The Bible and Early Christianity: The Western Critical Method and Islam
‘The Bible and Early Christianity: The Western Critical Method and Islam’ illuminates our contemporary religious context as Muslims by shedding detailed and critical light on the past, particularly the struggle to define early Christianity that held such enormous consequences for the future history of Christian and finally post-Christian Europe. Most significantly, the modern scholarship’s critical scholarly analysis of Biblical and other evidence for the nature of original Christianity reveals an astounding corresponding with the Islamic revealed account of those origins.
COURSE MODULES
Week 1 Why should we study the Bible and early Christianity?
Week 2 The various approaches to study: devotional; Christian fundamentalist; the Historical Critical Method; Muslim approaches.
Week 3 What is the New Testament? The early Christians and their literature. The great diversity of beliefs and practices.
Week 4 Do we have the original NT?
Week 5 Biblical Forgeries and why they matter
Week 6 The Jewish Context of Jesus and his followers
Week 7 The 4 NT gospels. A literary and historical introduction: Introductions to Matthew, Mark, Luke and John
Week 8 The Synoptic Problem and its significance for interpretation
Week 9 The 'historical Jesus' (according to the western HCM): sources, problems and methods
Week 10 The Islamic/real Jesus. The remarkable convergence between the Jesus of historical research and the Quranic Jesus. Christology. The 'problem' of the crucifixion. Who was Jesus?
Week 11 The apostle Paul: the man and his mission
Introduction to his Letters. The problem of forgeries
Paul in relation to Jesus
Week 12 James, the Brother of Jesus. His immense significance for Christians and
Week 13 What is Christianity? Christianities
Term 2
Week 1 Early Christian Doctrines
Week 2 Background: Judaism; Graeco-Roman philosophy; Neo-Platonism; Gnosticism
Week 3 The developing Canon of the Bible
Week 4 Typology and allegory
Week 5 Pre-Nicene theology (the Word; the Apologists)
Week 6 Doctrines of the Trinity (third to forth century)
Week 7 Christological developments
Week 8 Council of Nicea
Week 9 St Augustine and the emergence of Medieval Christendom
Week 10 Reformation: history, doctrines, personalities
Week 11 The birth of Biblical criticism and impact on the churches
Week 12 The Christian denominations explained
Week 13 Christian-Muslim relations and world events
