Loading...This weekend I am heading back up to the Washington D.C. area to do some consulting for my Teaching Company (also known as the Great Courses) course on “How Jesus Became God,” a course more or less based on my book of the same name due to be released at the end of March. I will be taping the course in February, over the course of six days spread over two long weekends. My normal procedure for doing these courses has been to record six lectures a day. That’s a killer, but on the upside, it’s over much faster! This time we couldn’t book the studio for that amount of time each day, so I’ll be doing four lectures a day, over six days.
This will be my eighth course for the Teaching Company. Of the other seven, six have been, like this one, twenty-four lectures (each 30 minutes) in length. The other was twelve. By my math, that means I’ve done 156 lectures for them so far; by the end of this course it will be 180.
And the funny thing is that every single lecture so far I’ve had exactly the same experience. Which is this: The lecture has to last 30 minutes. Even though they are taped in front of a camera (actually, three cameras), there is no one in the room, except the camera guys. So, basically, you’re lecturing to an empty room! That’s not easy. It’s *especially* hard to tell a joke. No one’s laughing….
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Glad you are coming out with a new course. Have seen them all and they are all great. Thought you guys taped in front of an audience ( the older courses have a few people in the audience during the intro)
Anyways looking toward to it
I’m very excited about your booking coming out in March! March… really? That’s so far away! Congratulations on another Course as well. I agree… this is one of, if not the, most important question in history. Its difficult to even imagine how life would be different today had Jesus’ followers not transformed him into god.
I’ve always wondered how scripted those lectures are. Normally in front of TV cameras, you assume a pretty predictable pace (a page a minute or so depending on script format.) Maybe it’s just a result of years of lecturing to students and other audiences, but it doesn’t sound like anything is ever either padded or stubbed. The TTC lectures don’t seem that formalized, but in the videos we watched you were clearly looking at something on the lectern. How much are you reading, and how much is just from practice? What kind of notes do you actually have in front of you? Just keywords? Outlines? Whole phrases?
I use a teleprompter, that has an outline that I fill in on the spot, as I go. A bit nerve-wracking, but it’s how I work best.
Oh dear, I’ve JUST embarked on a teaching career this semester, and find the same thing happening in my sessions (halfway through the 60 minutes, I feel like I’m running out of material, at the end of the 60 minutes, I feel like I’m running out of time) – I figured with experience, the feeling would go away, but after reading this post, I’m not so sure! Hope this weekend’s session goes well!
Can’t wait. I have all of your TC courses, plus two by Luke Timothy Johnson, and two by Amy-Jill Levine. It really is top quality stuff. LTJ’s “Jesus & the Gospels” is a great set. I never liked Johnson until I saw this series.
I would love to be able to listen to these and check out some of the other material, but price is the issue. It’s a nice idea though.
Yes, they are pricey. It helps that they’re usually on sale for 60% off or so, but even so, they do cost….
Dear All,
Pricey they are if you want hard copies (unless you buy them on sale, and then it’s a good deal.) I used to think DVDs (or even CDs) were the best, but most TTC courses (literature, ancient cultures) don’t need to be viewed as their is nothing to see other than the lecturer. (Of course Bart is a pleasant enough fellow to look at.) But if you don’t mind downloading them, that is truly the way to go. For example, I downloaded a month or so ago the audio of Bart’s History of Christianity to Constantine with the guide book for only 40 dollars. Then you can listen to it wherever you want. What a deal! But if you really need to see Bart, you can also download onto your hardrive video versions of his lectures for a bit more money.
mjardeen, check out the courses that are on sale. I’ve found one or two to be far more than reasonably priced and will be working them into my budget. My hope is that you will be able to as well.
I’m very eagerly awaiting both the book and the Great Courses DVDs!
Can’t resist asking this. When I asked you once before about what would be different if Christianity had died out at an early date, one of the things you said wouldn’t exist was Islam. I was hesitant to address such a “loaded” topic. But…you think the origin of Islam was more dependent on Christianity than on Judaism? (I understand that Muslims believe God revealed Himself to Abraham – with Ishmael, rather than Isaac, being the favored son – and the Jews, and later the Christians, got a lot of things wrong. Hence the later revelation to Mohammad.)
A little gripe I have about The Great Courses: they should tell us more prominently how *old* these courses are! Or update them, more often than they do. I was happily watching one, on a scientific topic, and heard the eminent scholar say something we all now know is wrong (that no Neanderthal DNA survives in modern humans). I went, “Yikes! When was this recorded?” Checked the small print on the back of the DVD case, and discovered it was 2003! Now I’m wondering what *else* may be outdated information.
Well, I don’t know enough about the origins of Islam to make an authoritative statement. On Great Courses, they almost never “re-do”/”update” courses, to my knowledge. Or maybe it’s just in my field. But yes, in the sciences that would be a very good idea!
I know they did release an updated version of an astronomy course by Dr. Alex Fillipenko. But I hadn’t looked at much of the original version – it was over my head!
I have completed all of your Teaching Company courses and this new one does sound like the best of them. Your courses are much clearer than the many that I have taken taught by others of the Teaching Company. Clarity is your special gift.
Fascinating. I’ve long wondered about the recording experience. Don’t ever solicit volunteers to be in a “studio audience” for you. They’ll have to book an arena. 🙂
They don’t allow it!
I am so excited to learn that you offer these courses! I’ve just read three of your books and am thrilled to learn some of the meatier material. My husband is a marine and we have been in Japan for over four years- these courses and your textbooks are the ONLY way I can pursue this at the moment. Thank you!
On this topic “How Jesus Became God”, do you part ways with many New Testament scholars on these theories or views? Since the majority of them are believers and this is obviously a big one in order to support their theological views I’d be interested to know where you stand on these matters in relation to your peers.
I’ll be interested to find out. There are a lot of NT scholars who think that the idea that Jesus was seen as God did not emerge until years after Jesus’ death. I used to think that. I completely and utterly disagree now. The one place where a lot of scholars will disagree with me is in my understanding of the resurrection — including such things as that there was no empty tomb discovered and that the visions did not need to be veridical to have their effect. But of course I’ll see quite vividly where the hard disagreements are soon enough!
Looking forward to this book on how Jesus became God, Bart. It will be my 16th read of your works. I am a “mini-Bart” as my love calls me. Truly, not only do I love your scholarship, I enjoy your sense of humor even more! It resonates with me, and so do the books. I literally had very little knowledge of early Christianity, and now I find myself in religious discussion about Jesus that tend to raise eyebrows. I am cautious though and have no agenda. I just like the truth speaking for itself. Thanks again for all your hard work and for making me laugh.
Dear Bart, this is my first posting; i hope you don’t mind that it is slightly on the longer side.
I have just finished reading “Jesus Interrupted” which i have thoroughly enjoyed. I am really looking forward to “How Jesus became God”
“Jesus Interrupted” has addressed (and i think very convincingly answered) questions that came to concern me as a teenager (and I’m now 48 yrs old!!). My concerns related to the discrepancy between the Gospel (esp synoptic) portraits of Jesus (the “apocalyptic preacher”) and the teaching of my once (perhaps still) beloved Catholic Church as second person of the blessed trinity, the God-Man (ala Nicea), the Eucharistic Lamb etc etc etc. No one then nor up till recently has been able to convincingly answer my doubts about reconciling these patently obvious anomalies. Thank you for articulating clearly the evidence regarding the chasm that exists between the Jesus of history & the Christ of faith.
My only desire as a teenager was to leave everything and follow Jesus as a franciscan friar. And now 30 years later (having been aggressively disabused of my much desired vocational path by my father) i have the great privilege of working as cancer doctor and have a beautiful family.
The only thing that sits uneasily with me is the sorrow of having lost something precious; no matter how much my mind tells me otherwise my heart still feels the sorrow of losing the beauty of “the faith”. My own
Catholic church has been responsible for some terrible things over the centuries and yet there is much beauty that has come from this religious tradition (art music literature). My heroes are still predominantly from this religious tradition: Oscar Romero, Raymond Brown (whom you mentioned in “Jesus Interrupted”), jesuits Friedrich Spee, Edmund Campion.
I would be interested in reading whether others do have similar feelings of loss and whether this has been the subject of books or essays
Yes, I think almost all of us who have left the faith feel a sad sense of loss. I talk about it a bit in my book God’s Problem, where I explain how I had to leave the faith because of the problem of suffering — something that you are familiar with daily, in your career — and how I reacted to this major shift in my life.