The Blue Collar Scholar

The European Theater of World War II will be our focus on the podcast for the next few months. (In the Spring, we will shift the focus to the Pacific Theater.) For the Nazis, the earliest stages of the Second World War was a series of successes. After their six-week conquest of France - the strongest of the Allies in World War I, and the nation Germany wasn't able to conquer in four years in the t...

This episode briefly explores the Paris Peace Conference, Prohibition, the Roaring '20s, technological advances after WWI, the Great Depression, the Dust Bowl, the Spanish Civil War, the Japanese invasion of Manchuria & China, and the rise of Adolf Hitler.

In this podcast episode, we will take a criminally-brief dive into World War 1, why it started, who were the major belligerents, and how WWI set the stage for WWII.

This short episode of The Blue Collar Scholar is a book review and enthusiastic recommendation to read or listen to "Confederate Reckoning: Power and Politics in the Civil War South" by Stephanie McCurry.

This episode kicks off a new class for Spring 2023: The World Wars. The first episode quickly summarizes all the wars and industrialization that helped form the great belligerent nations of the First & Second World War, namely the United States, the United Kingdom, Tsarist Russia (and the USSR), Germany, France, Austria-Hungary, Italy, the Ottoman Empire, China, & Japan.

This podcast episode will conclude the lessons for the Fall 2022 New Testament class. This episode is a survey of New Testament theology, examining the Doctrine of Man, the Doctrine of the Church, and Eschatology (the study of the End Times).

We will close out the New Testament class with a few lessons on New Testament Theology. First up, we will discuss monotheism and the Trinity.

This episode will cover the class notes of the last three class periods for the New Testament class. In this episode, we will briefly discuss how the original manuscripts of the New Testament were transmitted through time to us today. We will also take a look at translation philosophies of English translations and discuss the value of a few of them. The second half of the podcast will deal with th...

As a time-saving measure, I will be switching formats for the rest of the semester. Instead of sharing classroom audio, these episodes will use the same notes that I use to teach, but it will be a podcast format instead of classroom audio. This episode digs into the question of the "canon," the authoritative list that is our New Testament. How did these 27 books and no others make the cut?

This episode completes the three-part sub-series of biographies of the New Testament. In this episode, we take a look at the biography of Saul of Tarsus, who went by the Greek name Paul (or Paulos) once his apostolic ministry brought him primarily into Gentile and multicultural cities in Asia Minor & Europe.

This episode gives an overview of all the Apostles of Christ, as well as all of the individuals who could possibly be called Apostles based on the text of various New Testament verses. This episode depends on the evidence of New Testament texts, but mostly on church tradition. Where did all the Apostles go during and after Acts? How did they die? What can we learn from these Apostles?

Now that we have examined each of the books of the New Testament, we will begin to synthesize the material. We shall start with an overview of the life of Jesus of Nazareth, called Christ, or Messiah. In this episode, we look at Jesus' birth, His ministry, His miracles, His death, His Resurrection, and His prophesied return.

You will certainly hear multiple talking heads on documentaries or semi-educational programming talking about how the 27 books of the New Testament were chosen "arbitrarily," and that there are hundreds of books that were "erased" or "removed" from the New Testament canon, with the implication being that the Christianity that emerged from the first 3 centuries was really just the survivor of a no...

This episode gives a brief overview of the Church Fathers. We discuss the importance of the Council of Nicaea, the Ontological Argument, The Schism between the Eastern and Western Church, and the Protestant Reformation. Unfortunately, I do not have the time or the expertise to spend as much time on the text of the Early Church Fathers' writings as I would like. But the good news is that most-if-no...

We complete our study of the text of the New Testament by taking a look at Luke & Acts, which together make Luke the Evangelist the most prolific author of the New Testament. Through Luke, we have most of Paul's ministry accounts which puts the many letters of Paul in their proper context.

The New Testament opens with four accounts of Jesus life. The first two of these Gospels, Matthew and Mark, are the topic of discussion in this lecture. In this episode we will discuss the two earliest written Gospel accounts. We discuss which of the Gospels, Matthew or Mark, is the first written. We also look into the mysterious Q source, and make an argument that Q represents the oral traditions...

The four books with the word "John" in them plus the book of Revelation all all written by an author named "John." This could be several different Johns, or it could be The Apostle John. In this episode, I make the case that the Apostle John could be the author of all five books, even though the books are very, very different.

The #1 disciple, Simon (who Jesus named Peter) left us 2 letters. And Jude, the half-brother of Christ, gave us a short letter that is very similar in style and substance to 2 Peter. So in this episode we analyze these three epistles. Why, for instance, do these three letters refer to &/or quote the non-canonical book First Enoch? What warnings do these epistles give us to avoid false teachers? Wh...

This episode explores the incredible, academic, and very Jewish book called Hebrews. Who wrote it? Who is Melchizedek? What about those warning passages? ... In the second half, we look at the epistle of James. Also written to a predominately Jewish audience, the half-brother of Jesus gives us a robust defense of good works in the closest thing in the New Testament to Proverbs.

There is significant disagreement amongst scholars as to whether the Apostle Paul really wrote 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, or Titus, collectively known as the Pastoral Epistles. In this episode we will discuss the possibility of pseudonymity and also the possibility that Paul is the author. We also look into some of the content of the books. We also look at Titus and Timothy, the men who received these...

As the Book of Acts comes to a close, the Apostle Paul finds himself in prison. While under guard in house arrest, Paul is able to commune with the Roman church and to communicate with other churches via letters. It is highly likely that Ephesians, Colossians, Philemon, and Philippians (known collectively as the "prison epistles") were written at this time.

The church at Corinth was the Apostle Paul's most messed up church. But he loved them and stuck with them. In this episode we analyze two of his largest letters, both sent to the Christian church in this important Greek city.

Salvation is an important part of theology. Indeed, it is one of the core doctrines of Christian theology and the Gospel is the core theme of all of Paul's writings. Since Romans is a letter written by Paul to a church he has not yet visited, he seems to have been careful to lay out his teaching about the Gospel more clearly in Romans than in any other epistle. In this episode we will examine "The...

Romans is the best theological text ever written. In this episode, we will examine who wrote it, why it was written, to whom it was written, and what are the major themes taught by the epistle to the Romans. This episode also contains an impromptu classroom discussion over the role of women as presented in Paul's writings.

In this episode, we begin our discussions about the actual text of the New Testament. We start by introducing the author of much of it, the Apostle Paul. Next, we briefly look at Galatians and both epistles to the Thessalonians.