Who was Jesus and how did the first generations of his followers interpret his life in Judaea and execution at the hands of Rome? What kind of religious world did they inhabit, and what did their communal spaces look, sound, and smell like? This course is a historical introduction to the early Christian movement: a Jewish sect that emerged in the context of the Roman Empire. We will use the methods of ancient history to examine texts composed by followers of Jesus in the first two centuries CE, along with aspects of material culture, like the archaeological remains of relevant sites.
