The Origins of Christianity is a portal that tries to take you back into the ancient world where Christianity was born. The site was built in coordination with a course (CL C 3503: The Origins of Christianity) offered at the University of Oklahoma. The course is taught by Professor Kyle Harper. This site has been built with the great assistance of OU’s Center for Teaching Excellence (cte.ou.edu) as part of its create.ou.edu project, which aims to put open source tools in the hands of teachers and learners. The students of the course have participated in creating the site content, in particular the timeline and map features.
The course is organized around 28 chronological lessons, spanning from the Maccabean Revolt to the death of St. Augustine.
For more information, please contact Kyle Harper at kyleharper@ou.edu.
Kyle Harper is a historian of the classical world. He graduated summa cum laude with a degree in Letters from OU and then received his Ph.D. in History from Harvard University in 2007. A revised version of his dissertation was published by Cambridge University Press as Slavery in the Late Roman World, AD 275-425. The book was awarded the James Henry Breasted Prize by the American Historical Association and the Outstanding Publication Award from the Classical Association of the Middle West and South. His second book, From Shame to Sin: The Christian Transformation of Sexual Morality, was published by Harvard University Press in 2013 and received the Award for Excellence in Historical Studies from the American Academy of Religion. 
Dr. Harper’s research has focused on the social and economic history of the period spanning the Roman Empire and the early middle ages. His current work on the environmental and population history of the first millennium explores the impact of climate change and disease on the history of civilization.
