Master Students – Historical Brief: TOP SECRET – FOR YOUR EYES ONLY
A graduate student in the physics department of Northwestern University,
[NAME REDACTED] has invented a time machine. One of your colleagues, a GarrettEvangelical student fluent in koine Greek, has been chosen to go back in time to the early
Roman Empire. This student [NAME REDACTED] has been tasked with traveling back
into the early Church, to the city of Rome, to retrieve a copy of an important early
Christian document which at the present time is no longer extant. The document is not
known to exist after the turn of the fourth century, so the time traveler must go back to
a time when Christianity is still illegal and persecuted. Your assignment is to decide
what year is the best destination, create a cover identity, and write a historical brief
which will allow your colleague to travel undetected within the Roman world. You
must assign your colleague an occupation, as well as a cover identity as a devotee of
one of the accepted religions or cults of the Empire, to prevent our time traveler from
being executed as a Christians or as a sorcerer. In your brief, explain what the time
traveler should expect, what will be different from the world we know, and what the
time traveler will need to know in order to navigate the ancient world. Explain the
chosen occupation and cover religion/cult. Then explain how to act as a Christian in the
early Church, so that the time traveler will be able to gain the trust of the Christians of
the time and enlist their help to obtain a copy of the document.
Your brief should be around 4,000 words. Use footnotes, but keep in mind that
agreed-upon facts of history do not need footnotes. You are not required to do research
beyond the required materials from this course, but if you do use resources not
assigned for the course, make sure to footnote your sources. As long as your first
footnote for any source is a full bibliographic footnote, you do not need a bibliography
or “works cited” page.
Required Textbooks for All Students (prices are from Amazon as of October 2023):
1) Cohick, Lynn. Women in the World of the Earliest Christians
(Baker Academic Press, 978-0801031724, $35.00)
2) Jeffers, The Greco-Roman World of the New Testament Era
(InterVarsity Academic Press, 978-0830815890, $32.50)
3) MacMullen, The Second Church: Popular Christianity AD 200–400
(SBL, 978-1589834033, $24.95)
4) Papandrea, James L. A Week in the Life of Rome
(InterVarsity Press, 978-0830824823, $20.00)
5) Papandrea, James L. Reading the Church Fathers: A History of the Early Church and the
Development of Doctrine (Sophia Institute Press, REVISED VERSION 2022, ISBN: 978-
1644136560). This is for review, and you should already have this from History 1.
If
you took History 1 before 2022 and had the older version of the book, you will need
to get the new one.
6) Holman, Susan R. Wealth and Poverty in Early Church and Society
(Baker Academic, 978-0801035494, $35.00)
7) Stark, Rodney, The Rise of Christianity
(Princeton, 978-0691248042, $17.29)
8) Turcan, The Cults of the Roman Empire
(Blackwell, 978-0631200475, $42.49
Notes please use the sources listed above.
