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BIBL 202 — New Testament Survey

The New Testament is a smaller collection than the Old Testament in raw volume (twenty-seven books rather than thirty-nine), but its scholarly landscape is denser. In roughly a century of composition, a handful of communities scattered across the eastern Roman Empire produced gospels, letters, a theological history, and an apocalypse that became the scripture of a global religion. Reading the collection well requires more than a chapter-by-chapter summary. It requires a working knowledge of the Greco-Roman world that shaped the texts, the Second Temple Jewish setting that provided their vocabulary, the Synoptic Problem and the scholarly hypotheses offered to solve it, the Pauline authorship conversation and its range of faithful responses, the formation of the canon across the first four Christian centuries, and the interpretive conventions appropriate to each of the New Testament's literary genres. BIBL 202 is the New Testament backbone course of the Cathedra catalog. It assumes the student has already completed DISC 100 (the Bible's story), BIBL 210 (how to read the Bible's genres), and BIBL 201 (the Old Testament survey), and it goes deeper into every section of the New Testament book by book and division by division. The course covers the four Gospels (treating the Synoptic Problem directly rather than hiding it), Acts as Luke's second volume, the seven undisputed Pauline letters, the disputed Paulines and the Pastoral Epistles, Hebrews as a homiletical outlier, the General Epistles, and Revelation. For each book or group of books, it addresses authorship and date (including the live scholarly debates), historical setting, literary structure, major theological themes, and the book's place in the larger New Testament story. The goal is that a student who finishes BIBL 202 can pick up any New Testament book and have a framework for reading it: what kind of literature it is, when and by whom it was composed (or what the live authorship conversations are), what historical moment it addresses, how it is structured internally, and what theological threads run through it. Every downstream New Testament course in the Cathedra catalog (BIBL 305, BIBL 306, BIBL 307, NBST 501, EXEG 501, and the Greek language courses GREK 101 through GREK 503) assumes the foundation BIBL 202 provides.

15 hr
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Learning outcomes

  • Describe the structure and ordering of the New Testament, name the major textual witnesses to the Greek New Testament (the great uncials, the papyri, the major translation traditions), and explain the basic role of the early manuscripts in modern New Testament textual criticism
  • Describe the historical, political, and cultural setting of the Greco-Roman world in the first century, distinguish the main currents of Second Temple Judaism, and place the New Testament books on a working chronology from the 30s CE through the early second century
  • Describe the gospel as a first-century literary form, articulate the Synoptic Problem at an introductory level (including the Two-Source, Farrer, and Griesbach hypotheses), and describe the distinct theological portrait of each of the four canonical Gospels
  • Trace the narrative arc of the book of Acts as Luke's second volume, identify its programmatic statement in Acts 1:8, and describe how the speeches in Acts function as theological summaries rather than as verbatim transcripts
  • Describe Paul's biography and apostolic vocation, identify the seven undisputed Pauline letters and their historical settings, and articulate the theological shape of each letter (Romans, 1-2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, Philemon)
  • Distinguish the disputed Pauline letters (Ephesians, Colossians, 2 Thessalonians) and the Pastoral Epistles (1-2 Timothy, Titus) from the undisputed Paulines, describe the scholarly authorship conversation (vocabulary, theology, historical fit), and articulate the range of faithful Christian responses
  • Describe Hebrews as an anonymous sermon-like text with a distinctive high-priestly Christology, identify the major theological themes of the General Epistles (James, 1-2 Peter, 1-3 John, Jude), and explain why several of these books were contested during canon formation
  • Describe the book of Revelation as biblical apocalyptic addressed to persecuted first-century churches in the Roman province of Asia, and articulate the four major interpretive frameworks (preterist, historicist, futurist, idealist) along with what each approach does well and where it struggles
  • Describe the formation of the New Testament canon across the first four Christian centuries, name the criteria early Christians used (apostolicity, catholicity, orthodoxy, traditional use), identify the books that were contested in the process, and describe at least two early Christian texts that were considered and ultimately not included
  • Apply the orientation skills of BIBL 202 (canonical placement, authorship and date, historical setting, literary structure, theological themes) to an unfamiliar New Testament book, producing a first-pass reading that identifies the main interpretive questions the book demands and names at least one live scholarly debate it has generated

The New Testament as a Library

The New Testament is a twenty-seven-book collection composed across roughly a century in Koine Greek and preserved in one of the densest manuscript traditions in ancient literature. Module 1 orients the student to the shape of the collection (the four-part Gospels-Acts-Epistles-Revelation ordering), to the textual tradition behind the Greek text (the great uncials, the earlier papyri, the translation witnesses, and the basic moves of modern textual criticism), and to the Greco-Roman and Second Temple Jewish world that produced the texts. It also establishes a working chronology of New Testament composition from the 30s CE through the early second century so that every later module has a concrete frame of reference.

The Gospels and Acts

Four canonical gospels and the book of Acts together make up roughly half of the New Testament by word count. Module 2 takes up each of the Synoptic Gospels and Acts in turn, and treats the Synoptic Problem directly rather than hiding it. The module opens with the question of what a first-century gospel is as a literary form and works through the three major scholarly hypotheses (Two-Source, Farrer, Griesbach) fairly, and then examines the distinctive literary character and theological portrait of each Gospel. Mark is treated as the probable earliest Gospel with its urgent narrative pacing and Messianic secret. Matthew is treated as the Gospel addressed to a Jewish-Christian audience and framed around a new-Moses typology. Luke is treated as a Hellenistic historian with Gentile-friendly concerns whose second volume in Acts follows the Gospel directly. Acts itself is treated as a structured narrative of the early church, organized around the programmatic statement in Acts 1:8 and the speeches functioning as theological summaries rather than as verbatim transcripts.

The Gospel of John

The Gospel of John stands largely apart from the Synoptics in language, structure, selection of material, and theological altitude. Module 3 treats the fourth Gospel on its own terms. Lesson 3.1 describes the distinctive literary character of John (the seven signs, the seven 'I am' sayings, the high Christology of the prologue, the absence of Synoptic material like exorcisms and parables and the transfiguration, the presence of extended theological discourses), and Lesson 3.2 takes up the authorship question and the Johannine community hypothesis. Reading John well requires recognizing both how different the fourth Gospel is from the first three and how that difference is itself part of its theological witness.

The Undisputed Pauline Letters

Paul is the single most influential Christian writer in history, and his seven undisputed letters make up roughly a sixth of the New Testament by word count. Module 4 takes up Paul's biography and apostolic vocation, the occasional character of the Pauline correspondence, and then works through each of the seven undisputed letters in turn: Romans (the longest and most theologically systematic), 1-2 Corinthians (the most detailed window onto a first-century Christian community), Galatians (the angriest and most confrontational), Philippians (the joyful letter from prison), 1 Thessalonians (probably the earliest surviving Christian document), and Philemon (the shortest and most personal). Each lesson treats the historical setting, the literary structure, and the distinctive theological contribution of the letter.

Disputed Paulines, Pastorals, and Hebrews

Module 5 takes up the Pauline letters whose authorship is contested in modern scholarship and closes with Hebrews, the anonymous outlier of the New Testament epistolary corpus. Lesson 5.1 treats the three disputed Paulines (Ephesians, Colossians, 2 Thessalonians), describing the main lines of the scholarly authorship conversation and the range of faithful Christian responses. Lesson 5.2 takes up the Pastoral Epistles (1-2 Timothy, Titus), which form a distinct literary unit and whose authorship is more heavily disputed than any other part of the Pauline corpus. Lesson 5.3 treats Hebrews, which the traditional canon places at the end of the Pauline section even though its authorship has been universally recognized as anonymous since Origen, and whose high-priestly Christology gives the book a theological voice unlike anything else in the New Testament.

The General Epistles and Revelation

Module 6 takes up the General Epistles (James, 1-2 Peter, 1-3 John, Jude) and the book of Revelation. The General Epistles are a diverse collection of short letters that address specific first-century Christian communities with distinct theological concerns. Several of these books were contested during the canon-formation process (which Module 7 will treat in detail), and their canonical inclusion reflects both theological judgment and widespread church use over time. Revelation closes the collection with a book that faithful Christians have read in four fundamentally different ways, and the module treats the four major interpretive frameworks (preterist, historicist, futurist, idealist) fairly, describing what each approach does well and where it struggles without forcing a single answer.

The New Testament Canon and Synthesis

The final module of BIBL 202 does two things. Lesson 7.1 takes up the formation of the New Testament canon across the first four Christian centuries, naming the criteria early Christians used (apostolicity, catholicity, orthodoxy, traditional use), identifying the books that were contested during the process, and describing several early Christian texts that were considered and ultimately not included. Lesson 7.2 is the course's synthesis capstone. It traces the major theological threads of the New Testament across its books, applies the orientation skills of BIBL 202 to an unfamiliar New Testament book as a worked example, and hands the student off to the rest of the Cathedra catalog.