Today about 2.3 billion people belong to communities that recognise Jesus of Nazareth, a first century Jew from Roman Palestine, as the anointed one of God or "Christ". Despite this common point of reference in Jesus, his modern followers are astonishingly diverse in language, culture, practice, theology and even politics. Separate Christian traditions or "denominations" number in the tens of thousands. Aotearoa is home to at least fifty of these.
Despite their diversity, most Christian traditions look back to the first three or four centuries of Christian history as somehow normative for their life and belief. In this course we'll look at how some of those norms took shape. For example, we'll look at how early Christians developed the statements of faith and the versions of the Bible that shape most Christian traditions today. But we'll also look at the way in which early Christianity was shaped by its interaction with the worlds of the Ancient Near East, and the Mediterranean coasts of Africa and Europe.
Because of Christianity's diversity, there has never been one agreed story about who Jesus was, what his life and teachings meant, or exactly what happened in the early years of his movement. So in this course, we'll spend a lot of time looking at the challenges posed by the historical evidence for early Christianity: how did it get to us? how trustworthy is it? how sure can we be that we understand it? what should we do about the gaps in the evidence? We'll also look at some of the debates among modern experts and start to think about how to evaluate them and form our own well-informed opinions.
For each week of the course you'll be provided with readings and sometimes video clips to look at before class. Lectures will give you a broad overview of each week's theme. There will be plenty of opportunity to ask questions and discuss ideas in lectures, but you will also have a chance to develop your own ideas in a smaller tutorial each week. Tutorial discussions will always focus on the challenges of historical evidence and interpretation, and will usually be related to an early Christian text in English translation.