Early Christian Outlook and its Jewish Matrix

What will we learn?

• To recognize the importance of contextualizing nascent Christianity within late Second Temple Judaism.
• To name the main genres of the surviving early Christian sources and describe the process that eventually led to the canonization of the New Testament.
• To describe the historical circumstances of the birth of Christianity and variegated settings of the first decades of its existence.
• To comprehend the transition of the earliest Jesus-centered tradition from its oral Semitic stage to written Greek compositions.
• To discern various strategies employed by the Synoptic tradition (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) to define Jesus’ messiahship vis-a-vis the variety of Second Temple Jewish messianic beliefs.
• To recognize the multifaceted character of references to “the Jews” in the Fourth Gospel and acknowledge the variegated explanations of the Gospel’s harsh polemical stance raised in the research.
• To discern the roots of the notion of Messiah’s pre-existence in Second Temple Jewish literature and its metamorphosis in rabbinic sources.
• To discern John’s reworking of the Synoptic tradition of Jesus’ miracles into the narrative of signs and wonders, using the story of Exodus as its focal point of reference.
• To recognize the conflict within the Jesus movement about the inclusion of the Gentiles and their obligations to the Torah observance as a reflection of differences of opinion in broader Second Temple Judaism.