Christianity: a brief introduction
Many of you have read the Christian Gospels before, and all of you have at least some familiarity with Christian beliefs and tradition. So we’re spending just a single day on this vital topic, and I aim to focus on lesser-known aspects of the origin of this vital world religion. Please email me with any follow-up questions—or raise your hand in class!
Reading: selections from the New Testament, as translated by Richmond Lattimore (Blackboard: Christian Scripture.pdf).
Viewing: Christian Funerary Art from the Roman Catacombs.
Writing: Respond to ONE of the following prompts. Keep your response short, posting as a reply under the appropriate heading in the comments section:
- Identify and comment on a repeated motif from the reading: for example, healing or feeding. Don’t just name the pattern, but focus attention on the details: if healing, who is healed and how? if feeding, who is fed and how?
- Jesus often presents his teaching in the form of “parables.” Apply what you’ve learned in Rhetoric to explain (or perhaps question) the effectiveness of one of the parables the reading.
- Name one of your preconceptions about Christianity and explain how it was challenged by something in today’s reading.