CHRISTIAN ORIGINS: TEXTS AND DOCUMENTS

Early Christianity is, to all intents and purposes, an Asian religion and cultural phenomenon. It was born in Palestine and made its first proselytes in Syria and Asia Minor, before reaching (in fact very quickly) the western Mediterranean. In the very first centuries of its development, many of the crucial themes of this religion were played out between Asia and North Africa. The present course will focus on two markedly Asian and African (and absolutely vital) moments of Christian history: the development of the first communities in Palestine, Syria, and Asia Minor, with the birth within them of the first beliefs about Jesus and of the first Christian written documents. The course will focus specifically on the evolution of the conceptions of Jesus through the study of the figure of Paul in the Acts of the Apostles and in his letters, and of Jesus himself as represented in the four canonical gospels of Mark, Matthew, Luke, and John.

Students will be able to appreciate the complexity of Christian origins, with special regard to the formation of the first written documents (Pauline epistles, Gospels, Revelation), and will show that they can evaluate these themes in rigorously historical terms, without ideological or confessional precomprehensions.

None. A preliminary knowledge of the Hebrew Bible, which Christians called first or Old Testament, is warmly recommended.

The course will focus on the formation of the very first Christian written documents, in particular the letters of Paul, the Acts of the Apostles, and the Gospels, all written within the first century. The purpose is twofold: on the one hand we will show that these documents (which would later make up the Christian New Testament), and the Gospels themselves in particular, do not attest to a unitary vision of Jesus and his message, but changing and sometimes conflicting beliefs. On the other hand, it will also be shown that the first Christian documents (not yet a "literature" in the proper sense) are not compact texts, but complex montages of writings and rewritings.

A Bible, preferably the "Bibbia di Gerusalemme"
Compulsory reading: I Vangeli. Marco Matteo Luca Giovanni, a cura di Giancarlo Gaeta. Macerata: Quodlibet, 2024.
One reading to be chosen among:
Claudio Moreschini-Enrico Norelli, Storia della letteratura cristiana antica greca e latina, vol. I: Da Paolo all'età costantiniana. Brescia: Morcelliana, 2019, pp. 27-99, 131-162, 201-223.
Rudolf Pesch, L'evangelo della comunità primitiva, Brescia: Paideia, 1984.

Learning results will be verified through an oral exam and on the basis of participation in the planned activities. Average duration of the exam: 25 minutes.

Frontal lesson; possibly film proections; guided tours to ancient Christian sites.

Italian

oral