Join Professor David Brakke, an award-winning Professor of History at The Ohio State University, for Understanding the New Testament. In these 24 eye-opening lectures, he takes you behind the scenes to study not only the text of the New Testament, but also the authors and the world in which it was created. You will explore Jewish lives under Roman occupation, reflect on the apocalyptic mood of the first and second centuries AD, witness the early Christians’ evangelism beyond the Jewish communities, and witness the birth of a faith that continues to shape our world today.

Whether taken as a book of faith or a cultural artifact, the New Testament is among the most significant writings the world has ever known, its web of meaning relied upon by virtually every major writer in the last 2,000 years. Yet the New Testament is not only one of Western civilization’s most believed books, but also one of its most widely disputed, often maligned, and least clearly understood, with a vast number of people unaware of how it was written and transmitted.

In The Pagan World: Ancient Religions Before Christianity, you will meet the fascinating, ancient polytheistic peoples of the Mediterranean and beyond, their many gods and goddesses, and their public and private worship practices, as you come to appreciate the foundational role religion played in their lives. Professor Hans-Friedrich Mueller, of Union College in Schenectady, New York, makes this ancient world come alive in 24 lectures with captivating stories of intrigue, artifacts, illustrations, and detailed descriptions from primary sources of intriguing personalities.

Whether complete or only fragmentary, the 930 extant Dead Sea Scrolls irrevocably altered how we look at and understand the foundations of faith and religious practice. Now you can get a comprehensive introduction to this unique series of archaeological documents, and to scholars' evolving understanding of their authorship and significance, with these 24 lectures. Learn what the scrolls are, what they contain, and how the insights they offered into religious and ancient history came into focus.

Often, much of what is misunderstood about Islam is the result of a lack of information - and some dangerous and prolific myths. To combat these myths and better understand the complex Islamic tradition, Dr. Martyn Oliver, a senior professorial lecturer at American University, presents 12 in-depth lectures to provide you with a multifaceted approach to Muhammad, Islam, and the revelation known today as the Qur'an.

As the birthplace of Judaism and Christianity, the Holy Land (in and around modern-day Israel) is one of the most important regions in the world and the setting for defining events in religious history. Comb through this evidence for yourself with The Holy Land Revealed, which will add new dimensions to your understanding of this dynamic place. Delivered by archaeologist and award-winning Professor Jodi Magness of The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, these 36 lectures give you an insider’s look at how archaeology helps us relive this period of civilization.

The Mongol Empire was the largest empire the world has ever seen, forged by conquests across Eurasia in the 13th and 14th centuries. Yet despite the unparalleled brutality of the Mongols, they played a key role in launching civilization’s evolution into the modern world. In 24 half-hour lectures delivered by award-winning teacher and historian Craig Benjamin of Grand Valley State University, explore the paradox of the Mongols’ extreme barbarity combined with their enlightened religious attitudes and respect for high civilization, in The Mongol Empire.   

Philosophers have long puzzled over the nature of space, time, and matter. These inquiries led to the flowering of physics with the Scientific Revolution in the 17th century. Since then, the spectacular success of modern physics might appear to have made philosophy irrelevant. But new theories have created a new range of philosophical concerns: What is the shape of space? Is time travel possible? Is there a grand unified theory that unites all of physics? 

George Orwell was more than just a writer. He was a political and social sage who valued, above all else, individual freedom. His works aren’t just entertainment - they’re cautionary tales and red flags of warning. And if we ever hope to understand threats to freedom and how to stop them, we must learn from them. In these 24 lectures, learn how the man born as Eric Blair forged himself into a writer of international importance and renown. 

What is our species' greatest invention? Medicine, computers, space travel? Not even close. The innovation that underlies each of our past achievements and those we still aspire to is language. Language is the ultimate invention of Homo sapiens - one that has allowed us to change the physical and social world around us in every conceivable way, and an invention that has fundamentally changed us, as well.

The ancient Greeks, more than any other early culture, have given us the template for Western civilization, as seen in their superlative achievements in the fields of architecture, political theory, philosophy, science, and art - not the least of which are their inventions of democracy and drama. In these 24 compelling lectures, Professor Garland guides you in a richly illuminating exploration of what the ancient Greeks have given us, and why they’re still important to us today.   

The Bible is the central book in Western culture, yet extraordinarily there is no proper history of it. This exceptional work, by one of the world's leading Biblical scholars, provides a full account of how the different parts of the Bible came to be written; how some writings which were regarded as holy became canonical and were included in the Bible, and others were not; what the relationship is of the different parts of the Bible to each other; and how, once it became a stable text, the Bible has been disseminated and interpreted around the world. 

Thousands of novels are published around the world every year. There are so many readily available, it would take multiple lifetimes for a single person to even read a fraction of them. But it hasn’t always been that way. While humans have always been storytellers, the novel as we recognize it today is a relatively new art form in the timeline of human culture. Of all the ways we tell stories, why has the novel become such a perennial favorite? How did the novel go from a narrative experiment with a low-brow reputation to a cultural touchstone and focal point of modern literature?

Taught by award-winning Professor Patrick Grim of the State University of New York at Stony Brook, The Philosopher’s Toolkit: How to Be the Most Rational Person in Any Room arms you against the perils of bad thinking and supplies you with an arsenal of strategies to help you be more creative, logical, inventive, realistic, and rational in all aspects of your daily life. 

When you think about Christian history, you might think of the first thousand years - the events of Jesus' life, the acts of the apostles, the establishment of the church, and the various councils that established theological doctrine. But the history of Christianity from the Reformation to the present is equally dramatic and profoundly relevant. It's a story about people as much as theology - our cultures, our politics, our relationship to the world.