HIS/NT6/701 – Space, Time & Practice in the New Testament and the Early Church
View outline (PDF) Instructor(s): Dr. Harry O. Maier
NOTE: THIS COURSE IS CANCELLED FOR SPRING 2018
This course explores the various ways in which early believers constructed spatio-temporal worlds and how those formulations were created in the midst of other and often competing space-time conceptions (imperial, civic, Greco-Roman religious, and so on). The course aims to equip students to recognize the ways the secular configures different modalities of space and time and to consider ways in which religious leaders are called upon to be conscientious in their own practices and creations of space and time both as inheritors of traditions and as proclaimers of received wisdom. The course looks in particular at New Testament (Pauline and Johannine literature, Hebrews, 1 Peter, James, Revelation) and other early Christian texts of the first two centuries (the “Apostolic Fathers,” the Apologists, Irenaeus, “Gnostics”, martyrology, Eusebius of Caesarea). As such it seeks to extend beyond a restricted focus on the New Testament canon to consider a wider body of early Christian texts and practices.
Prereqs: HIS 500, NT 500, 501 or by permission to register