The traditional form of Christianity we know today includes beliefs
From Jesus to Constantine: A History of Early Christianity
Uncover the riveting story of the early formation of the Christian religion and learn how this faith grew from 20 followers to 2 billion.
Overview
About
Bart D. Ehrman is the James A. Gray Distinguished Professor at The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He received his MDiv and PhD from Princeton Theological Seminary. He has written or edited more than 30 books, including six New York Times bestsellers: Misquoting Jesus; God’s Problem; Jesus, Interrupted; Forged; How Jesus Became God; and The Triumph of Christianity. He has also received several teaching honors, including the John William Pope Center Spirit of Inquiry Award and the UNC Students’ Undergraduate Teaching Award.
01: The Birth of Christianity
This lecture introduces some issues essential to understanding how Christianity began, grew away from its Jewish roots, and ultimately became the most important religion of our civilization.
32 min
02: The Religious World of Early Christianity
This lecture introduces the pagan, polytheistic religions that dominated the early world and the most important Roman religion for the birth of Christianity: Judaism, the religion of Jesus and his followers.
31 min
03: The Historical Jesus
In the first of three lectures on the "birth" of Christianity, Professor Ehrman examines the life of Jesus of Nazareth, as referred to both outside the New Testament and within the Gospels themselves.
30 min
04: Oral and Written Traditions about Jesus
This lecture looks at how four anonymous authors who lived decades after Jesus recorded traditions that had been circulating orally over the intervening years, and examines the extent to which those traditions had been modified in the retelling.
31 min
05: The Apostle Paul
Based on a visionary experience of the resurrected Jesus, a Jewish Pharisee converts to Christianity and begins an intense missionary experience to win over non-Jews to faith in Jesus.
31 min
06: The Beginning of Jewish-Christian Relations
In the first of three lectures dealing with the relationship of Jews and Christians in the ancient world, we consider how Christianity started as a sect within Judaism, yet quickly became a religion separate from Judaism.
30 min
07: The Anti-Jewish Use of the Old Testament
How could most early Christians, who held on to the Jewish Scriptures as revelations from God, claim these Scriptures for their own when they did not follow many of the laws set forth in them? This lecture considers two key figures in the early Christian-Jewish debates.
31 min
08: The Rise of Christian Anti-Judaism
This lecture explores the social and historical situations that led to the rejection of Judaism by many Christians in the centuries after Christ.
31 min
09: The Early Christian Mission
This is the first of two lectures specifically exploring how Christianity became, in only 300 years, a world religion that commanded the attention and, eventually, respect of the Roman society and government.
31 min
10: The Christianization of the Roman Empire
In this lecture, we will move into the periods of the Christian mission after Paul to see how far and how quickly the religion spread, the reasons for its success, and its ultimate reach to the upper echelons of the Roman government.
31 min
11: The Early Persecutions of the State
In the first of four lectures dealing with persecution and martyrdom in the early church, Professor Ehrman examines some graphic early accounts and considers why these persecutions took place and the Christian reaction to them.
30 min
12: The Causes of Christian Persecution
This lecture provides a historical sketch of the course of persecution from the 1st to 3rd centuries, asking what motivated the two most common kinds of violence against Christians: grassroots persecutions and those ordered by the state.
30 min
13: Christian Reactions to Persecution
Many early Christians recanted their faith in the face of persecution, but many others stayed faithful to what they believed.
30 min
14: The Early Christian Apologists
This lecture examines the strategies of an elite group of Christian intellectuals who defended Christianity against the charges of atheism and immorality commonly leveled against them, focusing on the work of one of the most interesting of them, Athenagoras.
31 min
15: The Diversity of Early Christian Communities
This is the first of four lectures that will consider the wide-ranging theological diversity of early Christianity and the internal conflicts that emerged as Christians tried to determine once and for all the "right" beliefs and practices.
31 min
16: Christianities of the Second Century
Many groups of Christians in the 2nd century claimed to have the only true understanding of the faith, including three that are the focus of this lecture: Ebionites, Marcionites, and Gnostics.
31 min
17: The Role of Pseudepigrapha
This lecture considers several of the supporting—and usually forged—"sacred texts" possessed by the various groups of Christians arguing for their own version of the faith.
30 min
18: The Victory of the Proto-Orthodox
This lecture examines how the conflicts were waged between "heretical" forms of Christianity and the proto-orthodox Christians who eventually established themselves as dominant.
31 min
19: The New Testament Canon
This is the first of five lectures devoted to the question of how traditional Christianity—with its canon of Scripture, creeds, liturgy, and church offices—emerged out of the conflicts of the 2nd and 3rd centuries.
30 min
20: The Development of Church Offices
This lecture considers the movement from the charismatic organization of the early churches founded by Paul to the official church hierarchy in place by the end of the 4th century, with its elders, deacons, priests, and bishops.
30 min
21: The Rise of Christian Liturgy
This is an in-depth look at how Christian liturgical practices arose, particularly those that became virtually universal throughout the church: baptism and the Eucharist.
30 min
22: The Beginnings of Normative Theology
This lecture considers the development of a normative theology among the proto-orthodox, who insisted that believing the "right" things was essential for salvation and who took care, therefore, to formulate correct doctrine and differentiate it from false doctrine.
31 min
23: The Doctrine of the Trinity
This lecture considers the most distinctive theological development of early Christianity, the doctrine of the Trinity: God exists in three entities—the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit—who are equal and distinct but make up one God.
30 min
24: Christianity and the Conquest of Empire
This concluding lecture considers the character of Christianity at the beginning of the 4th century and its enormous consequences for the history of Western civilization.
30 min
