New Testament, episode 3 - Context of the New Testament: Alexander the Great, the Apocrypha, & Rome

The final lecture on the context of the New Testament starts with a review of the major Near East empires leading up to Alexander the Great. We then look at Alexander's conquests to understand how Greek culture & the Greek language became so ubiquitous during the times of the New Testament. We see some of the collision of Greek & Jewish culture in the books of Maccabees in the Apocrypha (a.k.a. the Deuterocanonical books). Finally, we briefly examine the history of Rome.