fts-mc500-09/29/10

Today's class with  Professor Bolger was especially interesting. We covered topics such as the 1st century Jewish prayers of Benediction. It is thought that these prayers along with the "Shema" may have evolved into the "Lord's Prayer" that modern day christians often recite. We covered topics such as Christ's role in Rome and how he was a new kind of prophet different from those seen before. He spoke of a message of love, forgiveness and advocacy of likeness to gentiles, versus what was seen from prophets before him that often excited revolution within Israel. Eventually attempts were made to overthrow Roman Government which lead to the death of the prophets and their followers. Thus a change was made within the followers of Judaism where they followed a Jewish rabbi with new teachings. Small churches began to form and eventually the numbers of christians grew to a possible number of 10,000 within the Roman Empire.

fts-mc500 blog-09/27/10

The discussion of mc500 class was very interesting today.  It was a great introduction of the class and what we will cover during the quarter. I appreciate the sincerity and the exploratory nature of the professor and how he would like us to dive into topics of diversity in real life and thus explore the experience of church in contexts and cultures different than our own. I am looking forward to the experience of this class and appreciate all that I will discover in my research.