What was it like to be born a Greek and a pagan but then to become a Christian in the first century? What would you expect of a religious ceremony? what would you think of when someone mentioned a theos or a daimon? what would you suppose a "religion" naturally to consist of? and then how would an exposure to early Christianity confound, or accord with, the religious and cultural expectations you grew up with?

In this class, we will focus on the excitement of discovering history through work with original source texts. We will read a variety of classical and biblical literary texts, but also texts from inscriptions and papyri, in order to try to fashion our own answers to questions like those posed above. Our approach to these questions will be profoundly based on original documents in Greek. That is, we seek not so much the sort of general knowledge one gets from an historical overview of the issues and time period, but the sort of specific knowledge one gets from digging deep into exemplary source documents that illuminate the historical problems. Our goals are several: (1) to continue our development of expertise in the Greek language by reading from a variety of classical and biblical sources; (2) to develop close familiarity with several important aspects of Greek culture and literature; (3) to develop expertise in how to "write history" from analysis of primary documents; (4) to enjoy thinking through some issues fundamental to one of the most powerful, and mysterious, developments in western culture (namely, the sudden rise of Christianity).

The terrain we have set ourselves is very broad, and we will keep focus by examining in turn four general issues, each as a "module" of the course. In each module there will be a set of "primary readings" consisting of one or more central texts with enough continuity to promote your fluency in Greek. Interleaved with the reading of these "primary" texts will be the introduction of a variety of short, documentary witnesses (such as texts on stone or on papyrus), as well as short background readings from the secondary literature.

Course modules. We will spend more time on the first two modules, less time on the last two.

• Popular Religion
• mystery cults
• plurality of pagan gods, religious tolerance and syncretism
• conceptions of death and the afterlife
• Primary reading: selections from Greek lyric,Aristophanes, Plato
• The Pauline Mission
• Greek letters and letterwriting
• the New Testament as "literature"
• Primary reading: Paul's First Epistle to the Corinthians (selections)
• Uncanonical Gospels and "Heresies"
• Gospel of Thomas, the "sayings source"
• Gnosticism, Hermeticism, Mithraism
• Primary reading: Acts of John
• Conversion and Persecution
• magic and wonderworking
• the acts of the "martyrs"
• Primary reading:  Martyrdom of Polycarp

At the bookstore you will find (I hope!) the "little Liddell," that is, the abbreviated Liddell Scott Greek to English dictionary. In addition to that, you'll need the Greek New Testament volume we used last Fall. All other texts will be supplied.

Logistics. Your final grade will depend on the following:

• 50% Written translation tests (roughly once a month) to give you a chance to demonstrate your command of the Greek texts.
• 25% Day-by-day class performance, together with occasional oral presentation of a short documentary text to the class.
• 25% Final paper, of about 8 pages, on a topic of your choice that makes use of original Greek texts. Due at the time and date scheduled for the final exam.