Sunday Morning Bible Study | Broadway church of Christ

• The Story of Christianity – The Early Church to the Dawn of the Reformation, Revised Edition; Justo L. Gonzalez
• Church History – From Christ to the Pre-Reformation, 2nd Edition; Everett Ferguson
• Backgrounds of Early Christianity, 3rd Edition; E.verett Ferguson
• Heart of Europe: A History of the Holy Roman Empire; Peter H. Wilson

Course Rationale

• Without understanding our past, we are unable to understand ourselves, for in a sense the past still lives in us and influences who we are and how we understand the Christian message.
• The notion that we consistently read the New Testament exactly as the early Christians did, without any weight of tradition coloring our interpretation is an illusion. It is also a dangerous illusion, for it tends to dogmatize our interpretation, confusing it with the Word of God.
• Not only is our view of the present colored by our history, but our view of history is also colored by the present and by the future we envision.
• History is not the pure past; history is a past interpreted from the present of the historian.
• Every renewal of the church, every great age in its history, has been grounded on a renewed reading of history.
Historical Context:
• 333 B.C. – Alexander the Great & the Macedonian armies
• 323 B.C. – Ptolemaic rule
• 200 B.C. – Seleucid rule
• 164 B.C. – Hasmonean rule
• 63 B.C. – Roman rule
• 40 B.C. to 3 A.D. – Herod the Great
• 70 A.D – Destruction of Jerusalem
• 135 A.D. – Hadrian removes Jews from Judea

Galatians 4: 4 __“But when the time had fully come, God sent forth His Son, born of woman, born under the law”

Temporarily, we are not meeting at the church site.

The Early Church To Early Reformation

The Early Church To
Early Reformation