This course introduces the student to the history of the earliest civilizations through the Roman world of Jesus’ time. Students will study the great river civilizations of Mesopotamia, Egypt, India and China; the Old Testament civilizations of Canaan, Assyria, Babylon, Phoenicia, Philistia, and Ugarit; the city-states of Greece and the spread of Hellenic culture; and the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. The course will provide an understanding of the world in which Israel was formed and rose to power, the world in which Jesus lived and taught, and the world of the early Church. The text for the class is Susan Wise Bauer’s The History of the Ancient World: From the Earliest Accounts to the Fall of Rome. The course also uses the Bible as a historical source study, to place the people and events of the Old Testament into broader historical perspective.