Improve your biblical literacy and re-encounter the New Testament as a great repository of literary genius. This is the promise of these 24 lectures, which offer vivid portraits of the cast of characters in the New Testament. While most of the figures introduced here are real, historical people, at least two (the Prodigal Son and the Good Samaritan) are fictional protagonists in stories told by Jesus within Luke's Gospel. Some of these great figures you've likely already heard of, including Jesus, John the Baptist, Pontius Pilate, Mary Magdalene, Judas Iscariot, and the Apostle Paul. Others, such as the Syro-Phoenician woman who must turn Jesus's own words back upon him to gain the healing of her daughter, are not so famous but deserve to be better remembered. The point of these lectures is not to inculcate any theology nor any particular religious worldview. Rather, they seek to read the ancient texts anew to discover what they really say and how they were interpreted by both the secular culture and the faithful church. You may think you already know all the great stories of the Bible. But often they are misted over by centuries of common misperceptions frequently repeated. Now, by taking a fresh look with Professor Levine, you'll learn anew from the fascinating cast of characters in the greatest story ever told.
Great Figures of the New Testament
01: The New Testament
Why choose the particular Great Figures discussed in these lectures? What do you most need to know about their historical settings? What tools can best help you as a student to grasp the depth of these characters and the richness of their stories?
02: John the Baptist
Why did John baptize? What precisely was his relation to Jesus? Why exactly did Herod have John killed? By comparing Gospel accounts to the writings of the 1st-century Jewish historian Josephus, you will have an excellent opportunity to explore how students of the New Testament address questions of history.
03: The Virgin Mary
Unwed mother or mother goddess? Queen of Heaven who bore her child in a stable? Revered in Catholicism, Orthodoxy, and Islam, yet sometimes eyed warily in Protestant thought, Mary the mother of Jesus continues to inspire intense devotion, provoke controversy, and stimulate theological reflection.
04: Joseph, Magi, and Shepherds
Staples of the Christmas story, even though they do not appear together in any one Gospel, these figures naturally raise the question of what the Gospel writers (and later interpreters) are trying to emphasize in their particular renderings of Jesus' birth.
05: Peter
How did a headstrong Galilean fisherman become “the prince of the apostles” and, so Catholic tradition holds, the first pope? Untangle the whole astounding, inspirational, and often-confusing story.
06: John and James, the Sons of Zebedee
Fishermen like Peter, these brothers join Jesus in a new life as “fishers of people.” While the Gospels (the fourth of which John is said to have written) show them often misunderstanding their master and his mission, in the end their faithfulness is beyond question.
07: Martha, Mary, and Lazarus
These siblings are beloved friends of Jesus. Mary and Martha appear briefly in Luke's Gospel, and all three figure importantly in John's. Historically, what role did they probably play in Jesus' movement, and culturally, how have their stories been retold through the centuries?
08: “Doubting” Thomas
While “Doubting Thomas” is a familiar phrase, the complex story of this apostle whose name means simply “Twin” is less so. Why are three major extracanonical early Christian works (including a gospel and an infancy narrative) associated with him?
09: The Gentile Mother
Find out why the story of this woman (Mark and Matthew identify her ethnicity differently) who pleads with Jesus to exorcise her child is one of the most problematic miracle narratives in all the Gospels.
10: The Good Samaritan and the Prodigal Son
The protagonists of these famous parables (they appear only in Luke) may be so familiar to us that we've lost a sense of just how unsettling the stories would have been to Jesus' audience or Luke's readers.
11: The Samaritan Woman
Having learned who the Samaritans are, you are now ready to meet the extraordinary and unnamed Samaritan woman who meets Jesus at a well (John 4) and has an amazing conversation with him about “living water,” proper worship, her own marital history, and the identity of the Messiah.
12: Mary Magdalene
Present at the cross in all four Gospels and the sole consistent witness to the empty tomb, this Mary appears before Good Friday in only one Gospel, Luke's. Yet, from the Gospel accounts to present-day Hollywood, she has enjoyed an exceptionally rich career in Christianity and culture.
13: Pharisees and Sadducees
Who were the Pharisees and the Sadducees? What did they believe and practice, and why do the Gospels polemicize against them?
14: The Herodians
Like the Pharisees and Sadducees, the Herodian royal family (Herod the Great, Herod Antipas, Herod Agrippa I, and Herod Agrippa II) gets “bad press” in the New Testament. What does the extra-biblical historical record add?
15: Judas Iscariot
Betrayer, dupe, victim, revolutionary, or even friend of Jesus who took on the necessary dirty work of arranging his arrest - with this range of possible identities, it is no wonder that Judas has captured the imagination of interpreters for two millennia.
16: Pontius Pilate
By tracing the character of this Roman governor through the Gospels, the writings of Josephus and Philo, and later Christian theologians, we gain a valuable view on how early Christians saw their relation to both the Roman state and to the Synagogue.
17: James
Was James (the apparent successor to Peter as head of the Church at Jerusalem) called “the Brother of the Lord&” because he actually was a sibling of Jesus? Did James write the epistle that bears his name?
18: Stephen
How does the story of this first follower of Jesus to be martyred open for us a window on the practices, beliefs, difficulties, and achievements of the early Jewish followers of Jesus?
19: Philip
In Acts, Luke offers us a number of colorful, intriguing vignettes about Philip that offer important clues about the growth of the early legends that scholars call the New Testament Apocrypha.
20: The Centurions
By examining stories in the Gospels and Acts about three centurions (prestigious Roman army officers) we can trace tantalizing clues about how the early Christians viewed life under the “pax Romana.”
21: Paul, the Hero of Acts
In this talk, you meet Paul as he is known through the companion volume to the Gospel of Luke, the Acts of the Apostles, where Paul first appears at the martyrdom of Stephen.
22: Paul, the Epistolary Evangelist
This second lecture on Paul considers what can be known about him from the letters that are attributed to him in the New Testament, weighs his authorship and views, and sketches his massive theological influence.
23: Jesus of Nazareth
This talk on “the Jesus of history” will first help you sort out major post-Enlightenment approaches such as source, form, and redaction criticism, and then help you weigh more recent scholarly reconstructions of who Jesus was, what he did, and what he taught.
24: The Christ of Faith
In the New Testament and later theological writings, knowing Jesus means more than knowing what he said and did prior to his crucifixion. In this final lecture, therefore, you examine various accounts of “the Christ of faith” as he appears in the New Testament and beyond. In the end, you are reminded of what else can, and should, be studied, again and again (cf. John 21:25).
Overview Course No. 6206
About
Dr. Amy-Jill Levine is University Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies, E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Professor of New Testament Studies, and Professor of Jewish Studies at Vanderbilt University Divinity School and the College of Arts and Sciences. She is also Affiliated Professor at the Woolf Institute, Centre for the Study of Jewish-Christian Relations, at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom. Dr. Levine earned her B.A. with high honors in English and Religion at Smith College, where she graduated magna cum laude. She went on to earn her M.A. and Ph.D. in Religion from Duke University. Professor Levine's numerous books, articles, and essays address such topics as Second-Temple Judaism, Christian origins, Jewish-Christian relations, and biblical women. She has served on the editorial boards of the Journal of Biblical Literature and the Catholic Biblical Quarterly and has held office in the Society of Biblical Literature, the Catholic Biblical Association, and the Association for Jewish Studies. A widely sought-after speaker and favorite at the Chautauqua Institution, she has given hundreds of talks on biblical topics to both academic and nonacademic audiences, including church, synagogue, and community groups throughout the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom. Her awards include grants from the Mellon Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Council of Learned Societies.
