This is the second time I've specifically studied the New Testament with one of the Great Courses -- the first time was a course called New Testament, also by Dr. Ehrman. I hadn't remembered that the first course was also his, so that explains why I kept feeling like I had learned some of this before. Ehrman covers the history of Paul's writings, as well as the Gospels, and talks about the themes of many of these books, much as he did in previous courses. But he also breaks new ground to help us understand how these writings made their way through history to us today.
One of the things we take for granted about books these days is that they are easy to produce. But clearly, this has only been the case in modern times. Books of any sort from more than a few hundred years ago only spread -- and often only survived -- if they were reproduced by hand. Reproducing them required painstaking copying.
This fact was very important in the formation of what Christians now consider the canonical books of the New Testament for a couple of reasons. First, this copying was error-prone, which means that the surviving copies of the scriptures have many differences from one another because of those errors -- you'd be surprised at the number. While many of the differences are minor enough not to cause confusion in meaning, one of the primary tasks of some biblical scholars is to apply study, logic and expertise to attempt to figure out what the original words of the authors were. Second, because of the effort involved, books were copied if they were deemed important enough. From this course, we do learn that scholars know that some writings were judged to be anything from fabrications to slightly heretical and thus were removed from the list of books allowed to be used in certain early congregations. But as far as the idea that there was a body of leaders who got together and voted some scriptures into the New Testament and some out, that did not occur for more than a dozen centuries after the books were first written, and by then the writings which would have been questionable were mostly lost to time, as they just didn't get copied any longer.
This is one Great Course which makes me want to get some confirmation from other sources. Over the years, I thought I had learned something about the creation of the canon. But now I think I heard misconceptions of others and, though I am disappointed by having to admit it, I was probably influenced by fiction such as The Da Vinci Code. At this point, I am regretting the fact that I opted not to take the New Testament course back at Luther when I was an undergraduate.
In any case, one excellent thing to get out of a course is new knowledge, but another is curiosity to learn a little more. And I got both from this course.
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