Understanding the New Testament

By: The Great Courses

Narrated by: Professor David Brakke

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.

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.

Excellent

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

Great Course on the New Testament

This overview of the New Testament had a lot of information from a historical perspective. I learned a lot and enjoyed listening.

Good solid information

This is provided solid research. Ecumenical in flavor. easy reading. Overall excellent performance. Will read again!