 Welcome everyone to New Testament Surveys. So we're going to be starting with New Testament Surveys. Is anyone joining us who was not with us in the last two hours? Looks like we have everyone from the first two hours here. Okay, if you were not with us, please just post on chat or just let us know if you're a new student, but welcome. We will do a small course overview. Look at some of the things that we'll be going over in this course and then we'll get into the content as well. Let me just share the screen with you. Okay, so through this course we are going to be looking at the whole of the New Testament and our goal is basically to get an overall picture of what each book in the New Testament talks about. So we'll have an introduction to the author of the book, when the book was written, why the book was written, what the main theme of the book is and some of the key verses, key passages in the book. We also want to look at an outline of Christ himself as revealed in the New Testament. And then we learn about the New Covenant in Christ, which is a covenant of grace. And we look at the life and ministry of Jesus and how it applies to our lives as believers. So that's the objective of the course. I've just written three outcomes or three goals that we'd like to see by the end of this course. So that each of us would have an overall picture of the New Testament narrative, so understanding how all of it ties together, that we would have a deeper understanding of what the New Covenant is in Christ that we are invited into and how it impacts our lives and then that we would be inspired to live as Jesus lived. So as we look at the life of Jesus that we would be inspired to live like him. We will also do two assessments here and again it will be a multiple choice assessment. I've given two dates, February 26th and April 15th. So we have a midterm and a final each will be 50 marks and it will just be a multiple choice exam. I've also put on Google Classroom a rough schedule and some more information about generally student guidelines and things like that, especially for the online students. Okay, so I think we can go into our content with someone like to prepare us before we begin. Okay, let's pray. Yes, please. Loving Father, we bless your name. We give you glory and honor. We want to thank you for this time. We want to thank you Lord for the wisdom, knowledge and understanding that you have given unto us, O God. We humble ourselves above Father to listen and to hear from you and we welcome your Holy Spirit to open our understanding in our minds that we may know more from you, King of Glory. We thank you. We give you glory and honor. In Jesus' name we are prayed. Amen. Thank you. So we'll just go into a small introduction to the course for today. If we finish early then we'll continue on Thursday. So our classes are Monday and Thursday so we do one hour each day. So we'll start and we'll see how far we get. So we're going to be looking at just a small background to the New Testament world. So between the writing of Malukai which is the last book in the Old Testament and then the first book of the New Testament which is Matthew, there's a 400 year period that has lapsed. So Malukai is considered as one of the last prophets in the Old Testament and the prophets were the people through whom God spoke to the Israelites. So when people wanted to know what God was saying, they were going to the prophet. They were listening to what the prophet was saying. So for 400 years God had not spoken through any prophets. And so this time is considered as the silent years where there were no prophets, there was no one who was speaking on behalf of God to the people of Israel. But during that time there were other things happening politically, religiously, although there was no prophetic revelation of who God was, there were things that God was doing in the background, preparing the way for Jesus's coming. So we'll look at what was happening during those 400 years, politically, religiously what was happening and what was the situation into which Jesus came when Jesus was born. So 400 to 334 BC. So if we read in the Old Testament, we know that before 400 BC, so before the Persian Empire took over, there was the Babylonian Empire which was reigning over Israel. So the Israelites were in exile in Babylon. And at that time the temple in Jerusalem had been destroyed. And so many of the Israelites were not even living in Jerusalem, they were living in Babylon. At this time around 500 and let me just get the dates right, 539 BC is when the Persians came into power. And we read about this in the scriptures where we read about Cyrus who was a Persian ruler. He came into power and he allows some of the Jews to return back to Jerusalem to start rebuilding the temple. So Cyrus is seen in scripture as someone whom God put in power and God uses Cyrus to start restoring his people. So it was during Cyrus's reign that about 50,000 Jews returned to Babylon. So there was a much larger, there were about 2 million Jews still remaining in Babylon. So just a small number of people actually returned to Jerusalem and they began to rebuild the temple there. Post this time we can also look at what was the religious implication. So while the temple was being rebuilt, we also know that Ezra and Nehemiah, there were several prophets that started to preach to the Israelites and talk about what God was going to do. And Ezra was one person who returned to Jerusalem and he began to teach the people. So he was like a priest to the people and he was teaching them about the Torah or he was teaching them from the Hebrew scriptures. So for very long the Israelites had not had that kind of teaching because they had been in exile. So this was being re-established now, their faith was being re-established. And during that time synagogues were also set up. So before there was only Jerusalem and everyone used to go to Jerusalem to the temple to worship. That was the one place. But now they started to have synagogues that were local places where people could come to learn the Torah. So there was still only one temple for worship. But the synagogues were a place of learning for the people that they could come to, they could learn the Torah in the synagogues. And so the synagogues played a very important role in Jesus' ministry. So when we know that Jesus went into so many synagogues and he preached there and then when the disciples started to take the gospel to people, they went into the synagogues. So synagogues played a key role in the spreading of Christianity later. But at this point is where synagogues were starting to be established as local places for people to come and learn the Torah. And then in 445 BC is where Nehemiah comes in and he begins to rebuild the city wall. So as of now the Persians are rolling. Jerusalem is starting to be rebuilt. The walls are starting to be rebuilt. The temple has already been rebuilt and there is some restoration of the Jewish faith as the priests are coming and continuing the work in the temple. And the synagogues are being established as well. After the Persian period, we have the Alexandrian period. And this is where Alexander the Great started to establish a Greek empire. So Alexander comes from Macedon which is in Greece. So he came from there and started to take over large parts of the globe. So if you look here on the map, this whole part is where Alexander the Great established his empire. That is from Greece to India is where he had established the Greek empire. And so this is called the Alexandrian period. So Alexander's goal was to have everyone come under the Greek culture. Everyone speak Greek and everyone to follow Greek rules, to follow Greek religion. That was his goal because he viewed the Greek culture as superior to every other culture. And he wanted to see that spread across the globe. And so he tried to take as many nations as he could and establish control over them. So he defeated the Persians and he took control of all of their land in an attempt to make a worldwide empire. This time is where a lot of people started to speak Greek. So a lot of Jews also started to speak Greek because they were under the Roman, under the Alexandrian empire. And Greek became the common language. So Hebrew was no longer the language that they amongst themselves. Greek became the daily language in which they were conversing. And a lot of the culture also became normal for the Jews. So that culture is called Hellenism. That's Greek culture. And we will read a lot about Hellenistic Jews. So Hellenistic Jews were Jews who had been influenced by this Greek culture. So they had their Jewish faith. But their culture was this Greek culture that had come in through Alexander. And because Greek became such a common language, we see that so much of the New Testament then was written in Greek. The New Testament was written in Greek because that was the common language. So like English is today, Greek was the language at that time. So post Alexander, Alexander's reign was pretty short. He died only when he was 32 years old. So he established this great empire, but it lasted for about 10 years. And after that, the empire was split between rulers who were under him. So two of the major rulers were Ptolemy and Seleus. And they were the two empires that were kind of fighting over power, trying to establish power over each other. So Ptolemy established his reign in Egypt. We can see that here in the purple color. So he established his empire in Egypt and he had power over this Palestine region, which was where Israel was. So before this was Alexander the Great and before that was the Persian Empire. Before that was the Babylonian Empire. Now Ptolemy is also from a Greek background, but he is ruling over Egypt and he's ruling over this Palestine region. That's from 324-204 BC. So it was during his time that the city of Alexandria was established. Alexandria became a center for education in the north of Egypt. So we read about Alexandria later on, which actually was a key place even in Christianity. Alexandria became a very important place when the church was established later on. So Ptolemy is the one who established the city and it was the largest city in the ancient world. And also during this time the Hebrew scriptures were translated into Greek. So this became very important because that is what the New Testament writers used. So a lot of the time when the New Testament writers are talking about what is written in the Old Testament, they're quoting from that Greek translation, which is called the Septuagint. So it's also written as LXX, which is kind of to say 70 in Roman numerals because there's a legend that 70 people translated the scriptures in 70 days. So they say LXX for the Septuagint. So it was during this time that the scriptures were translated and the scriptures became available to everyone in the language they were speaking. So that was also very important. The Jews had stopped speaking Hebrew and to have their text in Hebrew didn't make much sense because they didn't understand Hebrew anymore. Greek was the language that they were familiar with and so now they had their scriptures, the Hebrew scriptures in Greek. So after Ptolemy's reign comes the Seleucid period or Seleucid Empire, which is when the other side. So after Alexander the Great, Ptolemy and Seleucid were the two leaders who had taken over the empire. At first Ptolemy had control over this Palestine-Syria area and then Seleucid took over. So this 204 to 165 BC is where he has power over this region. And he is not very favorable towards the Jews. He's very against their religion. And one of the rulers during this time is called Antiochus IV or Antiochus Epaphany. And what that means is that he viewed himself as a revelation of who God is. Epaphany means someone who is a revelation of something or someone who is a representation of something. And so he considered himself as a representation of God and he was completely against the Jews, completely against their religion and he wanted to establish the Greek culture and Greek religion there. And so the Jews and their practices became something that was very contrary to his desire for the empire. So something he wanted to completely demolish or completely destroy. So this is, Seleucid was in the Syria region and Syria had power over the Jews at this point. So what Antiochus did is he went into the Holy of Holies, he went into the temple, sorry, and on the altar there he set up an altar for the Greek gods Zeus and obviously offended all of the Jews. But to make things worse, on top of that altar he sacrificed a pig which is considered unclean for Jews. So his whole goal was to destroy the Jewish faith, destroy their practices there. But because he did this and he offended them to such a great extent, there arose a revolt within Jerusalem. And this revolt is called the Maccabean Revolt. It was led by the Maccabean rulers who were Jews. So there was a priest named Mattathias and he had five sons. So there's Judas, John, Simon, Jonathan and Eliezer. And Judas was the main leader of this revolt. He was really efficient as someone in warfare and so he was able to lead people against this empire. Even though the Jews were very, very small and weak population compared to the Seleucid Empire, they were able to overpower them and they were able to take over Jerusalem. And over 100 years they started to slowly gain control. So we see here in this map from Jerusalem and Judea they started to gain control over other parts of the land of Israel and Israel and Syria and then also Samaria. So Samaria was in between and then there were Israelites on both sides. So people from Judea on the top and below. But during their reign there was a lot of corruption because power flowed from generation to generation within their families. And the following generations started to take advantage of their place of power. They were just making money. They were not taking care of the people. And so their rule was not something that the Jews were happy about. For 100 years they were under their power. But some things that we see during this time is that the temple was restored. So after the temple was desecrated by Antiochus IV, this temple was now restored by the Maccabines. And temple worship began to happen again. But the problem was that the Maccabines who had established themselves as kings were also controlling the priesthood as well. During this time when they took over the temple, when they restored worship as was talked about in the Jewish scriptures, is where this festival called the Hanukkah was established or the Feast of Dedication. So in John 10.22 we actually read about Jesus being in the temple during this feast. So it became a feast that was added to the other feast that happened in the Old Testament that God had established. This feast also became one that was celebrated by the people. It was not a religious feast. It was more like a political celebration because they had politically been freed from the Seleucid Empire. And the Maccabines had brought freedom to them. So it was more like Israel as a nation celebrating that feast. Also during this time the Sadducees and Pharisees became two groups of people that rose up when the temple was re-established. When biblical worship was re-established, the Sadducees and Pharisees became two groups of people. The Sadducees being more also politically inclined whereas the Pharisees were more inclined towards religious, like following religion completely. They were very zealous about their religious practices. And Sadducees were more also influenced by the empire having some political power as well. And then after the Maccabines revolt, although now the Jews had control over this land because they were so corrupt in their leading of the people. Once there was a ruler from Rome who came in from Egypt and his entrance into Egypt was actually welcomed because of all of the corruption that had happened because of Maccabean rulers. So his name was Pompey and he was from Rome. He came in and he took over this whole region. He took over Judea and then there was established under the Roman Empire. There were local leaders who were established to kind of report to the Roman Empire on behalf of what was going on there. So they were governors. So Herod the Great, who was there when Jesus was born, was one of the people who was appointed as a local governor, leader over the region to report to the Roman Empire and to make sure that whatever was happening in that region was in accordance with the Roman rule. So Herod was not actually a Jew. He is an Edomite, but he wanted to please the Jews. So he in 20 BC started to rebuild the temple and it took him over 80 years to rebuild because the Jews didn't fully trust him. So they didn't allow him to destroy the temple and rebuild it. He had to do the work slowly over time, restoring different parts of the temple. But in order to gain favor with the Jews, he rebuilt the temple. So when Jesus was ministering, the temple was still being rebuilt because they started in 20 BC. It was only in about 60 AD that it was completed. So from that till that time, they were still constructing or reconstructing the temple. So under the Roman Empire, there was much more peace for the Jews. There was also the establishment of a legal system. There was establishment of a commercial system. There was a lot of roads that were built across the Roman Empire. So the Roman Empire was really huge. And in this picture, we see just some of the regions that they had here, but eventually they actually covered a lot of this whole area, the Roman Empire. And so they established roads to connect their whole empire, which also was a key to the spreading of the gospel. Because of all of these roads that had been established, the disciples and the followers of Jesus who took the gospel to other places were able to use these roads to take the gospel to other parts of the Roman Empire. So this is generally a picture of the political and religious situation between 400 BC till when Jesus was born. So I just wanted to start us with a background. We won't go into more detail for the New Testament, for today's class. We'll continue on Thursday. But just these 400 years gives us a picture of how much turmoil was there in that place, right? That small piece of land that was between Egypt and between the northern or between that Persian Empire. It was at crossroads. And so every time there was a war between the north and the south between Egypt and Asia, Israel would get caught in between. And so that's why all of these empires wanted to also establish their reign there because it was so important for trade. So it was a very difficult period for the Jews to have so many different empires ruling over them. So many different groups of people influencing their culture, influencing their religion. So for themselves as an identity, having their own identity, having their own culture was something that they had to figure out in those 400 years. Which is why the Pharisees came up as such zealous people because they were trying to re-establish the Jewish culture. They were trying to re-establish what does it mean to be a Jew and what is it that we should be following? What is our religion about? So in that zeal to protect their identity as Jews, they started to make strict rules about following their scriptures to the T following the Sabbath, all of those things became strict ways to protect their identity, their cultural and religious identity. Anything you want to share for what we covered? If not, we'll just close for today and we'll continue on Thursday. Any questions? Okay, there are no questions. What we'll do is we'll stop here. On Thursday, we'll go into some of the introductory terms or some of the key things for us to understand as we look at the New Testament. So we look at groups of people that existed, the different key figures that were present, some things that will help us better understand the New Testament as we go into it. We are ending early today, but we'll continue on Thursday. Thank you so much. Thank you, sister. Thank you so much, sister. Thank you.