There is no minimum word requirement for the following questions and should be in APA format.Summarize the Greisbach theory. How does it differ from the
two-document theory?
According to the Synoptic accounts, what were Jesus’
characteristic modes of teaching? Define the term parables and aphorism, and
give examples of each.
Why do scholars think that the Gospel writers emphasized
their understanding of Jesus’ religious or theological meaning more than the
basic historical facts of his life? For what purpose does the author of John’s
Gospel say that he composed his account?
Describe the role the Zealots played in the Jewish revolt in
Rome. What happened to the Jewish state and religion as a result of the
revolt?
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Eighth Edition
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The New Testament
A Student’s Introduction
Stephen L. Harris
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part one
An Invitation to
the New Testament
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chap te r 1
An Overview of theM New Testament
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Rapocalypse (revelation). The early Christian
Ncommunity produced a host of other writings as
well, which scholars also study to understand
,the diverse nature of the Jesus movement as it
Here begins the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Mark 1:1*
Key Topics/Themes A collection of twenty-seven
Greek documents that early Christians appended
to a Greek edition of the Hebrew Bible (the Old
Testament), the New Testament includes four
Gospels, a church history, letters, and an
People read the New Testament for an almost infinite variety of reasons. Some read to satisfy their
curiosity about the origins of one of the great
world religions. They seek to learn more about the
social and historical roots of Christianity, a faith
that began in the early days of the Roman Empire
and that today commands the allegiance of more
than 2 billion people, approximately a third of the
global population. Because Christianity bases its
most characteristic beliefs on the New Testament
writings, it is to this source that the historian and
social scientist must turn for information about
the religion’s birth and early development.
Most people, however, probably read the
New Testament for more personal reasons.
Many readers search its pages for answers to
life’s important ethical and religious questions.
For hundreds of millions of Christians, the New
Testament sets the only acceptable standards of
*Unless otherwise noted, all New Testament quotations are
from the New English Bible (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1976); (see Chapter 2, p. 36).
2
spread throughout the Greco-Roman world.
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Ipersonal belief and behavior (see Box 1.1).
Readers attempt to discover authoritative counCsel on issues that modern science or speculative
Hphilosophy cannot resolve, such as the nature
God, the fate of the soul after death, and the
Aof
ultimate destiny of humankind.
E Jesus of Nazareth, the central character of
New Testament, provides many people with
Lthe
the most compelling reason to read the book. As
presented by the Gospel writers, he is like no
3other figure in history. His teachings and pronouncements have an unequaled power and au6thority. As an itinerant Jewish prophet, healer,
0and teacher in early-first-century Palestine, the
historical Jesus—in terms of the larger Greco4Roman world around him—lived a relatively obBscure life and died a criminal’s death at the hands
of Roman executioners. His followers’ conviction
Uthat he subsequently rose from the grave and appeared to them launched a vital new faith that
eventually swept the Roman Empire. In little
more than three centuries after Jesus’ death,
Christianity became Rome’s official state religion.
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ch apter 1 an overview of th e new tes tam ent
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b o x 1 .1 The New Testament: A Relatively Modern Artifact
A printed, bound copy of the New
Testament that readers can hold in their hands is a
relatively modern development. Until the fourth
century ce, the New Testament did not even exist as
a coherent entity—a single volume containing the
twenty-seven books in its now-familiar table of contents. Before then, believers, and even church leaders, had access to individual Gospels or subcollections,
such as compilations of Paul’s letters, but not to a
comprehensive edition of the entire text.
Even after Rome made Christianity the state religion and imperial patronage encouraged the production of an official Christian Scripture, New
Testaments were extremely rare. Not only were
manuscript copies prohibitively expensive, but the
vast majority of people in the Roman Empire could
neither read nor write. It was not until the printing
press was invented in the fifteenth century ce, permitting the eventual mass production of Bibles, that
the New Testament as we know it came into being.
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Clearly, the New Testament authors present O Christian writings are qualitatively different
Jesus as much more than an ordinary man. The
from ordinary books. Some students express
Gospel of John portrays him as the human ex- R surprise that non-Christian religions also have
pression of divine Wisdom, the Word of God N scriptures—documents that these groups conmade flesh. Jesus’ teaching about the eternal
sider sacred and authoritative (having the power
world of spirit is thus definitive, for he is depicted , to command belief and prescribe behavior). In
as having descended from heaven to earth to reveal ultimate truth. About 300 years after Jesus’
crucifixion, Christian leaders assembled at the
town of Nicaea in Asia Minor to decree that Jesus
is not only the Son of God but God himself.
Given the uniquely high status that orthodox
Christianity accords the person of Jesus, the New
Testament accounts of his life have extraordinary
value. Jesus’ words recorded in the Gospels are
seen not merely as the utterances of a preeminently wise teacher but also as the declarations of
the Being who created and sustains the universe.
The hope of encountering “God’s thoughts,” of
discovering otherwise unattainable knowledge of
unseen realities, gives many believers a powerful
incentive for studying the New Testament.
What Is the New
Testament?
When asked to define the New Testament, many
students respond with such traditional phrases
as “the Word of God” or “Holy Scripture.” These
responses are really confessions of faith that the
fact, many other world religions possess holy
books that their adherents believe to represent
M a divine revelation to humankind. Hindus
I cherish the Vedas, the Upanishads, and the
Bhagavadgita; Buddhists venerate the recorded
C teachings of Buddha, the “enlightened one”;
H and followers of Islam (meaning “submission”
the will of Allah]) revere the Quran (Koran)
A [to
as transmitting the one true faith. Ideally, we
E approach all sacred writings with a willingness to
the religious insights they offer and
L appreciate
to recognize their connection with the cultural
and historical context out of which they grew.
Given the historical fact that the New
3
Testament was written by and for believers in
6 Jesus’ divinity, many readers tend to approach it
0 as they do no other work of ancient literature.
Whether or not they are practicing Christians,
4 students commonly bring to the New Testament
B attitudes and assumptions very different from
those they employ when reading other works of
U antiquity. The student usually has little trouble
bringing an open or neutral mind to exploring
stories about the Greek and Roman gods. One
can read Homer’s Iliad, an epic poem celebrating the Greek heroes of the Trojan War, without
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any particular emotional involvement with the
Homeric gods. However, this objective attitude
toward supernatural beings is rare among persons studying the New Testament.
To be fair to the New Testament, we will want
to study it with the same open-mindedness we
grant to the writings of any world religion. This
call for objectivity is a challenge to all of us, for we
live in a culture that defines its highest values
largely in terms of the Judeo-Christian tradition.
We can most fully appreciate the New Testament
if we begin by recognizing that it developed in,
and partly in reaction to, a society profoundly different from our own. To a great extent, the New
Testament is the literary product of a dynamic
encounter between two strikingly different cultures of antiquity—the Jewish and the Greek. A
creative synthesis of these two traditions, early
Christianity originated in a thoroughly Jewish environment. But in the decades following Jesus’
death, Christianity spread to the larger Greekspeaking world, where it eventually assumed the
dominant form that has been transmitted to us.
The Jewish world of Jesus and his first disciples was centered in Palestine, an area at the eastern end of the Mediterranean Sea now partly
occupied by the modern state of Israel (see
Figure 1.1). According to the biblical Book of
Genesis, God had awarded this territory—the
Promised Land—to his chosen people, the Jews.*
In Jesus’ day (the first third of the first century
ce†), however, the land was ruled by Rome, the
capital of a vast empire that surrounded the entire Mediterranean basin, from France and Spain
in western Europe to Egypt in northeast Africa
and Syria-Palestine in western Asia (see Figure
1.2). As a Palestinian Jew, Jesus experienced
the tension that then existed between his fellow
Jews and their often-resented Roman overlords
* Jew, a term originally designating the inhabitants of Judea,
the area surrounding Jerusalem, also includes all members
of the covenant community living outside Palestine.
†
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ce (the Common Era), a religiously neutral term used by
Jews, Christians, Muslims, and others, is synonymous with
the traditional ad, initials representing anno domini, Latin
for “in the year of the Lord.” bce (before the Common
Era) corresponds to bc (before Christ).
(see Chapters 5–10 for discussions of Gospel references to Jewish-Roman relations).
Although many students automatically ascribe their own (twenty-first-century North
American) values and attitudes to Jesus’ world,
it is important to recognize that, even today,
inhabitants of the eastern Mediterranean region do not view life as Americans typically do.
In the Mediterranean’s agrarian, conservative
peasant society, old ideas, values, and pracM
tices contrast sharply with those in the West’s
Etechnologically sophisticated democracies.
thousand years ago, the degree of
LTwo
difference—social, religious, and political—
Hwas even greater, a fact that must be considered when studying the Gospel accounts of
O
Jesus’ interaction with Palestinian villagers
Rand Roman officials. The more we learn about
Nfirst-century Palestinian-Jewish and GrecoRoman customs, social institutions, and reli,gious beliefs, the better we will understand both
Jesus and the writers who interpreted him to
Greek-speaking audiences (see Chapters 3–5).
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H the Hebrew Bible
ABefore considering the second great historiEcal influence on the creation of the New
thought and culture—it is
LTestament—Greek
helpful to describe what the New Testament is
and how it relates to the older Jewish Scriptures,
3the Hebrew Bible (so called because it was originally composed in the Hebrew language, with a
6few later books in a related tongue, Aramaic; see
0Boxes 1.2 and 1.3). Basically, the New Testament
is a collection of twenty-seven Christian docu4ments, written in Greek and added as a suppleBment to a Greek edition of the Hebrew Bible
known as the Septuagint (see below). The
UChristian Bible, therefore, consists of two unequal parts: the longer, more literarily diverse
Hebrew Bible (which Christians call the Old
Testament), and a shorter anthology of Christian
writings (the New Testament). Bound together,
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Sarepta
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Plain of
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Jordan River
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Bethany Beyond Jordan
Bethphage
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Bethany Qumran
Bethlehem E
Machaerus
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Gaza
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Bfirst century ce). Located at the eastern margin of
figure 1.1 Palestine at the time of Jesus (early
the Mediterranean Sea, this region promised to Abraham’s descendants was then controlled by Rome
U
(see Figure 1.2).
Jorda
0
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30 Kilometers
30 Miles
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ATLANTIC
OCEAN
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SYRIA
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Petra
Map inset
Jerusalem
JUDEA
Map of the Roman Empire (c. 30 bce). By the reign of Augustus (30 bce–14 ce), the Roman Empire controlled
most of the known world.
500 Kilometers
Caesarea
Joppa
CYPRUS
AEGYPTUS
Alexandria
CRETE
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figu re 1.2
250
SAHARA
CYRENAICA
Cyrene
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Pergamum
CAPPADOCIA
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Ephesus
Iconium
Lystra
Athens
Derbe
Colossae
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Jerusalem
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Bethlehem Bethany
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bo x 1 .2 Hebrew Bible and Apocrypha
torah
writings
Genesis
Exodus
Leviticus
Numbers
Deuteronomy
Psalms
Job
Proverbs
Ruth
Song of Solomon
Ecclesiastes
Lamentations
Esther
Daniel
Ezra-Nehemiah
Chronicles (1 and 2)
prophets
Former Prophets
Joshua
Judges
Samuel (1 and 2)
Kings (1 and 2)
Latter Prophets
Isaiah
Jeremiah
Ezekiel
The Twelve (Minor Prophets)
Hosea
Joel
Amos
Obadiah
Jonah
Micah
Nahum
Habakkuk
Zephaniah
Haggai
Zechariah
Malachi
the two testaments form the Christian Bible.
Bible, a term derived from the word biblia (meaning “little books”), is an appropriate title because
this two-part volume is really a compilation of
many different books composed over a time span
exceeding 1,100 years.
In considering early Christians’ use of the
Hebrew Bible, however, we must remember that
the Jewish Scriptures did not then exist as an
easily accessible bound volume. At the time of
Jesus and the early church, the Hebrew Bible
existed only as a collection of separate scrolls
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deuterocanonical books (apocrypha)
1 Esdras
2 Esdras
Tobit
Judith
The rest of the chapters of the Book of Esther
The Wisdom of Solomon
Ecclesiasticus, or the Wisdom of Jesus Son of
Sirah
Baruch
A Letter of Jeremiah
The Song of the Three
Daniel and Susanna
Daniel, Bel, and the Snake
The Prayer of Manasseh
1 Maccabees
2 Maccabees
(see Chapter 2). Few Jews or early Christians
owned copies of biblical books or read them privately. Instead, most Jews and Jewish Christians
only heard passages from the Mosaic Torah or
prophetic books read aloud at religious services
in the local synagogue or at a Christian house
church. If at the latter, they likely heard the
Scriptures read not in the original Hebrew but
in Greek translation.
That the early Christian movement appropriated the Hebrew Bible, which had been
created by and for the Jewish community, is
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bo x 1 .3 Organization of the Hebrew and Christian Greek Scriptures
The contents of the New Testament
are arranged in a way that approximates the
order of the Hebrew Bible, which is also called
the Tanakh, a term whose consonants represent
the three principal divisions of the Hebrew
Scriptures: the Torah (Mosaic Law or instruction), the Nevi’im (Prophets), and the Kethuvim
(Writings).
old covenant (testament)
new covenant (testament)
T Torah (five books of Moses)
A
N Nevi’im (Prophets)
Histories of Joshua-Kings
Books of the Prophets
A
K Kethuvim (Writings)
H Books of poetry, wisdom, and an
apocalypse (Daniel)
extremely significant. Believers who accepted
Jesus as the Jewish Messiah (Anointed One, a
term applied to all of Israel’s kings; see Chapter 3)
looked to the Jewish Scriptures—the only written religious authority for both Jews and early
Christians—to find evidence supporting their
convictions. When New Testament authors refer to “Scripture” or “the Law and the Prophets”
(cf. Luke 24:27, 32), they mean the Hebrew
Bible, albeit in a Greek (Septuagint) edition. In
composing their diverse portraits of Jesus, the
Gospel writers consistently clothed the historical figure in images and ideas taken from the
Hebrew Bible. In Matthew’s Gospel, for example, virtually every word or action of Jesus is interpreted in terms of ancient biblical prophecy
(see Chapter 8).
Testament and Covenant
The very term New Testament is intimately connected with the Hebrew Bible. In biblical usage,
testament is a near synonym for covenant, which
refers to an agreement, contract, vow, or bond.
To appreciate the New Testament concept of the
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Four Gospels (story of Jesus)
E
LBook of Acts (church history)
HLetters of Paul and other church leaders
O
RBook of Hebrews, catholic epistles, and an
Napocalypse (Revelation)
,
bond between God and humanity, we must ex-
M
amine the Hebrew Bible’s story of God’s relationIship with Israel, the ancient Near Eastern people
with whom the Deity forged a binding covenant,
Cmaking them his exclusive partner. Exodus, the
Hsecond book of the Hebrew Bible (Tanakh), rethe solemn ceremony in which the
Acounts
Israelites conclude their central covenant with
EYahweh (the sacred name of Israel’s God) (Exod.
19–20; 24). Under the terms of the Mosaic
LCovenant
(so called because the Israelite leader
Moses acts as mediator between Yahweh and his
chosen
people), the Israelites swear to uphold all
3
the laws and commandments that Yahweh en6joins upon them. These legal injunctions are
0contained in the books of Exodus, Leviticus,
Numbers, and Deuteronomy. Together with the
4Book of Genesis, which serves as an introducBtion to the framing of the Mosaic Covenant, this
section of the Hebrew Bible is known as the
UTorah (see Figures 1.3 and 1.4). Meaning “law,”
“teaching,” or “instruction,” the Torah is also
referred to as the Pentateuch (a Greek term for
the first five books of the Bible, Genesis through
Deuteronomy). According to Mark’s Gospel,
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