Cultural World of the New Testament

The works of the New Testament were written in a different language, under very different living conditions and circumstances, and in a world that had substantially different cultural knowledge, practices, and priorities than our own. To understand these texts as their authors and their primary audiences heard and understood them, we need to immerse ourselves in the social and cultural “knowledge” of the first-century Mediterranean world. In this course, you will learn about aspects of Greco-Roman culture that influenced the writers and audiences of the New Testament, including honor and shame, patronage and reciprocity, kinship and the household, and purity and pollution.