Pizzas of Eight

Thank you so much for your detailed reply! My general lack of awareness comes from still being an undergraduate. After writing this post and looking around online more I got more enthusiastic about Princeton for Luijendijk and Pagels, though I worry that Pagels will retire soon. A professor I have had mentioned U. of Texas, and you've made me more confident about applying there. I was iffy about Yale in the first place; thanks for dissuading me. I looked at Harvard and agree that there are more people relevant to my interests there. Do you know if Harvard's Master of Divinity program would be appropriate for a person like me? Their website made it seem as if it's meant for ministers-in-training. I'll be looking at UNC and the other schools that you mentioned. From my layman's knowledge, I agree with you about the focus being heavily on New Testament; I would add that a lot of energy seems to be spent on late-antique Christianity, but like you I'm more interested in Christianity from its origins up to fourth century, and even then not so much on theology. I've been looking at history and classics programs as well, but I haven't found much. Thanks again for your help.

Looking at programs related to history of early Christianity, especially in terms of Christianity in its Hellenistic context, pagan-Christian interactions, Gnosticism, Coptic Christianity... Most interested in U. Chicago and Princeton so far, but also looking at U. Texas, UC Berkeley, Yale. If anyone has helpful suggestions for those programs or other programs I might be interested in, I'd greatly appreciate them.

Hello everyone, I'm a second-year undergraduate in a UC history program, and my intent is ultimately to pursue a doctorate in a history. Lately, however, I've been struggling in my head on what I want to study specifically in undergraduate and then graduate. I came into this year thinking along the lines of studying ancient Mediterranean history, so I enrolled in a relevant history class as well as Latin and Ancient Greek language courses. As I've looked through the Internet, however, I can tell I'm basically historically illiterate. I have questions that may seem stupid, but I want to get a sense of the historical process in general. Specifically, I want to know whether formulating a research question on ancient Mediterranean history is even worthwhile - surely for 2000 years everything that can be said about antiquity has basically been said (absent of actual new physical discoveries, i.e. archaeology, etc.). I also want to know how I can educate myself on the theory of history and how historians do their work - essentially how I can become aware of higher-level academic thought, perhaps more specifically in ancient or Middle Ages Europe. Is there any direction that I can be pointed in with regards to this? Thank you all.