Loading...I was pleased a couple of weeks ago to see that my new course for the Great Courses (formerly called the Teaching Company; now called Wondrium [??]) “The Triumph of Christianity” has now seen the light of published day. This is my ninth course for them and is obviously based on my book of the same name.
Do you know about the Great Courses? If not, you should. They are *terrific*. I don’t mean mine – I mean in general. I’ve watched a ton of them, on Classical music, astronomy, psychology, neurology, Roman history, and and and. They get really fine lecturers (except for the ones they hired a long time ago, not to name names). All but one course I’ve seen has been superb.
Bart Ehrman Great Courses
I did my first course for the Company in 1999, published, I think in 2000. In fact, I did two courses at virtually the same time, an Introduction to the New Testament and a Life of the Historical Jesus. I was absolutely convinced, and told them up and down, that the Jesus course would far outsell the NT course. They were equally convinced and adamant that it would be the other way around. Oh boy, were they right!
My two best-selling courses are the New Testament and Lost Christianities. But all of them have been good to do. I was going to say “fun” to do but, well, they weren’t. None of them. They were incredibly hard. These courses are the hardest things I’ve ever done professionally, by a long shot.
It’s just not easy preparing thirty-minute lectures that cannot be relatively loose and casual but are to be very tight, well worded, interesting, and sufficiently informative on BIG topics.
For example: tell us all we need to know about the Gospel of John in 30 minutes! There is enormous pressure on the delivery of the lectures. It’s not like a classroom where you can putz around a bit and off the cuff at times and possibly stop now and then to take questions.
The Gospel in 30 Minutes
It’s 30 minutes of intensity. You’re in a TV studio with a set, and lights, and cameras, and camera people, and a director, and producers, and a content director, and if you misspeak a word you have to do it again and the timing has to be right and…it’s intense. And for my courses, it means doing 24 of these things.
The lectures all have to be prepared months in advance; they are reviewed and checked, suggestions are made and changes are pushed. you edit them, go over them again, provide outlines, reading suggestions, biographies, key terms, maps, charts, and, and ….
Teleprompters for Thee not for Me
Virtually ALL the professors who do these write out their lectures and then literally read them off a teleprompter. In other words, pretending to give them off the top of their heads. Not me. I have to talk my producer into not making me do that. I go off detailed outlines. The VALUE of writing them out, and the reason everyone does it, is you never have to worry about missing a beat, forgetting a point, or having any problems with the timing. Timing is especially important. You know exactly how long it will take which means 28-32 minutes.
Me? I don’t like lecturing that way, so I don’t do it. I have my outlines on the teleprompter (no notes allowed!) and go for it, almost always with lectures I’ve never ever given before. That’s why they’re so tense.
Part of the problem is that the teleprompter has only a small amount of text on it, and in my case, it’s an outline. How am I supposed to get the timing down? I do it by inserting numbers into the outline in the margin, indicating how many minutes I’m supposed to have used at this point and how many minutes I have left.
This helps me to decide whether to add an example or two, cut something out, or explain something more or less – depending on the time. So if the marginal note says: 14/16 it means: you better be at about the 14-minute mark just now because you have 16 minutes of material left and if you are already at 20 minutes or only at 6 minutes you better think of something quick!
The Great Courses is Pressure Filled
I’ve always found that a lot of pressure. 24 times in a row. Most presenters do four lectures a day over the course of six days. I don’t like that. My view of every unpleasant task I do and there seems to be a lot of them, is to get them done and out of the way as quickly as possible.
So this time I went for it. I had to do one lecture twice. The first one is usually not good, because you haven’t hit your stride yet, so you often do it again later after you’ve warmed up. This time I did 25 lectures in 4 days. Yikes. Now THAT was a lot. Oh my god was I glad when that was over.
In any event, I like very much how the course came out. Just look up “Great Courses Bart Ehrman” and you’ll find it. Hint: NEVER EVER buy any of the Great Courses at full price. They are ALWAYS going on sale (70% off!). If a course is not on sale when you want it, wait a few weeks.
The course is organized differently from my book. Much of the material is the same, but it’s organized and presented differently.
Here are the 24 lectures – Bart Ehrman Great Courses:
1 The Christian Conquest of Rome
2 Pagan Religions in the Roman World
3 Judaism in the Roman World
4 Christianity in the Roman World: An Overview
5 The Life and Teachings of Jesus
6 The Beginning of Christianity
7 The Earliest Christian Missions
9 Paul: The Apostle of the Gentiles
10 The Christian Mission to the Jews
11 Early Christianities
12 Reasons for Christianity’s Success
13 Miraculous Incentives for Conversion
14 The Exponential Growth of the Church
15 Early Opposition to the Christian Message
16 Imperial Persecution of the Early Christians
18 Major Imperial Persecutions of Christians
19 The Conversion of Constantine
20 Did Constantine Really Convert?
21 Constantine’s Interactions with the Church
22 Imperial Christianity after Constantine
23 The Beginnings of a Christian Roman Empire
24 The Triumph of Christianity: Gains and Losses
I love your Great Courses! I subscribe to Wondrium to watch them and many other courses. I have your new course in my queue and am anxious to start it.
The downloadable course booklets are icing on the cake.
I’ve learned so much from the Great Courses, and in particular from your courses Bart. Thanks so much!
There is also an online version of Great Courses or Wondrium as it is now called (https://www.wondrium.com/). The annual membership cost for me is $149.99 and i have unlimited access to the courses. No I am not a salesman for the company. 😉 If you have an IPad I would advise downloading the course videos since the streaming video is not always smooth like with Netflix.
It seems Wondrium only offers a subscription program now, and you no longer can buy individual lectures.
Really? You sure? Seems odd! But who knows….
Wondrium (used to be Great Courses Plus) is their subscription/streaming service.
The individual courses are available directly through Great Course:
https://www.thegreatcourses.com/
I’ll also mention that among the “member benefits” when you subscribe to Wondrium/GreatCoursesPlus is that you can buy any of courses from GreatCourses at a greatly reduced price.
This can be useful because while Wondrium/GreatCoursesPlus offers an excellent variety of the courses (as well as each newly added course as it becomes available) they don’t offer all of the courses in the GreatCourses back-catalogue.
(Another benefit is free shipping; this can be useful if you want to order, for example, hardcopy workbooks for classes where they are available such as language courses.)
Ah! Really? OK then. I thought they told me they officially changed the name.
“Great Courses *Plus*” (I.e. the streaming service) switched over to “Wondrium” (together with the other services, e.g. Craftsy, Kino Lorber, etc.)
But good ol’ “Great Courses” itself is still around.
Read the book. Don’t remember (of course) most of its content. Now watching the course, through lecture #10. It’s very good. Recommend. Lots o’ stuff from the book “came back.” Dr. E an engaging speaker, not news to most of you.
If you can afford about $120/year subscription (as of 2021), you have access to the entire ‘Wondrium’ library, which includes all of the ‘Great Courses’ plus many other videos. If you watch many of them, a subscription is more cost effective than purchasing a given ‘great course’ at the sale price (absolutely, never pay “retail”) and more convenient than uploading from a library DVD (lotsa scratched discs) unless you really prefer to store them on your hard drive.
I don’t own Wondrium stock, and am not in its employ, btw.
Sounds great! I look forward to getting it.
I am enjoying the new course. It’s difficult for me to imagine the “My god is better at giving you stuff than your god” theory for Christianity’s success. I don’t know if there’s any evidence for it, but is it possible that the Hebrew god sacrificing himself for humanity and therefore showing more love for people and being less of a selfish god expecting sacrifice from people played into the appeal of this particular god?
Side note… I enjoy pairing the courses with a TV series of the same theme. I did this with Vikings, the Great Course and fictional take on Vikings series, and the way the information would overlap episode by episode was particularly rich.
No, I’m afraid not. Pagans thought the idea of a god sacrificing himself weird and almost risible. It jsut wasn’t what gods did.
I think what we have to consider is why anyone would worship a god at *all* in the ancient world. Once we have that figured out, we can make sense of the appeal Christianity had.
Great to hear, Bart!
Another hint: If you have Amazon Prime streaming video, you can pay something like $11 a month and have access to a good portion of their catalog. I doubt whether Bart’s new course will appear immediately, but I recently watched “How Jesus…”. This one will get there if you can wait, otherwise you can probably pay an upcharge for it.
I also cannot recommend many of the other lecturers ENOUGH. There are a couple of “duds”, but I suggest you don’t write someone off right away. Some of these professor types can be quirky at first (present company excepted, of course).
One I’m glad I stuck with is Edwin Barnhardt of the Maya Exploration Center. He does three really good courses on South-, Meso-, and North American cultures. The Meso-American cultures one is 48 lectures, so don’t make that your first Great Course!
Seemed an oddball at first, but over time really interesting, and humorous. And almost everything he talks about, he’s been digging at during some point of his career.
John Hawkes course on human evolution is exceptional. I had just taken an excellent one at a University and then watched Hawkes one and I couldn’t believe just how good it was.
Hello Bart!
I have a burning question. How is it that early Christians didn’t gather and unite around Peter and James? There seems to have been tons of different early era preachers with their own brand of Christianity in a very diverse ecosystem of faith. Why would they then not seek out leadership from Peter and James? Did the 2 lose credibility in some way or were they somehow not well known? How is it that Paul and apparently others have the audacity to openly disagree with them?
My sense is that almost all early Christians held Peter and James in extremely high regard. The only thing Paul disagree with them on was the question of whether gentiles were on completely equal footing with Jews in Christ, without becoming Jews. This was Pauls major concern. We don’t really know the view of James (though Paul says he agreed with him when they met); Paul indicates that Peter waffled on it.
Thank you Bart!
So what kind of gets to me as a muslim is it seems to be the case Paul is clearly proclaiming Jesus a son of God whose death has cancelled out the law of the Lord Himself, and that’s a fundamental aspect of his preaching why law is now over. It’s not simply a new instruction, a new god now runs the universe, sharing lordship with God over the dominion, and specifically because of that sacrifice and ascension to semi-godhood that the law is canceled.
He must have been very open about preaching it to Peter and James. Which means…Peter and James are literally thinking themselves that their companion and brother respectively is a god? And they new him in life too! Its very hard to square someone having known another then thinking of them as a literal god after death!
Since Peter was a Jew, what would convince him that Christ ascended to God in a godifying kind of manner as opposed to just another prophet/rabbi who dies and comes close to God? And James being the actual brother, would we expect he’s starting to literally think his bro has a father son relationship with God Himself?
I think Peter and James thought Jesus was divine even before they had any contact with Paul. In my book How Jesus Because God I explain who the belief in the divinity of Jesus makes sense within the world of Judaism. There are lots of aspects of Judaism that most people don’t know about….
I have found that to be true, but I wonder if (1) the Great Courses people appreciate you telling us that, and (2) whether that is actually a good long term strategy.
Part of the decline of big retailers like J. C. Penney and Sears (not to say that it was the primary reason) was that people realized that the regular retail prices were for chumps and that if they could afford to wait there would always be a sale coming along.
Ha! I talked with one of their telephone salespersons once who told me that SHE tells peple that when they want to buy a course full-price. That was years ago, so I don’t know now. But everyone on the planet realizes this is their marketing strategy, and other higher up people there have told me that everyone pretty much knows it.
Also, check out your local library (and/or, if your local library is connected, definitely check out the Inter-Library Loan system.)
At least in my neck of the woods most libraries seem to have a decent collection of Great Courses.
Also, a very good —not to mention *free*— way to check if tGC is a good fit for you. This is how I first watched the “Lost Christianities” course, back in the day, (on VHS, nonetheless!)
I’m not Bart, but I think you misremembered the lesson! JC Penney attempted to switch from “huge list prices with frequent 50% off sales” to “every day low prices” like Wal-Mart back in 2011-2012, and it was a disaster. They absolutely bathed in red ink until they undid the change; luring chumps on coupons was more profitable. Granted, Wal-Mart is obviously successful, so it CAN work, but “college courses” are probably not a good fit for the “always cheap” model that would be competing with free YouTube videos or the like.
See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Johnson_(businessman)#JCPenney
Hi Dr Ehrman!
I was hoping to implore your guidance and expertise once more with regards to a school project! If I am writing an essay on how the NT canon was formed and how this has impacted its interpretation, do you think that this is a good way to structure it:
1.Basic information (structure of canon, date range etc.)
2.History of texts in the canon (why were these writings produced in the first place)
3.How texts came to be viewed as scripture
4.Other early Christian writings
5.Factors explaining why the scriptures were canonized
-Intrinsic (time distance from Christ event and death of apostles)
-Extrinsic
*theological controversy
*nature of codices prevented easy canonization until fourth century
6.Criteria for canonization
7.How does the formation of the canon affect interpretation of the NT (the canon acts as a hermeneutic itself, & the canon is a theological problem in the heart of Catholic vs Protestant doctrine in that it calls the authoritative nature of scripture over church and tradition into question)
Also, I came to the nativity lecture on Sunday and really enjoyed it!!!!!
Thank you so much!
Wow — you’re goin’ for it! Good job!
Thank you so much Dr Ehrman!! I really appreciate it!
Thank you for doing another course. I’ve taken your other courses on Great Courses and enjoyed them very much. As someone who spent their career working in technology I never really had much time until I recently retired to really explore topics like Religious Studies and Philosophy. My question is are there other courses in these areas on Great Courses that you consider particularly well done? Also, more generally are there any other on-line sources that you know of that are presenting courses in these areas at the quality level of Great Courses?
I think the courses by Amy Jill Levine and David Brakke are terrific. I’ve enjoyed the courses on Roman history. I haven’t seen any of the philosohpy courses.
> Also, more generally are there any other on-line sources that
> you know of that are presenting courses in these areas at the
> quality level of Great Courses?
If I can take a stab at this, I think the short answer is No. I’ve spent a lot of time looking for these things but Great Courses really seems to be in a class by itself.
First, there is the quality of the content from GreatCourses. The material is always first-rate and presenters are never less than superb. In addition there are their Course Guides which with their extensive detailed bibliographies are one of the true gems of what GreatCourses has to offer.
Equally important is the production quality of the presentations. (This is especially true when you compare them to the YouTube-ish videos where they’ve obviously just set up a video camera to record a lecture.)
And yes GreatCourses is not free (no doubt there is a lot of free content on the Internet —“Everything You Ever Wanted To Know About String Theory In 10 Minutes!!”). but GreatCourses really is case of “getting what you pay for”.
I have several of your Great Courses. Really nice to listen to a lesson while on my exercise walk. I highly recommend them. The Old Testament course by Amy-Jill Levine, who’s written for the blog, was also good.
Congratulations
I already watched this course Bart! A very well-done course (as usual!). Thank you.
That is wonderful news. I have listened to your other courses several times each over the years. I reread your books often as well. I have a massive collection of great course material but you are by far my favorite. I can’t imagine your readers here not being familiar with your courses but just in case, I strongly recommend them, they are superb and enlightening. Thank you for the work you do. I am extremely grateful you share your knowledge and perspectives. Your work has been an incalculable benefit to me.
Prof Ehrman,
In terms of the ratification and approval of the list of 27 books of the NT, what were the specific roles of:
1. The Synod of Hippo in AD 393
2. The Council of Trent in 1545
1. I’m not sure. The Synod of Carthage was the first to affirm Athanasius’s list, I believe.
2. This was the first major council that talked about and decided the canon. The issue was raised at this point mainly because Protestants did not accept the Deuterocanonical writings (the Apocrypha) as authoritative.
Up until reading this post I was only vaguely aware of great courses. Thank you! Would you say these are an equivalent to reading your books? As someone who has more time to listen than read would you recommend audio book versions or great courses? Open to other people’s opinions too who have tried both.
They are an easier way to learn and remember the material, but they (the courses) cannot go into as much depth and nuance.
Thank you for this. This “behind-the-scenes” peak is great.
I’d also like to second the plug for Great Courses —I can’t say enough about them— and more specifically I’d like to mention their streaming service. One of the truly great bargains on the web.
The service was originally called Great Courses Plus but a few months back they expanded the service (it now includes courses from Craftsy, documentaries from Kino Lorber, and much else) and is now known as Wondrium.
OK, in all honesty I have to admit that I’m not much of a fan of the new name but aside from that it’s, well, Great.
While it’s not free[*] the quality (in terms of content, skill of the lecturers, and —equally importantly— production quality) is never less than superb. And to my mind (and level of interest —my target rate is 2-3 lectures per day) easily worth the cost (I’ll also mention that the fee is my yearly Father’s Day gift from my wife and daughters).
Yours in opsimathy…
[* The annual fee is about 150$US. They also have monthly rates as well as a fairly standard try-it-for-free-for-a-month offer, so you can easily check if it’s a good fit for you.]
Yeah, the name is a wonder (ium). Not sure I get it….
I’m sure some marketing consultant got paid big bucks for that name. How do you get into that racket anyway? 🙂
Good morning, Dr. Ehrman. Your webinar on Dec. 5th was meaningful – hearing a scholar discuss geography, tradition, languages and more is invaluable.
One question: You once remarked there are differences in fundamentalism and evangelicalism- I’d benefit from your comments.
I am a reader of the late Dr. Reynolds Price and especially his version of the Gospel of Mark- he also assigned his students to write their interpretation. Did you ever have conversations with him about his Biblical scholarship, writings and perhaps beliefs? And, do you have comments about his vivid experience of a visit to the Holy Land where he encountered Jesus? Price was so confident it was real- that gives us much to think about.
Thank you for your consideration and reply. Jo Ann Reaves Florence SC
Yes, Reynolds was a friend; he was a colleageueof my wife in teh English Department at Duke and we socialized a bit. He was a great man. We disagreed on our religiuos beliefs, but we didn’t talk about it much. Fundamentalists tend to be more hard-core in their belief in teh inerrancy of the Bible and stricter in their moral codes and insistence on their version of the “truth.”
I always had the impression it also had something to do with specific doctrines involving “dispensations,” whatever they may be. Or is that something that one could, ah, dispense with, and still be a fundamentalist.
Hi Dr Ehrman!
So when, in the first few centuries, epistles and gospels started to be regarded as scripture and “the word of God” this still did not mean inerrant? What is the difference?
Thank you!
There were plenty of peole who realized that biblical passages had differences between them (look up Origen). Inerrancy is a modern category invented at the end of the 19th centtury to rexplain that the Bible was completely true down to the very word, in opposition to those who were starting to accept the views of science (evolution, age of the earth) and historical criticism of the Bible (contradictions, forgeries, etc.)
That is extremely helpful!! Thank you!
Did Origen write anything specifically pertaining to gospel differences that I could look up?
Not in a single work. His discussions are scattered throughout his commentaries.
Thank you for all of the help!! It’s invaluable!
Great news, I was hoping you would do more of these.
Thanks Dr Ehrman letting us know.
One off topic question:
1. What is the origin of modern word Christmas and festivities associated with it?
2. Is it true that December 25 was first identified as the date of Jesus’ birth by Sextus Julius Africanus in 221 and later became the universally accepted date? If so, why it was done so?
1. It means the “mass that was held on the date of Christ’s birth.” Most modern festivities are … modern
2. I’m not sure; I’ve heard that but haven’t looked seriusly into it. There are debates about why Dec. 25 became the date; usually it’s thought that ith as something to do with either the winter solstic (more light starts to shine in the world) or Saturnalia, the Roman festival that disappeared with the advent of Xty.
I already finished it! As expected, it was excellent!
I started subscribing to The Great Courses Plus when we basically went into lockdown. As you noted, they changed the name of this streaming service to Wondrium, which I’m surprised that some pharmaceutical company hadn’t trademarked, like for a regularity drug. Why they jettisoned a sterling brand that they have built up for such a long time — and who hasn’t heard of The Great Courses? — is baffling. But I digress.
My wife and I have watched so many courses on a wild variety of subjects that we feel like we’ve gone back to college (in a relaxing way). I was delighted to find you on there, Dr. Ehrman, and now have your new course in my queue.
Your explanation of how grueling it is to do a course was an eye-opener. I had no idea. Now I understand why you said in a different post that this was your last one. It’s sad, because you’re the best NT scholar there (and out here). But your courses will remain there to help people learn biblical scholarship.
I’m curious as to where you went to give the lectures? Chantilly, VA? Or do they have studios in major areas of the country?
I did all the coursses in lovely (!) Chantilly (very lovely indeed if you like strip malls….). Except this last one. They set up in a studio down in my parts so I wouldn’t have to travel uring the crisis.
I have listened to a number of Great Courses lecture series, by you, Bart, and on music structure by Rob Greenberg. Your lectures and his are really terrific. If they are indicative of the overall quality of the Great Courses lectures on so many topics — math, history, astrophysics, … — there is a lot to be absorbed and enjoyed there.
Greenberg is fantastic. He apparently quit his day job to do Great Courses!!
I’m remembering that I’ve listened to one other Great Courses lecturer, Prof Gary Rendsburg, on the Book of Genesis. Very clear, a lot of good insights and information, including insights about the original Hebrew wording, much like we get from your knowledge of the languages, Dr. Ehrman. So they’re indeed great lectures, and at the same time I’m hoping that you might be familiar with them and am interested in any observations you have about the content, the perspectives he presents there. Shucks, that’s probably a question requiring three blog posts, rather than just a comment, to answer but would be interesting to hear your thoughts if you somehow find a way!
I haven’t listend to Rendsburg’s course — so I’m afraid I ouldn’t know. Greenberg’s I’ve heard. The man knows *everything*!!
Some institutions, such as Hillsdale College, for example, offer online courses in specific areas on their own websites that are high quality and well done. But they don’t have nearly the range that The Great Courses offers.
I LOVE your courses on Wondrium/Great Courses! So glad to hear you’ve done another. Before the pandemic I was actually having some friends over once a week to watch one lecture of yours each week and then discuss it. I watched it ahead & prepared notes for guided discussion. It was like doing a book club with the author (you) talking to us each week. SO FANTASTIC!
Dr. Ehrman, you may not have checked it out, but Luke Timothy Johnson also seems to like doing his Great Courses differently. I have his course on the NT and he’s got lecture notes in front of him. He’s a pretty good lecturer as well. I also appreciate that he lets you know when his perspective deviates from the consensus rather than pushing it as consensus.
Yes, those were done in the old days when that was possible. He’s a very fine scholar.
Prof Ehrman,
On the upcoming series – “How Scholars Read the Bible”, what are your thoughts on awarding a certificate of participation to participants? I personally wish I could go into scholarship related to the kind of things you teach us but I am very much constrained (location-wise and a whole lot). Just so that those of us who so wanted to but unfortunately couldn’t get the opportunity to pursue this path in an academic setting would atleast have something to show – in this case ‘Certificate of Participation’.
What are your thoughts, please.
What a great idea! I’ll look into it!
I’ve heard Dr Ehrman mention one or two times that he’d recently recorded a new course for The Great Courses. Would he be able to share the topic or title and does he know when it might be released?
It was an edited and now video version of the Greatest Controversies of Early Christianity (previously available only in audio). I’m not sure when it’ll be released. One can only hope it “is coming soon.”