First Baptist Friends,
Last year in our Sunday School group we read Shared Storied, Rival Tellings, in which we were introduced to the writings of various early Christian thinkers (including Justin, Origen, Irenaeus, and Marcion) on the biblical stories of Cain and Abel, Mary (Mother of Jesus), and Hagar and Sarah. During the 2017-18 Sunday School year, we are going to look at the writings of those and other early Christian thinkers in greater depth. While last year the writings of the early Christian thinkers were relayed to us primarily through a secondary source, this year we are going to read English translations of what the early Christian writers actually wrote. These primary sources include works found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, in the Gnostic library at Nag Hammadi, in monastic libraries, and at buried sites such as the church at Dura Europas in Syria. These texts have been collected and introduced by Bart Ehrman, a leading New Testament scholar at UNC-Chapel Hill, in After the New Testament: A Reader in Early Christianity 100-300 CE. First Baptist Church can make these books available to you at cost or above or below cost, depending upon what you can afford - and desire - to pay.
The volume includes:
We won’t be able to read, much less discuss in depth, all of the 96 texts contained in After the New Testament during our roughly 40 class sessions this year. Therefore, it will up to the members of our class to decide which topics and texts we will cover.
Steve Loar and I are hoping that the leadership of this course will be shared among all of the participants, so that the class can continue during those Sundays when I am away. Our first class will be held at 9:00am on Sunday, September 17 in the Everts Room on the lower level of the educational wing (the same place we met last year). At that first class, we can decide which texts we will study during the fall, and then we can develop similar lists later for our winter and spring classes. For our first class on the 17th, you just need to read the wonderful General Introduction (Chapter 1), and the three page essay on The Spread of Christianity at the beginning of Chapter 2.
If we decide we like this approach to learning about the early development of Christianity, next year we could study Ehrman’s sequel, Christianity in Late Antiquity 300-450 CE. It contains numerous texts by three of the Great Fathers of the Western Church (Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine), and the four Great Fathers of the Eastern Church (Basil the Great, Athanasius, Gregory of Nazianzus, and John Chrysostom).
Steve and I are looking forward to seeing all of you on September 17th at 9:00am!
Dick Ransom
Last year in our Sunday School group we read Shared Storied, Rival Tellings, in which we were introduced to the writings of various early Christian thinkers (including Justin, Origen, Irenaeus, and Marcion) on the biblical stories of Cain and Abel, Mary (Mother of Jesus), and Hagar and Sarah. During the 2017-18 Sunday School year, we are going to look at the writings of those and other early Christian thinkers in greater depth. While last year the writings of the early Christian thinkers were relayed to us primarily through a secondary source, this year we are going to read English translations of what the early Christian writers actually wrote. These primary sources include works found among the Dead Sea Scrolls, in the Gnostic library at Nag Hammadi, in monastic libraries, and at buried sites such as the church at Dura Europas in Syria. These texts have been collected and introduced by Bart Ehrman, a leading New Testament scholar at UNC-Chapel Hill, in After the New Testament: A Reader in Early Christianity 100-300 CE. First Baptist Church can make these books available to you at cost or above or below cost, depending upon what you can afford - and desire - to pay.
The volume includes:
- Texts narrating conversions to Christianity
- Accounts of persecutions and martyrdoms
- Pagan attacks on Christianity, and the apologies (defenses) made by Christians to such attacks
- Anti-Judaic polemics by early Christians
- Writings later deemed heretical (including Gnostic Christian texts)
- Writings against “heretics”
- Apostolic writings that did not make it into the Canon (including the Gospels of Thomas and Judas)
- Lists of the evolving Canon (including the first Church history by Eusebius)
- Early Christian approaches to the interpretation of scripture
- The early proclamation of the Word through homilies
- Descriptions of the organizational structure and liturgy of early Christianity (including the Didache)
- Texts describing the role of women in the early Church
- Explorations of ethical issues (Do Jesus’ teachings clarify or replace the Jewish Law? Do Christian ethics go beyond the teachings of Jesus? Is the material world inherently evil? Does the renunciation of sex provide liberation to men? To women?)
- Early statements of theological principles (unlike most ancient religions, Christians thought that what one believed affected one’s standing before God)
We won’t be able to read, much less discuss in depth, all of the 96 texts contained in After the New Testament during our roughly 40 class sessions this year. Therefore, it will up to the members of our class to decide which topics and texts we will cover.
Steve Loar and I are hoping that the leadership of this course will be shared among all of the participants, so that the class can continue during those Sundays when I am away. Our first class will be held at 9:00am on Sunday, September 17 in the Everts Room on the lower level of the educational wing (the same place we met last year). At that first class, we can decide which texts we will study during the fall, and then we can develop similar lists later for our winter and spring classes. For our first class on the 17th, you just need to read the wonderful General Introduction (Chapter 1), and the three page essay on The Spread of Christianity at the beginning of Chapter 2.
If we decide we like this approach to learning about the early development of Christianity, next year we could study Ehrman’s sequel, Christianity in Late Antiquity 300-450 CE. It contains numerous texts by three of the Great Fathers of the Western Church (Ambrose, Jerome, and Augustine), and the four Great Fathers of the Eastern Church (Basil the Great, Athanasius, Gregory of Nazianzus, and John Chrysostom).
Steve and I are looking forward to seeing all of you on September 17th at 9:00am!
Dick Ransom
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