Josep Montserrat-Torrents, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona

“Old Testament” is a discourteous expression: a certain amount of people doesn’t consider the Hebrew Bible to be “old” at all. On the other hand, “New Testament” is a theological term, framed to design a set of writings purportedly inspired by God in the First century. The canon of such books was not established until around 200 A.D. Now, historians have nothing to do with pious legends, instead they deal with writings tout court created by human beings. The writings dated from the first century of Christianity (from 50 to 150) amount roughly to fifty titles.. These are the subject matter of the course.
Early Christian literature is a chapter of Greek literature. Its study belongs to philology and history, particularly to the history of religions. Therefore, its methods are the scientific methods of those disciplines, largely improved over the last two centuries.
The procedure of the course rests upon the direct contact with the texts themselves. Philological and historical features will be raised by means of analysis and commentary as well as through correlation with others texts.
Texts will be read in translations. Copies can be downloaded from a myriad of Internet sites. Greek originals will be provided if requested.

Topics
1) General introduction. The sources. The manuscript tradition. The Roman Empire. The Jews. The Greek common language (koiné). Books and literacy. Communications. Social differentiation.
2) The Pauline corpus. The five (seven) authentic letters of Paul. Passages from Galatians, Romans and I-II Corinthians.
3) The Synoptic Gospels. The Synoptic problem. The Q source. Passages from Matthew, Mark and Luke.
4) The Book of Acts. Passages parallel to the Pauline epistles.
5) Other Gospels. The Gospel of Peter. The Gospel of Thomas. The Gospel of Marcion.
6) The Gospel of John. The Johanine school. Doctrinal passages.
7) The apocalyptic literature. Jewish apocalypses. The Apocalypsis of John. The Apocalypsis of Peter. The Ascension of Isaiah. The Pastor of Hermas. The Sibyllin oracles.
8) Late epistles. Hebrews and Clement I. The letters of Ignatius. The letter of Polycarp. The letters of the Mosaic Christianity. Pseudonymous letters.
9) Communitarian and liturgical writings. The Didaché. The Odes of Solomon.

Students are expected to participate in the form of short communications about subjects of their choice. When written, such papers will account for grading. Otherwise the grading system will consist in a formulary of questions.

Required reading
One Synoptic Gospel. John. The Gospel of Thomas. Two Letters of Paul. Acts.

Bibliography
New Testament Abstracts, Cambridge, Mass. (from 1956).
W.H.C. Frend, The rise of Christianity, London, 1984.
H. Koester, Introduction to the New Testament, Philadelphia, 1982.
Ph. Vielhauer, Geschichte der frühchristlichen Literatur, Berlin, De Gruyter, 1975 (English translation).
H Koester, Ancient Christian Gospels, London, SCM Press, 1990.
R. Bultmann, The Gospel of John. A Commentary. Oxford, Blackwell, 1971.
E.P. Sanders, Paul, the Law and the Jewish people, London, SCM Press, 1985.
J.P.M. Sweet, Revelation, London, 1979.
J. Montserrat-Torrents, La sinagoga cristiana, Barcelona, 1989.

Biography
Doctor in Theology (Gregoriana, Rome) and in Philosophy (Barcelona). Full Professor (catedràtic) of Philosophy at UAB. Taught at VIU in the Undergraduate Program of Fall 2000. Author of various books, including: Filó d’Alexandria. La creació del Món i altres escrits, Laia, Barcelona, 1983; Las transformaciones del platonismo, Publicacions de la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, 1987; El desafio cristiano. Las razones del perseguidor, Anaya y Mario Muchnik, Madrid, 1992; Platón: de la perpejidad al sistema, Anthropos, Barcelona, 1995; Textos gnósticos. Biblioteca de Nag Hammadi, (with A. Piñero and F. García Bazán), 3 vols., Trotta, Madrid, 1997-99. Publications in English include: “Methodius of Olympus, Symposium III 4-8: an interpretation”, in Studia Patristica XIII, ed. Elisabeth Livingstone, Akademie Verlag, Berlin, 1975, pp. 239-243; “Some epistemological notes on greek cosmologies”, in Foundations of Big Bang Cosmology, ed. W. Meyerstein, World Scientific, Singapore, 1989, pp. 5-8; “Plato’s Philosophy of Science and Trinitarian Theology”, in Studia Patristica XX, Peeters, Lovaina, 1989, pp. 102-118; “The Social and Cultural Setting of the Coptic Gnostic Library”, in Studia Patristica XXXI, Peeters, Leuven, 1997, pp. 464-481.