Introduction to the Bible : New testament [ LTHEO1110C ]

To reach these objectives, the course will treat the following themes :

• the historical and religious milieu of the NT
• the Figure of Jesus in the NT
• introduction to the Pauline literature, to the Gospels, to the Apocalypse and to the Apocryphal texts of the NT
• Brief history of the NT Canon
• relation between history, literature and theology for the lecture of the Gospel

At the end of that course, the student will be able to :

- describe the historical and religious milieu of the NT and locate the person of Jesus
- master a basical knowledge about the NT (contents, main characteristics...)
- describe the history of the formation of the NT Canon

Unit A Introduction to the New Testament : Students will be introduced to a critical reading of the Gospels through a theoretical and practical presentation of exegetic methods. Methods and results of the historical research on Jesus and his contemporaneous society will be also treated. Finally the common issues related to the Gospels and Acts (literary genre, objectives, author, date, plan) will be dealt with. Unit B Introduction to the Old Testament Content: Historical questions : main lines of the history of Israel people, of the progressive formation of the Old Testament and of the tradition of its text. This theoretical presentation is completed by the reading of some important texts; the scope is to introduce to the principal exegetical methods. A general bibliography on the O.T. is also presented. Methods: For historical questions: teaching and personal readings; for text readings: interactive work and comments of the teachers on the methods used in these readings. Unit C Theology of the Holy Scripture : The questions of revelation, inspiration and truth of the Bible will be successively dealt with. The formation of the biblical canons will be examined historically and theologically. The main Apocrypha of the OT and the NT will be presented. The course will end with a brief introduction to the textual criticism of the NT.

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