Life During Jesus’ Time: How Did the First Christians Live, Work, and Interact?

How did Jesus and his followers live? In this course by Brown University’s Fr. Raymond F. Collins, you will enter the fascinating milieu of the New Testament.

If you’ve spent time in a foreign culture, what you encountered might have intrigued, even perplexed you. There is so much to take in: unfamiliar languages, strange foods, different customs. Reading the New Testament provides a similar experience. After all, the environment in which Jesus lived was worlds away from our own. Without understanding the life and culture of first-century Palestine, therefore, you cannot fully appreciate the Gospels, the Pauline Epistles, or Christ’s ministry.

This compelling 12- lecture series transports you to the world that shaped Christianity. You will navigate the streets Jesus walked, enter the temples the disciples attended, and explore the sociopolitical context in which they lived. Fr. Collins, a renowned New Testament scholar, leads you on this journey with wisdom and wit.

As you learn about the differences between Jesus’ environment and our own, you will look with awe at that world from two thousand years ago. Each lecture paints a vivid picture, inviting you to imagine what this time and place looked like. By following Jesus’ life from first-century Galilee to the city of Jerusalem, you will see the New Testament with new eyes.

This course is part of the Learn25 collection.

This course was previously published as The Life and Times of Jesus and His Contemporaries

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