Whoo! all the Marcus Borg is available for Kindle! Time to do my homework. Thank you.
Yeah, I would think talking content would count more than the exterior trappings like reciting books or apostles… or the plagues.
And I’d hope she’d be a sucker for honest communication. Try THAT on her…
A knowledge of the basics is critical to discussing specifics. Making a basic mistake (Revelations for Revelation) can make one look like a boob.
I think the first thing you need to do is become familiar with the content and context of the books in the New Testament. IF you understand the basic facts regarding each book, you can build on those.
For example, of the 4 gospels, you should know that (and this is the opinion of the conservative end of Christianity):
Matthew is the gospel which has the most and longest discourses
Mark is considered to be written by John Mark (from Acts) and was written while Mark travelled with Peter. Mark has the most detail in the stories it includes.
Luke and Acts are written by the same person, of course, and Luke has the most stories of the gospels.
John is totally separate from the others, is written by “the one Jesus loved” (see the end of John), and has the most theological tinge of the gospels.
You need to know that Galatians is a defense of Paul’s apostleship and a denuciation of the legalistic elements in the church, that Colossians is written against some form of proto-gnostic teachings and teaches on the nature of Christ, that the Corinthians letters concern issues in the Corinthian church that Paul addresses as a minister, that Romans is a theological treatise, that we don’t know who wrote Hebrews, that Paul wrote a number of his letters in prison, and so on. Revelation should be understood in the context of the earliest persecutions of the church and the tension surrounding the destruction of the temple in 70.
If you know these kinds of facts (whether you believe them or not), and have a basic familiarity with the stories and characters in the New Testament, you’ll go far.
The same is true of the Old Testament.
My OT used to be fairly strong, but it has been donkey ears since I have cracked open a Bible.