We’ve reached the last unit of the course, and I want to point out something you may have already noticed. Every unit has really been about teaching one main skill. We’ve used different names for it, but it’s been there since the first lecture. It’s all about interpretation. The practice of doing this well is…
Last time, we focused on Paul, who wrote many of the New Testament letters. But he was not the only one writing to early Christian communities. In this unit, we look at the other letters, known as the General Epistles or sometimes the Catholic Epistles. That name can be confusing, so let me clarify: here,…
Now we turn to a major part of the New Testament: the letters, especially those linked to the apostle Paul. Thirteen books in the New Testament carry Paul’s name, making him the most prolific named author in the collection. Before we start reading them, I want you to approach them differently from anything we’ve seen…
As we move from the Old Testament to the New, everything feels different. Think back to Unit 3 and picture the world we’re entering: Israel under Roman rule, influenced by Greek culture, filled with lively debates among Jewish groups, and full of hope for a promised savior, as we saw in Unit 11. It’s into…
We’ve reached the last major part of the Old Testament: the prophets. Before we dive in, let’s clear up a common misunderstanding. Many people think of prophets as fortune tellers whose main job was to predict the future, so they expect these books to be full of secret codes about what’s coming. That idea can…
This unit marks a real change. In the last two units, we followed the big story of Israel, from its founding family through the kingdom and exile. Now, we pause that story and focus on something different. In the Protestant tradition, after the historical books come the poetic and wisdom books: Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes,…
When we finished the Torah, the people of Israel were standing at the edge of the promised land, ready to enter, with Moses gone and the story moving ahead. Now we join them as they cross into what Christian tradition calls the historical books of the Old Testament. In the Protestant Bible, these books go…
Now we have reached the books themselves, starting where the Bible does: with Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, and Deuteronomy. These five books are known by two main names. In Jewish tradition, they are called the Torah, a Hebrew word often translated as law, but it more accurately means teaching or instruction, which better captures what…
We have come a long way with the biblical text. In Unit 3, we saw that it was written in Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek. In Unit 6, we learned how scholars piece together the earliest wording from thousands of handwritten copies. Now we arrive at the final step, the one most of us cross every…
Let me begin with a fact that surprises most people when they first hear it. We do not have the original manuscript of any book of the Bible. Not a single one. The actual page that Paul dictated, the original scroll of Isaiah, the first copy of the Gospel of Mark; all are lost to…