Literature and history

come. Hello and welcome to literature and history.

Episode 80, the General Epistles.

This program is on the New Testament letters not attributed to St Paul. These being James, First

and Second Peter, First, Second, and Third, John and Jude, a bundle of seven rather short books of the New Testament that, when combined altogether, still aren't even the length of Leviticus.

While the majority of the Pauline Epistles, which we looked at last time, are thought to have been written largely in The general epistle's are most often

the general epistle are most often dated to a period 40

or 50 years later making them products of a third and even fourth generation

of Christian theologians.

These seven short letters certainly aren't the most famous parts of the New Testament.

If not contextualized properly, they can seem like a small and redundant hallway

that leads from Paul's important doctrines on mosaic law and salvation to the fireworks show of revelation that concludes

the various Christian Bibles.

But these later epistles are primary historical evidence of the ideas, concerns, and experiences of later generations

of Christians.

Generations who had never known Jesus had had limited or no contact with the Apostles, but nonetheless inhabited a world

in which Christianity was taking a route in its earliest forms, transforming the Eastern

Mediterranean Basin, and in turn being transformed by it.

In our programs on the New Testament thus far, we have concentrated most heavily on a period between about 50 and 100 CE a period

that produced the Gospels, Acts, and the letters attributed to Paul.

This episode, however, using the general Epistles of the New Testament,

will look forward into the 100s and 200s, CE and beyond, seeking to understand how the doctrinal rifts in the pages of James, Peter, and

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