"The New Testament" Prof. Bart D. Ehrman (24 Lectures / 30 Minutes Per Lecture / 12x CD - The Great Courses)
Scholarly inquiry into the twenty-seven books of the New Testament requires moving beyond traditional piety to examine these texts as historical artifacts of the early Roman Empire. Professor Bart D. Ehrman guides the audience through a rigorous literary-historical analysis, treating the Gospels, the Epistles of Paul, and the Apocalypse of John as individual documents reflecting the diverse and often conflicting perspectives of early Christian communities. By situating these writings within their original Greco-Roman and Jewish contexts, the course reveals how the message of a first-century Jewish apocalypticist was transformed into a global religious movement, highlighting the significant differences in how each author portrayed the life, death, and significance of Jesus.
 
The latter half of the survey delves into the "detective work" of textual criticism, exploring how the New Testament was physically transmitted and eventually canonized. Ehrman explains the challenges of reconstructing the original texts from thousands of divergent Greek manuscripts and investigates the vibrant debates over "orthodoxy" and "heresy" that characterized the first three centuries of the faith. By examining the quest for the historical Jesus and the theological developments of the proto-orthodox church, the course provides a sophisticated framework for understanding how a handful of obscure letters and narratives became the most influential scripture in Western civilization.