BI-331 Intertestamental Period

One blank page stands between Malachi and Matthew. Learn what happened in that time, and how it prepared the world into which Jesus came.

Following Between the Testaments, this course traces the history from the Persian empire through Alexander the Great, the Maccabean revolt and the Jewish kings who followed to Rome and Herod. You meet the groups of Jesus' day and the new hopes of the period: resurrection, angels and demons, the hope that God will end this age, and the Messiah. Then you see how the New Testament steps into this world, why its writers used the Greek Bible, and what Paul meant by "the fullness of time".

What you will study

• From Persia to Greece: the return and Alexander's conquest
• The Maccabean revolt, Hanukkah and the kings who followed
• Rome and Herod: the world Jesus entered
• The synagogue, the Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes, Zealots and Samaritans
• New hopes: resurrection, angels and demons, the Messiah and the Son of Man
• The Apocrypha (Jewish books of the period, not in the Hebrew Bible), other writings and the Dead Sea Scrolls
• The Septuagint: the Greek Bible of the early church
• The fullness of time: how God prepared the way for Christ

Course materials

• Between the Testaments, a WWES textbook
• The Bible