The Gospels (the books Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John in the Bible) are the stories of Jesus' life. The word "gospel" means "good news," and these four books are the telling of the good news of Jesus' life and mission. (There's another book, Acts of the Apostles aka Acts, that tells what happens with the followers of Jesus after the events of the Gospels.)
In this class, we're going to read the four Gospels to see what they actually say. We'll be talking a lot about context, including the context of the events as described, the writing of the books themselves, and the different contexts through history in which the books have been read and interpreted and translated.
This course is appropriate for anyone who wants to take it, from people who have read the Gospels multiple times and are just curious about the Ruden translation, to people who know nothing about Christianity and the Gospels, to people who suspect they may have been misinformed about what's in the Gospels or reasonable interpretations of the Gospels, to people who just want to do a group activity online involving reading a common text. I don't care what you believe about Jesus and/or his divinity, but please bear in mind that there will be people in the class who believe he was divine and people who have been hurt by church teachings about Jesus, so act in good faith and bring real questions.
Come to as many sessions as you can. There will be around 40 pages of reading per week, which looks like around 2 hours per week in the audiobook version at 1.0 speed. Come to class even if you haven't finished the reading, but we'll talk about everything in the reading for that week. (Spoiler: He dies. Once in each book.) The first week is going to be reading the introduction, which gives a lot of context about how the Gospels were written and by whom and why, and this section is a little thick, so I'll do a summary of the introduction and post it for everyone to read instead of or along with the Introduction in the book.
About Magda Pecsenye: I was raised ELCA Lutheran (the social justice, studious, nerdy, smart-ass kind of Lutheran) in a church that taught us to evaluate and reevaluate continuously to get to the truth. I was Bible Lookup Champ in Sunday School for many years in a row. In high school I was voted "Most LIkely To Become Pope" which was extra-funny because I've never been Catholic. In college I majored in Comparative Literature and furthered my love of interpreting texts and talking about them with other people. Over the last ten years I've become increasingly enraged about men using bad-faith interpretations of the Bible to control and hurt other people, so I'm finally doing something about it by leading an exploration of what's actually in the Gospels vs. what's simple manipulation. My goal for teaching this course is for everyone to understand what these texts say and the context in which they were written, so you can make your own decisions and interpretations about them. I run my classes on the principle in Galatians 3:28.
*I am not charging money or accepting money for teaching this class, but if you get value from the class you are certainly welcome to donate to my church, Blue Ocean Faith Ann Arbor, an LGBTQ+-inclusive church.
To "enroll" in the class, just put your email address in the box, and you'll be on the list. I'll send out the syllabus and links to the class sessions a few days before the class.
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