From Luke to James, the writers of the New Testament transformed the Greco-Roman ideal of friendship into a communal ethos. This koinonia was characterized above all by the sharing of material possessions.

lecture 1. The world of the Greco-Roman moralists -- lecture 2. How empire changed philosophy -- lecture 3. The great schools and their battles -- lecture 4. Dominant themes and metaphors -- lecture 5. The ideal philosopher, a composite portrait -- lecture 6. The charlatan, philosophy betrayed -- lecture 7. Philosophy satirized, the comic Lucian -- lecture 8. Cicero, the philosopher as politician -- lecture 9. Seneca, philosopher as court advisor -- lecture 10. Good Roman advice, Cicero and Seneca -- (...) lecture 11. Musonius Rufus, the Roman Socrates -- lecture 12. Dio Chrysostom, the wandering rhetorician -- lecture 13. Dio Chrysostom, preaching peace and piety -- lecture 14. Epictetus, philosopher as school teacher -- lecture 15. Epictetus, the stoic path to virtue -- lecture 16. Epictetus, the messenger of Zeus -- lecture 17. Marcus Aurelius, meditations of the king -- lecture 18. Jews thinking like Greeks -- lecture 19. Philo, Judaism as Greek philosophy -- lecture 20. Plutarch, biography as moral instruction -- lecture 21. Plutarch and philosophical religion -- lecture 22. Plutarch on virtue and educating children -- lecture 23. Plutarch, envy, anger, and talking too much -- lecture 24. The missing page in philosophy's story. (shrink)

The world according to Hebrews reveals the living God. Entering this world requires readers to imagine the world in which they live as the world imagined by scripture. That world comes alive when scripture is read not as a record of the past but as a witness to God's work in the present.