Making of the Western Mind — Fall

What is civilization?
What is the Western Tradition?
What is Western Civilization?
And why doesn't our educational system want to teach it any more?
What is the state of the Western Tradition today?
What is the state of the teaching of the Western Tradition?
European critics of the Western Tradition:
Claude Levi-Strauss (1908–2009 )
Michel Foucault (1926–1984)
Paul De Man (1919–1983)
Jacques Derrida (1930–2004)
Edward Said (1935–2003)
Triumph of the European critics in American universities in the 1970's

One Definition of Civilization:
Winston Churchill was one of the greatest heroes of Western civilization. On July 2, 1938, at the height of the Sudetenland crisis, he delivered the Chancellor’s Address at the University of Bristol. In a short but powerful speech Churchill, a master of the English language, gave as eloquent a statement of the Anglo-American tradition of liberty and civilization as has ever been uttered.
"There are few words which are used more loosely than the word 'Civilization.' What does it mean? It means a society based upon the opinion of civilians. It means that violence, the rule of warriors and despotic chiefs, the conditions of camps and warfare, of riot and tyranny, give place to parliaments where laws are made, and independent courts of justice in which over long periods those laws are maintained. That is Civilization—and in its soil grow continually freedom, comfort and culture. When Civilization reigns, in any country, a wider and less harassed life is afforded to the masses of the people. The traditions of the past are cherished, and the inheritance bequeathed to us by former wise or valiant men becomes a rich estate to be enjoyed and used by all. The central principle of Civilization is the subordination of the ruling authority to the settled customs of the people and to their will as expressed through the Constitution. In this Island we have today achieved in a high degree the blessings of Civilization. There is freedom: there is law; there is love of country; there is a great measure of good will between classes: there is a widening prosperity. There are unmeasured opportunities of correcting abuses and making further progress."
Source: Winston S. Churchill, Blood, Sweat, and Tears, Randolph S. Churchill, ed. (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1941), pp. 45–46

RECOMMENDED READING: David Denby, Great Books

This is a wonderful book. David Denby went back to Columbia where he had been an undergraduate many years before, and did the Humanities course sequence again and wrote this fascinating record of his experiences with the students and their reactions to the great books. It will serve you all as a delightful parallel experience to our own class. As you read and discuss the books in our class you can read about the undergraduates at Columbia and their reactions to the same books. But let me suggest the following: wait until AFTER we have read and discussed a book before reading the section in Denby on the same material. Otherwise your reaction will be constantly predetermined by the Denby reaction and the ideas he presents.

Be sure to see our collection of links in the right sidebar; this week, in particular, please see the ancient world chronology.

Ancient Israel and the Covenant
The ancient Israelis had a vision of history in which there was a covenant with God. There was a contract, there was an agreement between the Creator and the individual people who sign the covenant. So, we now have an agreement whereby these people will live and continue to discover truth and discover the essence of life in history, and proceed step by step to fulfill the plan. It is not complete in the beginning. When Abraham is called out of the Middle East to begin this story it is just the beginning of the story. There are thousands of years ahead when the story has to continue and come into being. So the essence of the Jewish story is constant striving, constant work, and constant study.

The Hebrew Bible
The book becomes important in the story, the very book we are going to look at in a second, The Hebrew Bible. That Bible itself is understood to be not complete, not perfect, but needing constant study, editorial work, editorial commentary, and so it grows. It is constantly being studied and constantly being added to. That is where you get the extraordinary accent on scholarship in the Jewish faith. That is something that has been given to the West because, of necessity, the Jews understood from the very beginning that the document they were slowly building was the record of their covenant with God. Therefore it was essential that it be accurate, that it be circulated, that it be translated, that it be preserved.

Accent on History
The key thing the Jews give us in Western Civilization is an accent on history. Everything about the Jewish insight is the revelation of the Divine plan in time. We have to stop and think about this because we often don’t realize it. We look at a story in time and think that is so terrible, why did they do that? Human sacrifice! In ancient societies, every single society practiced human sacrifice, and for a long time. One of the stories we will look at tonight is Abraham and Isaac, one of the great stories of all time. The point of that story is the end of human sacrifice.

RECOMMENDED READING

Our text this week is the first book of the Hebrew Bible. The scholarship on the Bible is massive and difficult for the ordinary student. But some understanding of how the Bible was formed is absolutely essential and therefore I am happy to recommend to you all a wonderful book. It is called Who Wrote the Bible? and it is written by Professor Richard Elliott Friedman, of the University of California at San Diego (HarperCollins paperback, ISBN 0060630353). Prof. Friedman has written an important book about an important subject that is a pleasure to read: it is elegant and informative. It will change the way you think about the Hebrew Bible.

This is the best book in English about the origins and writing of the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament.

It is a brilliant exciting book. You will never forget it.

Ancient Greece and the origins of the Western Tradition.
Greece: the land, the light, the people.
The Indo-European invaders.

The Bronze Age Charioteers.

Homer and Troy

REQUIRED READING

Homer, Iliad, Book I

Partial copy will be provided to you.

RECOMMENDED READING

This is the best new introduction to the world of the ancient Greeks. Edith Hall takes you back to the beginning and then covers the whole Greek story through Alexander the Great. She is both a brilliant writer and an engaging lecturer. If you would like to see her lectures go to Youtube and look her up.

Athens and the Golden Age
In 450 BC, a whole new world, a whole new culture was born in a new location: Athens. Athens emerges as the center of this new culture. So in this new world the thinkers, writers, playwrights, politicians, the poets will try to summarize Greek culture in 450 BC in Athens.

Sophocles lived from 496 BC to 406 BC. He wrote over 100 plays. Most of them were huge hits. They were popular successes, with 15 to 20 thousand people at each performance. Epidaurus could seat thousands. Sophocles is a man of 44-50 at exactly the moment Athens is rebuilding herself. His friend Pericles is exactly the same age. Therefore, they are a generation of men around the same age born in 450, 440, 430, who give us this voice to what we want to talk about tonight: Sophocles, Pericles, Thucydides, and Herodotus.

REQUIRED READING

We are reading Oedipus the King in the collection (Oedipus Rex).

Tonight we are going to talk about Alexander the Great. The first question everybody will ask is: “Why was he great?” What is great about Alexander the Great? Much of what we will talk about tonight will be battles and people will get killed. People don’t think of that as greatness. That is true. Often battles are not that great. So what about Alexander is great?

Why is Alexander “Great”?
1. The first reason is, he did more than any other human being has done in 33 years. There is no other historical figure with such a short life who does so much. So that is pretty great to start with.

2. Second, he is he first person we know about who thinks about “the ecumenical reality of the world”, that this is “one world”. Alexander had a clear ecumenical idea and his idea was he would go to the ends of the earth, to the very edge. As far as he knew the edge was India, and when he died at 70 or 80 he would have unified that world.

3. He planned to not just conquered it, but rather he wanted to bring cultures together, to unify them often in a fairly sophisticated way. For example, in Babylon, present day Iraq, he sponsored a mass marriage between Greeks and Persians. His idea was that he would bring the whole culture together by having thousands of Greek soldiers marry Persian women. So his idea went beyond conquest. If he had had a longer time who knows how unified the world would have been. But the fact was that when he died in 323 BC this was a radical, progressive, extraordinary idea.
Nobody had thought like this, certainly not in Egypt, and not in Persia. The leaders of ancient cultures were very insular. Each thought his culture was the best so there was no reason to have anything to do with other cultures, except to sell things to them. Alexander is a trailblazer, a “world thinker”.

REQUIRED READING

No required reading

RECOMMENDED READING

These three excellent books about Alexander are all in print. The Renault book reads as an essay about Alexander and the literature about him. The Green book is considered the masterpiece of the world's leading expert on Alexander. Renault's book reflects her adoration of Alexander; Green's book is cooler and more academic. The Goldsworthy book is fascinating about Alexander and his father. All are excellent and well worth reading.

MORE RECOMMENDED READING: Historical Fiction

The best introduction to ancient Greece that I know is the historical fiction of Mary Renault:

Mary Renault (4 September 1905–13 December 1983), born Eileen Mary Challans, was an English writer best known for her historical novels set in ancient Greece. In addition to vivid fictional portrayals of Theseus, Socrates, Plato, and Alexander the Great, she wrote a non-fiction biography of Alexander. It is the best short book about him. (The Nature of Alexander)

Historical novels:

The Last of the Wine (1956)—set in Athens during the Peloponnesian War; the narrator is a student of Socrates.

The King Must Die (1958)—the mythical Theseus, up to his father's death

The Bull from the Sea (1962)—the remainder of Theseus' life

The Mask of Apollo (1966)—an actor at the time of Plato and Dionysius the Younger (brief appearance by Alexander near the end of the book)

Fire from Heaven (1969)—Alexander the Great from the age of four up to his father's death

The Persian Boy (1972)—from Bagoas's perspective; Alexander the Great after the conquest of Persia

The Praise Singer (1978)—the poet Simonides of Ceos

Funeral Games (1981)—Alexander's successors

On the left you see Plato and Aristotle as depicted in Raphael's great fresco in the Vatican called "The School of Athens," and you see the older Plato in red on the left with his student Aristotle in blue on our right. These two men create the philosophical structure of Western thought.
 
 
 
 
 
 

REQUIRED READING

Aristotle, The Categories (PDF provided)

Euclid, The Elements (PDF provided)

Ptolemy, The Geography (PDF provided)

ROME

On the left you see one of the many sculpted heads of Julius Caesar that have survived from the first century BC. Julius Caesar was born in 100 BC; he died on March 15, 44 BC. Caesar may be the most controversial figure in all of European history. For two thousand years, his life and death have marked the end of the Roman Republic and the onset of the Roman Empire. The fate of the Republic has been the most important issue of debate in various periods of European history, as well as in our own US history. In every instance of political crisis, when Western democracies debate the true nature of their political health, the conversation has gone back to Julius Caesar: Was he a tyrant or was he a failed savior of the Roman Republic? For example, in 1215 when they signed the Magna Carta, during the crises of the Tudor century, and also in the Stuart era, men looked to Caesar. In 60 BC, and in 50 BC, that question was the core of the debate among Romans. And then, in 44 BC, the debate was ended with a sword. For our study of the Republic, we must evaluate Julius Caesar, his life, and his career; and we must also try to decide what happened. Was he the final destructive, last chapter of the 500-year old Roman Republic? His life and his dialog with Cicero are the most important sources of information on the issue.

REQUIRED READING

RECOMMENDED READING

Goldsworthy presents a wonderful exploration of Caesar's life, including his military and political conquests, revealing his personality in a sympathetic telling. Many, many books have been written about Caesar and his time. This one is very accessible and worthwhile, and, I think, the best.

NEXT WEEK: Thanksgiving Week November 24–27

Classes will not be held the week of November 24 to 27, Thanksgiving vacation.

Students have stated they prefer having the week off; many are traveling for the holidays.

Rome, Cicero, and the Republic

Cicero and Julius Caesar

Lifelong friends, lifelong enemies.

Cicero and Octavian

Cicero's last days: martyr for freedom.

REQUIRED READING

In this collection of Cicero's works read the following:

1. The excellent introduction by Michael Grant
2. Part One (Section 2) "Selection from His Correspondence"
3. Part One (Section 3) "The Second Philippic"

RECOMMENDED READING

We are very lucky to have a paperback edition of the wonderful new biography of Cicero available to us for our class this Fall. The Everitt biography is the first new biography of Cicero in many years and it is the best I have ever read. It is a total pleasure and if you find Cicero to be as interesting as I do then you will want to own the Everitt book.

Jesus of Nazareth according to the writer Luke. Who was Jesus? Who was Luke?

REQUIRED READING

Please feel free to use any edition of the New Testament that you already possess.  But this edition, the New Jerusalem Bible, paperback edition of the New Testament is particularly useful and well designed. This paper edition is now out of print, but there are many used copies available from Amazon at very low prices. I will be using this edition in my lectures.

RECOMMENDED READING

In our second week of study when we were reading Genesis, I recommended Richard Friedman's book Who Wrote the Bible? Now this week when we come to Christianity we need another book to give us some background on both the Old and New Testaments. And I have just the book for you: Jeffery Sheler, Is the Bible True?(ISBN 0-06-067542-X, paperback,$15.00). Sheler is the religion writer for US News. Over the years he has covered all the latest debates in the world of Biblical criticism, and two years ago he wrote this wonderful summary of all he has learned over the last years. It is a total pleasure to read. It is clear and well organized and provides the best survey available in the complex world of New Testament criticism (He also provides a good summary of the issues raised in Friedman's book.)

MORE RECOMMENDED READING: HISTORICAL FICTION

Here are two wonderful novels that tell about the world of early Christianity; both deal with Luke. The Taylor Caldwell novel, Dear and Glorious Physician, is the best possible way to come to know the whole world of Luke and Paul, other than reading Luke and Acts.  You will love these books if you are a fan of historical fiction.

Paul of Tarsus

Christianity in the first century

The spread of Christianity and the work of Paul

Paul and Peter in Rome

 

REQUIRED READING

The Acts of the Apostles in The New Jerusalem Bible

Please see also the outline of the Acts of the Apostles.

RECOMMENDED READING

We are very fortunate to have a fine biography of Paul recently published by Oxford University Press.  It is very good: succinct and helpful with maps that are just what we want.

Christmas Vacation: December 22 to January 2

Classes will not be held during the weeks of Dec 22 and Dec 29.

Winter Quarter for Thursday class begins January 8, 2026.

What is civilization?
What is the Western Tradition?
What is Western Civilization?
And why doesn't our educational system want to teach it any more?
What is the state of the Western Tradition today?
What is the state of the teaching of the Western Tradition?
European critics of the Western Tradition:
Claude Levi-Strauss (1908–2009 )
Michel Foucault (1926–1984)
Paul De Man (1919–1983)
Jacques Derrida (1930–2004)
Edward Said (1935–2003)
Triumph of the European critics in American universities in the 1970's

One Definition of Civilization:
Winston Churchill was one of the greatest heroes of Western civilization. On July 2, 1938, at the height of the Sudetenland crisis, he delivered the Chancellor’s Address at the University of Bristol. In a short but powerful speech Churchill, a master of the English language, gave as eloquent a statement of the Anglo-American tradition of liberty and civilization as has ever been uttered.
"There are few words which are used more loosely than the word 'Civilization.' What does it mean? It means a society based upon the opinion of civilians. It means that violence, the rule of warriors and despotic chiefs, the conditions of camps and warfare, of riot and tyranny, give place to parliaments where laws are made, and independent courts of justice in which over long periods those laws are maintained. That is Civilization—and in its soil grow continually freedom, comfort and culture. When Civilization reigns, in any country, a wider and less harassed life is afforded to the masses of the people. The traditions of the past are cherished, and the inheritance bequeathed to us by former wise or valiant men becomes a rich estate to be enjoyed and used by all. The central principle of Civilization is the subordination of the ruling authority to the settled customs of the people and to their will as expressed through the Constitution. In this Island we have today achieved in a high degree the blessings of Civilization. There is freedom: there is law; there is love of country; there is a great measure of good will between classes: there is a widening prosperity. There are unmeasured opportunities of correcting abuses and making further progress."
Source: Winston S. Churchill, Blood, Sweat, and Tears, Randolph S. Churchill, ed. (New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1941), pp. 45–46

RECOMMENDED READING: David Denby, Great Books

This is a wonderful book. David Denby went back to Columbia where he had been an undergraduate many years before, and did the Humanities course sequence again and wrote this fascinating record of his experiences with the students and their reactions to the great books. It will serve you all as a delightful parallel experience to our own class. As you read and discuss the books in our class you can read about the undergraduates at Columbia and their reactions to the same books. But let me suggest the following: wait until AFTER we have read and discussed a book before reading the section in Denby on the same material. Otherwise your reaction will be constantly predetermined by the Denby reaction and the ideas he presents.

Be sure to see our collection of links in the right sidebar; this week, in particular, please see the ancient world chronology.

Ancient Israel and the Covenant
The ancient Israelis had a vision of history in which there was a covenant with God. There was a contract, there was an agreement between the Creator and the individual people who sign the covenant. So, we now have an agreement whereby these people will live and continue to discover truth and discover the essence of life in history, and proceed step by step to fulfill the plan. It is not complete in the beginning. When Abraham is called out of the Middle East to begin this story it is just the beginning of the story. There are thousands of years ahead when the story has to continue and come into being. So the essence of the Jewish story is constant striving, constant work, and constant study.

The Hebrew Bible
The book becomes important in the story, the very book we are going to look at in a second, The Hebrew Bible. That Bible itself is understood to be not complete, not perfect, but needing constant study, editorial work, editorial commentary, and so it grows. It is constantly being studied and constantly being added to. That is where you get the extraordinary accent on scholarship in the Jewish faith. That is something that has been given to the West because, of necessity, the Jews understood from the very beginning that the document they were slowly building was the record of their covenant with God. Therefore it was essential that it be accurate, that it be circulated, that it be translated, that it be preserved.

Accent on History
The key thing the Jews give us in Western Civilization is an accent on history. Everything about the Jewish insight is the revelation of the Divine plan in time. We have to stop and think about this because we often don’t realize it. We look at a story in time and think that is so terrible, why did they do that? Human sacrifice! In ancient societies, every single society practiced human sacrifice, and for a long time. One of the stories we will look at tonight is Abraham and Isaac, one of the great stories of all time. The point of that story is the end of human sacrifice.

RECOMMENDED READING

Our text this week is the first book of the Hebrew Bible. The scholarship on the Bible is massive and difficult for the ordinary student. But some understanding of how the Bible was formed is absolutely essential and therefore I am happy to recommend to you all a wonderful book. It is called Who Wrote the Bible? and it is written by Professor Richard Elliott Friedman, of the University of California at San Diego (HarperCollins paperback, ISBN 0060630353). Prof. Friedman has written an important book about an important subject that is a pleasure to read: it is elegant and informative. It will change the way you think about the Hebrew Bible.

This is the best book in English about the origins and writing of the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament.

It is a brilliant exciting book. You will never forget it.

Ancient Greece and the origins of the Western Tradition.
Greece: the land, the light, the people.
The Indo-European invaders.

The Bronze Age Charioteers.

Homer and Troy

REQUIRED READING

Homer, Iliad, Book I

Partial copy will be provided to you.

RECOMMENDED READING

This is the best new introduction to the world of the ancient Greeks. Edith Hall takes you back to the beginning and then covers the whole Greek story through Alexander the Great. She is both a brilliant writer and an engaging lecturer. If you would like to see her lectures go to Youtube and look her up.

Athens and the Golden Age
In 450 BC, a whole new world, a whole new culture was born in a new location: Athens. Athens emerges as the center of this new culture. So in this new world the thinkers, writers, playwrights, politicians, the poets will try to summarize Greek culture in 450 BC in Athens.

Sophocles lived from 496 BC to 406 BC. He wrote over 100 plays. Most of them were huge hits. They were popular successes, with 15 to 20 thousand people at each performance. Epidaurus could seat thousands. Sophocles is a man of 44-50 at exactly the moment Athens is rebuilding herself. His friend Pericles is exactly the same age. Therefore, they are a generation of men around the same age born in 450, 440, 430, who give us this voice to what we want to talk about tonight: Sophocles, Pericles, Thucydides, and Herodotus.

REQUIRED READING

We are reading Oedipus the King in the collection (Oedipus Rex).

Tonight we are going to talk about Alexander the Great. The first question everybody will ask is: “Why was he great?” What is great about Alexander the Great? Much of what we will talk about tonight will be battles and people will get killed. People don’t think of that as greatness. That is true. Often battles are not that great. So what about Alexander is great?

Why is Alexander “Great”?
1. The first reason is, he did more than any other human being has done in 33 years. There is no other historical figure with such a short life who does so much. So that is pretty great to start with.

2. Second, he is he first person we know about who thinks about “the ecumenical reality of the world”, that this is “one world”. Alexander had a clear ecumenical idea and his idea was he would go to the ends of the earth, to the very edge. As far as he knew the edge was India, and when he died at 70 or 80 he would have unified that world.

3. He planned to not just conquered it, but rather he wanted to bring cultures together, to unify them often in a fairly sophisticated way. For example, in Babylon, present day Iraq, he sponsored a mass marriage between Greeks and Persians. His idea was that he would bring the whole culture together by having thousands of Greek soldiers marry Persian women. So his idea went beyond conquest. If he had had a longer time who knows how unified the world would have been. But the fact was that when he died in 323 BC this was a radical, progressive, extraordinary idea.
Nobody had thought like this, certainly not in Egypt, and not in Persia. The leaders of ancient cultures were very insular. Each thought his culture was the best so there was no reason to have anything to do with other cultures, except to sell things to them. Alexander is a trailblazer, a “world thinker”.

REQUIRED READING

No required reading

RECOMMENDED READING

These three excellent books about Alexander are all in print. The Renault book reads as an essay about Alexander and the literature about him. The Green book is considered the masterpiece of the world's leading expert on Alexander. Renault's book reflects her adoration of Alexander; Green's book is cooler and more academic. The Goldsworthy book is fascinating about Alexander and his father. All are excellent and well worth reading.

MORE RECOMMENDED READING: Historical Fiction

The best introduction to ancient Greece that I know is the historical fiction of Mary Renault:

Mary Renault (4 September 1905–13 December 1983), born Eileen Mary Challans, was an English writer best known for her historical novels set in ancient Greece. In addition to vivid fictional portrayals of Theseus, Socrates, Plato, and Alexander the Great, she wrote a non-fiction biography of Alexander. It is the best short book about him. (The Nature of Alexander)

Historical novels:

The Last of the Wine (1956)—set in Athens during the Peloponnesian War; the narrator is a student of Socrates.

The King Must Die (1958)—the mythical Theseus, up to his father's death

The Bull from the Sea (1962)—the remainder of Theseus' life

The Mask of Apollo (1966)—an actor at the time of Plato and Dionysius the Younger (brief appearance by Alexander near the end of the book)

Fire from Heaven (1969)—Alexander the Great from the age of four up to his father's death

The Persian Boy (1972)—from Bagoas's perspective; Alexander the Great after the conquest of Persia

The Praise Singer (1978)—the poet Simonides of Ceos

Funeral Games (1981)—Alexander's successors

On the left you see Plato and Aristotle as depicted in Raphael's great fresco in the Vatican called "The School of Athens," and you see the older Plato in red on the left with his student Aristotle in blue on our right. These two men create the philosophical structure of Western thought.
 
 
 
 
 
 

REQUIRED READING

Aristotle, The Categories (PDF provided)

Euclid, The Elements (PDF provided)

Ptolemy, The Geography (PDF provided)

ROME

On the left you see one of the many sculpted heads of Julius Caesar that have survived from the first century BC. Julius Caesar was born in 100 BC; he died on March 15, 44 BC. Caesar may be the most controversial figure in all of European history. For two thousand years, his life and death have marked the end of the Roman Republic and the onset of the Roman Empire. The fate of the Republic has been the most important issue of debate in various periods of European history, as well as in our own US history. In every instance of political crisis, when Western democracies debate the true nature of their political health, the conversation has gone back to Julius Caesar: Was he a tyrant or was he a failed savior of the Roman Republic? For example, in 1215 when they signed the Magna Carta, during the crises of the Tudor century, and also in the Stuart era, men looked to Caesar. In 60 BC, and in 50 BC, that question was the core of the debate among Romans. And then, in 44 BC, the debate was ended with a sword. For our study of the Republic, we must evaluate Julius Caesar, his life, and his career; and we must also try to decide what happened. Was he the final destructive, last chapter of the 500-year old Roman Republic? His life and his dialog with Cicero are the most important sources of information on the issue.

REQUIRED READING

RECOMMENDED READING

Goldsworthy presents a wonderful exploration of Caesar's life, including his military and political conquests, revealing his personality in a sympathetic telling. Many, many books have been written about Caesar and his time. This one is very accessible and worthwhile, and, I think, the best.

NEXT WEEK: Thanksgiving Week November 24–27

Classes will not be held the week of November 24 to 27, Thanksgiving vacation.

Students have stated they prefer having the week off; many are traveling for the holidays.

Rome, Cicero, and the Republic

Cicero and Julius Caesar

Lifelong friends, lifelong enemies.

Cicero and Octavian

Cicero's last days: martyr for freedom.

REQUIRED READING

In this collection of Cicero's works read the following:

1. The excellent introduction by Michael Grant
2. Part One (Section 2) "Selection from His Correspondence"
3. Part One (Section 3) "The Second Philippic"

RECOMMENDED READING

We are very lucky to have a paperback edition of the wonderful new biography of Cicero available to us for our class this Fall. The Everitt biography is the first new biography of Cicero in many years and it is the best I have ever read. It is a total pleasure and if you find Cicero to be as interesting as I do then you will want to own the Everitt book.

Jesus of Nazareth according to the writer Luke. Who was Jesus? Who was Luke?

REQUIRED READING

Please feel free to use any edition of the New Testament that you already possess.  But this edition, the New Jerusalem Bible, paperback edition of the New Testament is particularly useful and well designed. This paper edition is now out of print, but there are many used copies available from Amazon at very low prices. I will be using this edition in my lectures.

RECOMMENDED READING

In our second week of study when we were reading Genesis, I recommended Richard Friedman's book Who Wrote the Bible? Now this week when we come to Christianity we need another book to give us some background on both the Old and New Testaments. And I have just the book for you: Jeffery Sheler, Is the Bible True?(ISBN 0-06-067542-X, paperback,$15.00). Sheler is the religion writer for US News. Over the years he has covered all the latest debates in the world of Biblical criticism, and two years ago he wrote this wonderful summary of all he has learned over the last years. It is a total pleasure to read. It is clear and well organized and provides the best survey available in the complex world of New Testament criticism (He also provides a good summary of the issues raised in Friedman's book.)

MORE RECOMMENDED READING: HISTORICAL FICTION

Here are two wonderful novels that tell about the world of early Christianity; both deal with Luke. The Taylor Caldwell novel, Dear and Glorious Physician, is the best possible way to come to know the whole world of Luke and Paul, other than reading Luke and Acts.  You will love these books if you are a fan of historical fiction.

Paul of Tarsus

Christianity in the first century

The spread of Christianity and the work of Paul

Paul and Peter in Rome

 

REQUIRED READING

The Acts of the Apostles in The New Jerusalem Bible

Please see also the outline of the Acts of the Apostles.

RECOMMENDED READING

We are very fortunate to have a fine biography of Paul recently published by Oxford University Press.  It is very good: succinct and helpful with maps that are just what we want.

Christmas Vacation: December 22 to January 2

Classes will not be held during the weeks of Dec 22 and Dec 29.

Winter Quarter for Thursday class begins January 8, 2026.