Reading the New Testament

Contemporary Approaches

James G. Crossley, James Crossley

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9780415485302
• eBook ISBN: 9781136981647
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Biblical Studies

Reading the New Testament offers an exciting and contemporary approach to New Testament Studies, which have changed dramatically in the past thirty years. James Crossley combines an introduction to traditional methods of source, form and social-scientific criticism with postcolonial, gender and political frameworks. He discusses reception-history, covering areas such as popular culture, party politics, historical theology and the politics of contemporary scholarship. He discusses Paul and Christian origins in continental philosophy, as well as offering a more traditional analysis of Paul's theology and the quest for the historical Jesus. A selection of readings from contemporary scholarship is provided in the final chapter of the book.

Reading the New Testament has been carefully designed to help students think critically and in wide-ranging ways about the texts of the New Testament and will prove a valuable resource for everyone engaged in serious study of the Bible.

Chapter 1
Introduction

How to Read the New Testament

Readers should emphatically not read this book as a series of definitive ways in which to read this collection of texts which have been the subject of disputes, often bloody, for effectively two millenia. This book is not called, How to Read the new Testament. Perhaps the plural of the subtitle – Contemporary Approaches – might already imply that this is a guide to different ways in which readers can approach the texts. In fear of sounding quaint and sentimental, one of the aims in this book is to open the way for readers to search for more and more ways of reading the texts which inevitably could not all be covered in this introductory book.

One of the key purposes of this book is to introduce students, and relative newcomers to advanced biblical studies, to a greater range of approaches to the New Testament than the standard introductions. Standard introductions to the New Testament, at least in the experience of this writer, place a heavy emphasis on issues such as place of writing, authorship, theological agendas, literary structure, original historical context, broader historical contexts, key themes, and other traditional historical and literary approaches. There is, obviously, nothing wrong with such approaches, and they absolutely will not be ignored in this book, though there would be little point in producing yet another traditional introduction. However, New Testament studies, and biblical studies more widely, has so many more different approaches than is usually found in introductory textbooks and the omission of a range of creative and innovative approaches in textbooks fails to provide approaches for students who are not necessarily interested in the more traditional and seemingly ‘mainstream’ approaches to biblical texts. The mere ‘fact’ that the study of the New Testament, like any academic discipline, has so many different approaches not typically covered in introductory textbooks seems, to this writer at least, a failure and simply reinforces the idea that certain ‘mainstream’ approaches are the ‘best’ approaches.

This book is divided into four distinct sections. The first section, ‘History’, will introduce classical historical critical approaches to the New Testament – from source criticism to the quest for the historical Jesus – and more recent developments which might loosely be labelled ‘historical’–from postcolonial criticism to issues in gender and identity. The second section, ‘Revolutionary origins of Christian beliefs?’, will cover classical questions of Christian origins (e.g. the origins of Christology, Paul’s theology, emergence of a gentile religion) as well as some of the related but seemingly unusual discussion of Paul among contemporary continental philosophers. The links with the ‘History’ section ought to be obvious enough but this section also links neatly to the third section, ‘Reception’. This section will discuss the various methods surrounding the reception of the New Testament texts, most notably in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, using examples from politicians to pop music, from theology to contemporary scholarship. The final section will be extracts from contemporary New Testament scholarship relating to the different chapters and sections of this book.

But before we get carried away, it ought to be stressed that this book is not as radical as might have been implied. While there are a range of approaches discussed which are not typically discussed in most introductory textbooks, many of these approaches are now becoming less cutting-edge and even, ever-so-slowly, part of the establishment. This might be one good reason to justify the inclusion of such non-traditional approaches in an introductory textbook, namely, to keep up with current trends before it is too late. Furthermore, what this book will also do is to show how various non-traditional approaches either are a direct development of more traditional approaches or can be wed with traditional approaches with relative ease. This has partly been done throughout this book by using ideas of ‘history’ to bring approaches old and new (-ish) together and to show that, no matter how hard we may try, history cannot be avoided. Even those of a more literary bent may have to concede that the historical is always there, even if those of us fascinated by history will have to concede that history can be reconfigured in different ways and in light of challenges made by the literary. But throughout all this, the main idea is to give students some insight into a wide range of different approaches to the New Testament, some of which they may otherwise have missed in most introductory textbooks. Arguably the most prominent ways of approaching the New Testament which have not been given much, if any, space in introductory textbooks are those involving identity, postcolonial criticism, Paul in continental philosophy, and the major growth area in New Testament studies, ‘reception history’, which gets a section to itself.

We are now getting ahead of ourselves. Before we properly begin, let us go back to the most basic question: ‘What is “the New Testament”?’.

What is ‘The New Testament’?

The New Testament consists of twenty-seven books which are regularly subdivided. Firstly, we have four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) which are effectively lives of Jesus. Mark’s Gospel is usually said to have been written first, some time between 65–75 CE, although there is a minority opinion (this writer included) which would date it as early as some time close to 40 CE. It is usually thought to have been written in Rome or somewhere in the eastern Mediterranean (e.g. Syria or Galilee). Matthew is typically thought to have been written some time after the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple by the Romans in 70 CE, though again a minority scholarly tradition dates it earlier. Antioch is one of the favoured places of writing for Matthew. Luke is likewise thought to have been written after 70 CE, and possibly after Matthew, though the obligatory early daters can always be found. Quite where Luke was written is much more of a mystery. John’s Gospel, perhaps the latest of them all, is again thought to be post-70 CE (with occasional detractors) and often thought to have been written in Ephesus. Whether the Gospels were written by the names attributed to them continues to be debated, with opinions including: accepting the attributed names (and even then working out who they might be!), originally anonymous authors and texts; and pseudonymous authorship, a known cultural practice.

Then we have the book of Acts which is a history of the development of the early Church from Jerusalem to Rome, with a particular focus on the acts of Paul and his epic journeys, though Peter features in significant places too. Acts is typically thought to have been written by Luke or whoever wrote Luke’s Gospel. While there are those who date Acts just about pre-70 CE (inevitable, perhaps, if there are those who date Luke early), it is usually thought to be a post-70 CE text, with some recent scholars following an older scholarly tradition in suggesting a second century date. Again its place of origin is difficult to discern, though Rome is being touted by certain major scholars of Acts.

Then we have letters written by arguably one of the most influential thinkers in Christian history, (Saint) Paul. It is common for scholars to talk of the ‘seven authentic Pauline letters’, or the ‘undisputed letters’, named so because they are the letters which virtually all scholars would agree are genuine letters from Paul. These letters were written in the middle of the first century and are: Romans, 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians, and Philemon. The Deutero-Pauline letters, or the disputed Pauline letters, are those which are less confidently attributed to Paul with a long scholarly history of being thought to have been pseudonymously written in Paul’s name. These letters are Ephesians, Colossians, 2 Thessalonians, 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus. 2 Thessalonians and Colossians are more likely to be believed to be genuine Pauline than the rest. These ‘disputed’ Pauline texts are usually believed to have been written in the latter half of the first century. Mention might also be made of the anonymous letter to the Hebrews which did get attributed to Paul by some in the early church (and thus helping Hebrews make its way into the New Testament canon) but is now typically accepted as ‘authorship unknown’.

Further subdivisions include the ‘Pastoral Epistles’, thus called because they are addressed to individual church figures and discuss issues of responsibilities, faith and practice, and these letters are 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy and Titus. The ‘Catholic Epistles’ are thus called because they are seemingly addressed to a general Christian audience and the letters are: James, 1 Peter, 2 Peter, 1 John, 2 John, 3 John, and Jude. Again, these letters are typically believed to be written pseudonymously, and so deliberately recalling a major ‘name’ in Christian origins, towards the end of the first century, or some time into the second century, though cases have been made, for instance, that James and 1 Peter could be ‘authentic’ texts.

Finally, there is the book of Revelation (note the singular ‘Revelation’ and not the plural ‘Revelations’). Revelation, with all its seemingly weird and wonderful language, is typically thought to have been written in the latter part of the first century or early second century, and in reaction to persecution of Christians, though this, along with the idea that the book reflects a specific persecution of Christians, has been challenged and it may be a reaction against a less dramatic cultural imperialism surrounding the general worship of the Roman Emperor in the Eastern Mediterranean. Revelation seems to have been written by a figure called John exiled on the island of Patmos.

But the New Testament as a collective whole emerged over a longer period of time as certain Christians sought to include and exclude texts in the formation of their definitive writings, or, as it is more typically called, their ‘canon’. Christians would eventually distinguish two testaments we know as Old and New, though there is some grounding for this in New Testament texts (e.g. Heb. 9.18–20), and Jesus’ words themselves were taking on an authoritative status from the earliest decades (e.g. 1 Cor. 7.10–11). By the turn of the second century, it seems that Paul’s letters were taking on a degree of authority in certain circles (2 Pet. 3.15–16). By the end of the second century the fourfold Gospel starts to become a distinctive collection in its own right, partly to help define a form of Christianity which would eventually develop into Christian orthodoxy over against different other Christian sects and movements, often described as ‘heresies’, which had their own favoured Gospels or versions of the canonical Gospels. Yet it was hardly all plain sailing for the text we have. People had their doubts about the validity of major texts such as John’s Gospel, Hebrews and Revelation which were at times considered suspect. But by the time we get to the mid-fourth century CE, and thanks to figures such as Athanasius, we start to get the collection of the twenty-seven books we now know as the New Testament.

In this general context, we should not underestimate the importance of apostolic authority for defining an authoritative canon because this meant that tracing back texts to the first century and to the major Christian figures was important. Christians may not have got everything accurate but we can say that they did collect texts from the first and early part of the second century. While there remain plenty of disagreements over the specifics of dates, authorship, and places of writing, in general terms we can see that we have a group of texts written in the eastern Mediterranean, and perhaps as far west as Rome, in the first and second centuries CE.

Now we have a general idea of what the New Testament might be and its general setting, let us now dive straight in and proceed to look at ways of reading it.

Part One
History

Chapter 2
Reading Historical Documents Historically

From Historical Criticisms to Literary Criticisms and Back Again

What is History?

Writing history means different things to different people. In contemporary contexts, some people may be interested in cataloguing lists of monarchs, rulers, presidents and so on. Others may be interested in explaining why things happened, such as the various factors underlying the Second World War. Others still may want to write an explicitly ideological history defending their own perspective, an extreme example of which might include retellings of the past in Soviet Russia. While Soviet histories literally airbrushed the inconvenient out of history (think of Stalin’s removal of Trotsky from photographs of Lenin), partisan histories and interested parties can potentially provide insights others might miss. Perhaps a committed evangelical might pick up nuances of Paul’s theology of justification that a non-believer might miss through lack of interest. A non-believer might think about reading New Testament texts like any other text and provide insights from different disciplines beyond the interests of others. A Jewish scholar might bring insights from a range of Jewish texts and interests in Jesus or Paul as a Jewish figure. A middle-of-the-road Anglican or Episcopalian might happily absorb the lot. All these examples have happened and such perspectives or biases can bring insights as well as distortions.

All of these approaches to history ultimately stand or fall by evidence and yet none of these approaches to history, not even the most accurate, can be regarded as innocent. History writing will often tell us about the presentation of a given group’s or individual’s agenda and so we can also read the historians as history, so to speak (see Chapter 11). History writing can also tell us something about the historian and the historian’s time by, for instance, what they do not tell us. Why catalogue monarchs and not local folk heroes? Or why catalogue local folk heroes and not kings? Why catalogue both? Decisions have to be made when writing history and it is worth asking what informs those decisions.

So much for contemporary history writing; what of ancient history? There are plenty of differences between ancient and modern history writing. Modern historians have significantly better access to a greater range of evidence, resources and methodology so modern history is inevitably and obviously going to be different. But there are general similarities too. Ancient historians and writers with an interest in history still had to select evidence and reports. Compare, for instance, the opening of Luke’s Gospel (Luke 1.1–4) with the words of one famous ancient historian, Thucydides:

With reference to the speeches in this history, some were delivered before the war began, others while it was going on; some I heard myself, others I got from various quarters; it was in all cases difficult to carry them word for word in one’s memory, so my habit has been to make the speakers say what was in my opinion demanded of them by the various occasions, of course adhering as closely as possible to the general sense of what they really said. And with reference to the narrative of events, far from permitting myself to derive it from the first source that came to hand, I did not even trust my own impressions, but it rests partly on what I saw myself, partly on what others saw for me, the accuracy of the report being always tried by the most severe and detailed tests possible. My conclusions have cost me some labour from the want of coincidence between accounts of the same occurrences by different eye-witnesses, arising sometimes from imperfect memory, sometimes from undue partiality for one side or the other.

(Thucydides, Peloponnesian War 1.22.1–4)

There does seem to be some concern for something like the sifting through of evidence and something potentially useful for modern concerns with accuracy, even if elaboration through imagining what a person said or did in the absence of sources was practised and even if some historians thought it fair to bring in the occasional supernatural agent in the story. That said, the differences between then and now should not be overstated: contemporary historians such as Simon Schama and Natalie Zemon Davis have both used the role of fictive characters and a liberal historical imagination in their historical work. Similarly, the agendas of an ancient historian, like the modern, can be seen in the most basic terms, whether the focus is on epic wars, military leaders, emperors, religious figures, some great intellectual, or something the historian’s patron might want to hear, and already tells us something in terms of the interests of the writer. In addition to Thucydides’ concern for sifting through the sources, it is not difficult to detect his perspective and bias anymore than it is to detect the perspectives and biases of the New Testament writers (cf. John 20.30–31):

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Table of contents

• Reading Religious Texts series
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Chapter 1 Introduction
• Part One History
• Part Two Revolutionary Origins of Christian Beliefs?
• Part Three Reception
• Part Four Extracts from New Testament Scholarship
• Notes
• Index