreciated was that he offers the spectrum of views Christians have taken about their beloved New Testament from the time it was written to now. As a part-time/amateur Bible scholar I felt like I was in the lecture hall, eager to hear the next lecture as soon as the first was completed. I have more questions for Professor Brakke than I have answers from his comprehensive introductory presentation of the historical background, interpretations, and summaries of the New Testament. I would recommend this lecture series to anyone who wanted to take a step into the critical scholarism of the New Testament as well as for anyone who wants a solid overview of New Testament books. I appreciate that Professor Brakke does not tell the listener what to think. His summaries of the books and topics have depth but don't bog you down with too many details. We are offered a guide through the text, but also avenues of inquiry and study to pursue on our own. I was digging into questions I had as I would pause between listening, on my own time. I hope others enjoy this lecture series and that it spurs them on to their own research and investigation of the New Testament text.

Excellent

A very clear and understandable walk through the New Testament that helped me understand the history of it all. Fabulous.

for the alienated

As a millennial in North America, I grew up understanding Christianity as a political movement that always seemed to be on the side of intolerance, arrogance, and a presumptive wickedness willing to connive and manipulate like narcissistic infants, if unable to achieve their agendas by straightforward rhetoric (which was often). In short, by my early 20s I associated “Christianity” with American classism, hate, hysteria, and serpentine machinations that cloaked base unexamined and unchecked disgust, as religious freedom, presented, for instance, as pretending that human rights were topics of genuine democratic debate , in the same category as tax policy, zoning laws, and whether to close dramshops before 2 am.

Baptized and confirmed, I had accompanied one of my parents to Catholic Church in my youth. However, for the above reasons, I drifted toward indifferent agnosticism. And when post personal tragedy, I began to revisit the Catholic faith of my heritage, I was ashamed and kept it a secret.

It was personal examination of the faith, of the source material, and of interpretations presented by scholars and laypeople alike, throughout centuries, who approached faith and God as mystery and saw faith as a path that fulfilled and satiated through the act of exploration, even if the so called “end” might never be achieved, and through this the realization that sedition and dissent is as deeply woven into the diverse patchwork of this world religion’s history, as are the repeated attempts to harness its tenants for conformity, earthly status, and power.

The professor’s approach in this course, is the type of work that has helped me access the comfort, willpower, and inspiration that spirituality provides. The teacher does not provide answers, and his opinions (which he always announces as opinions), are regarding his current best guesses regarding historical events, over which there is a fair amount of current academic debate.

If you believe, or want to explore the possibility, that for a brief moment in our history, the Word manifested, “the Word became man”, consider this book/audiobook, the professor presents well sourced (as well sourced as possible) biographies of the authors of each section, their historical contexts, clear and possible contradictions, all for the student to absorb and then deduct meaning for themselves.

I would say that, for those looking for very specific instructions to survive and be acceptable, and to understand oneself primarily through comparison to others, than other reading choices would likely be preferable.

Great lectures, but a bad place to start

These lectures are highly informative and interesting, but the way that they are presented will make the topic very difficult to understand for newcomers. To me, the word "Understanding" in the title should imply a more beginner-friendly lecture, as it did in the previous "Understanding the Old Testament" course by The Great Courses, which I could easily follow despite having never read the text previously.

This course is presented almost in reverse chronological order -- it opens by recounting the events of the old testament, then skips straight to Paul's letters, which can be difficult to understand if you are not familiar with the Gospels. Also, the narrator skips around between books and never seems to use the book:chapter:verse format to refer to what he is talking about in the text. So, if you're trying to follow along with a Bible and highlighter in front of you, it may be difficult to take notes.

Overall, this course still gets 4 stars because my only complaint is that the title may be misleading to some listeners. If you are new to Christian scripture and history, I would recommend listening to the earlier Great Courses lecture series from 2013 simply titled "The New Testament" before this.

Great summary of New Testament development

Professor Brakke reviews the development of the New Testament beginning with Saint Paul’s letters, the earliest of the 27 books of the New Testament. Brakke presents a historian’s perspective of scripture supported by nearly 6,000 manuscripts or manuscript fragments from the first century through current Bibles. We learn that not all books were written by the purported authors, and some copiers of early versions made changes as they made copies.

As Professor Brakke notes, most biblical historians study the Bible to understand the context in which the books were written, and are Christians themselves. Readers who are convinced the Bible should be taken literally, will probably discount the evidence presented here.

A Testament to the Contextual Nuances of the New Testament

This book brilliantly deciphers the New Testament's intricate context, making it accessible to all. Its engaging language unveils profound meanings, making it a must-read for both scholars and newcomers, offering fresh insights into this timeless text.