Recently finished my latest set of lectures from The Teaching Company The New Testament, and really enjoyed them. The lecturer is Dr. Bart Bart D. Ehrman of UNC - Chapel Hill, and he does a great job of going through the books and letters and explaining the historical and literary background of each. He points out themes, discrepancies, disputes over authorship, and gives you a much broader understanding of the texts by placing them in their historical context. For example, I didn't know writing letters seeking to gain adherents to a particular point and claiming Paul (or Peter or another prominent figure) as the author was common in the early centuries - or that there was a distinct strand of apocalypticism in first century Judaism, or even that John's Revelation was "an" apocalypse, not the only one. Interestingly, it turns out apocalypses were a distinct genre of writing at the time, of which we have numerous examples of - in somewhat the same way Ehrman says that science fiction is a type of writing today - and it is helpful to understand the general rules that seem to have applied to such stories in order to have a fuller understanding of what John's version means. He says, by the way, that John's Revelation should not be read as applying to future events - rather it was common for such books (and he given other examples in the Bible) to recount recent history as a prophetic vision, and comment essentially on current events at that time. Thus there are good arguments that it refers to Rome and to Nero (whose name adds up to 666 or 616 - which one version of Revelation says is the number - depending on which of the two acceptable Hebrew spellings of "Caesar Nero" you use), rather than to some future Babylon or Antichrist. Interesting stuff!
I highly recommend it to anyone interested in a fuller understanding of the New Testament. I got it as a kind of introduction to Biblical scholarship - there are more on the New Testament I hope to get to soon.
I can't stand not to have several of these going at the same time. Right now I'm listening to one about imaginative literature (have covered Brothers Grimm, Poe, Kafka and currently on Wells) in the car, and am bouncing back and forth at home between watching the history of the Byzantine Empire (for the third time), ancient civilizations of Asia Minor, and just started a really interesting Introduction to Judaism. I also started one on Rome, but it turned out it was limited to the ancient civilization, not the city's whole history, so I think I'll wait a bit before getting to that one. I also got one on decisionmaking skills, but am not sure when to start listening to it.
