Study Guide to the New Testament

Intelligent Education

• Publisher: Influence Publishers
• Year: 2020
• Edition: 1
• eBook ISBN:
  9781645423799
• Topic: Study Aids
• Subtopic: Study Guides

INTRODUCTION TO THE NEW TESTAMENT

LIFE OF JESUS: AN INTRODUCTION

Modern scholars place the birth of Christ around 5 B.C., toward the end of the reign of Herod the Great (d. 4 B.C.).

In northern Palestine is the hilly province of Galilee where Jesus grew up and spent most of his life and work. On the eastern borders of Galilee lies the lake of Galilee and the Jordan River (the lake being but a widening of the river), which flows south and empties into the Dead Sea. Jesus was born in the small town of Bethlehem, which is located in the southern part of Judea, and he was the oldest child in a family of at least seven children, four brothers and at least two sisters. His father was a carpenter, and one would have no doubt that Jesus adopted his father’s trade, since that was the customary procedure for most male children in that day. The family itself was descended from the great King David of Israel; accordingly it was one of many eligible families from which the Messiah could come, according to Jewish thought and tradition. His father seems to have died when Jesus was still a young man, and very likely he took on himself the burden of providing for his brothers and sisters, as well as his widowed mother.

In about 26 A.D. there was great excitement in Galilee: John the Baptist (the Immerser), a strange prophet indeed, called for the Jews to repent, that the Kingdom of God was near, that baptism or immersion in the Jordan River would cleanse people of sin and prepare them for the coming Kingdom of God. At about 30 years of age Jesus was himself baptized by John, but soon after ceased following John to form his own ministry and gather his own followers or disciples.

Now the Jews did expect a Messiah, a warrior-king who would release them from enslavement to the Romans and institute a rule on earth of peace, joy, and plenty; and the Messiah himself would be seated on the throne. He would be the redeemer of Israel and the saviour of the state; he would be the Son of Man so often mentioned in the Old Testament (hereafter referred to as O.T.), the man selected by God himself to save Israel. God’s anointed, chosen, and divine son would one day suddenly and unexpectedly appear amidst earthquakes, thunders, eclipses, and other terrible natural manifestations and would institute a reign of terror for the sinful and greedy, but the good, the poor, and the virtuous Jews would be saved from his wrath and win eternal life and happiness. This, or some variant of it, was the messianic hope so strongly felt by the great mass of Jews in the days of Jesus. But Jesus bewildered the Jews: yes, he spoke with authority, as if he were God’s spokesman with divine rights of biblical interpretation; but he was opposed to violence or rebellion against the Roman rulers, which opposition seemed pusillanimous to the more revolutionary and radical groups of Jews known as Zealots. Instead, Jesus advocated an inflexible pacifism, a policy of no reprisals against injustice and cruelty by the state; he preached the returning of good for evil; he preached repentance of sins, and reformation of the inner and outer man so that he would be ready for the imminent coming of the Kingdom of God, at whose right hand Jesus Christ (Christ means messiah in Greek) would be seated.

Such policies as Jesus advocated were endorsed by the Pharisees (Fare uh seez), that religious party which reflected the views and habits of most Jews; but the Pharisees objected to Jesus’ rather casual treatment of the Laws of Moses, the traditional laws, the habits, and the customs so long solemnly and punctiliously observed by Pharisaic Jews. On the other hand Jesus opposed most fiercely the party of the Sadducees (Sad you seez). [Note that this pronunciation system will be used throughout this book; all new and unfamiliar names and places will be respelled by this simple phonetic-syllabic system.] The Sadducees were the ruling, aristocratic party who held the reigns of power so long as they cooperated closely with the Roman authorities-which they most zealously did. Jesus looked upon them as opportunist and vicious exploiters of the poor and miserable of Israel. Both parties looked upon Jesus as a demagogue and dangerous revolutionary who not only associated with villains, whores, and knaves, but also collected a following who worshipped his every word. True, Jesus did not preach active rebellion, but he did attract the very poor (if awakened) to his standard of love and repentance and reform. The Sadducees were especially fearful that such messianic activity and social disturbance might foment rebellion, for messianic views are based upon a passionate nationalism. The Romans could easily have taken away the small modicum of independence and self-rule that the Jews up to then were enjoying. On the other hand, any relaxation of the Laws of Moses, any loosening of religious observance, would break up the religious unity of the Jews and allow the always omnipresent pagan religions to seep in and subvert Judaism. The pagan religion of the Greeks, for example, was widespread throughout the Empire, as was their language; no wonder then that the two major parties looked upon Jesus’ popularity with the masses as down-right treachery.

Now the big problem was the one of stopping the spread of Jesus’ teaching and stopping Jesus himself either by murdering him, or by arresting and then murdering him. Certainly, his popularity made open arrest quite difficult since a popular rebellion in his name might be initiated and upset the political situation. Especially risky was the arrest of a person during the Passover festival, when all Jews celebrate their national liberation from Egyptian slavery. A “nationalist” like Jesus would at such a time have been extremely popular. We do know that he chose the Passover for his triumphal entry into the holiest of holy cities, Jerusalem, while riding on an ass. The city greeted him with great ovations, actually strewing palms before his entire path into Jerusalem and hailing him with great joy and exultation as their liberator-Messiah. Unfortunately, his arrest was made possible by one of his disciples, Judas, who had betrayed him to the authorities. Jesus singled out by Judas Iscariot by what is known today as the Judas-kiss; and Jesus, arrested in haste and secrecy, was brought before the hastily convened Jewish Council, the Sanhedrin (San hee drin). First, Jesus was charged with practicing magic, with being a magician or wizard who practiced the black arts from devilish sources. When this charge failed, he was charged with the political crime of claiming to be the King of the Jews, the Jewish Messiah so long predicted by the prophets of the O.T., especially Isaiah, Zechariah, and the Psalm singers. Since Jesus was king in the religious sense only, the charge of treason against the Roman state could not be legally placed against him; but if the laws against treason were generously interpreted, Jesus could be arrested on a technicality. The next day he was brought before Pontius Pilate, the Roman procurator (governor) of Judea (the province in which Jerusalem lay), who unwillingly sentenced Jesus to death by crucifixion (the Roman method of capital punishment for criminals who were non-Roman citizens) on a charge of high treason. Jesus never did deny that he was the divine King of the Jews, their Messiah, although such a denial might have very well saved his life. In short, the “trial” was little more than a “frame-up,” and like all “frame-ups” the legal motions were painstakingly gone through.

Jesus was buried on the third day, and our gospels tell of his disappearance from the tomb on the third day; they also tell how his disciples and others had seen, talked, felt, and dined with Jesus after his death by crucifixion, thus testifying to his having risen from the grave, alive in body and soul: In addition, these same sources testify that he appeared not as a ghost but as a man of flesh and blood. The last glimpse his disciples had of Jesus was his bodily ascension into heaven, but not until Jesus had given them a series of detailed instructions on the spreading of the good news (“gospel” in Greek). What is the good news? That Jesus is the true Messiah so long expected by the Jews; that he died willingly on the cross as a redeeming sacrificial victim for the sins of man. With the death of Jesus, the doors of heaven and the eternal life are now possible, since Jesus the Christ had removed the burden of sin and guilt earned by man through the disobedience of their first parents, Adam and Eve. Before long, as the prophets of the O.T. had also testified, he would return with trumpet-blowing angels and vast cataclysmic omens to announce his reign on earth and the establishment of the New Kingdom of God. Jesus the Crucified initiated a new messianic movement which was known as Nazorean by the Jews and as Christian (Christianoi = Christos or Christ = Hebrew Meshiach or Messiah), and Messiah in Hebrew means the anointed one-anointed because the O.T. describes that process essential in the choosing of kings, an act of divine approval in the choice.

THE SPREAD OF CHRISTIANITY

The Book of Acts of the Apostles of Jesus Christ is the fifth book of the New Testament, and it tells of what happened after Jesus had risen to heaven. The original twelve followers of Christ had been reduced by the suicide of Judas Iscariot; so Matthias was elected to replace him. Filled with the force of the Holy Spirit (Epiphany = ee PIFF uh nee), the disciples spread the good news everywhere, but not without great difficulties. The Jerusalem church, with James, the oldest brother of Jesus, as its leader, was the original and first Christian Church, the base of the Movement, but soon branches of the Church were established everywhere, especially in Asia Minor in such cities as Antioch and Caesarea Philippi and in Greece (Athens and Corinth). The greatest of the apostles was Simon Cephas (Cephas = Peter = Rock), better known as Peter; but a self-appointed apostle, Saul or Paul, soon became his rival. Paul had become converted to Christianity while on the road to Damascus, obtaining there an ecstatic vision of the Lord, a vision which was to turn him into an indefatigable worker for the Cause. He preached Christ to the Gentiles (pagans) at a time when the Gentiles were seeking a religion of puritanical promise, free of corruption and salacity. Christianity, with its attractive monotheistic God, its doctrine of charity and love, its promise of the New Kingdom proved well-nigh irresistible to many pagans; so much so that the state became alarmed and tried to suppress the movement. Worse, the political situation throughout the empire was steadily deteriorating; in Palestine, for example, the Zealots (political radicals) advocated revolt against the Roman tyranny. Other persons claimed to be messiahs also (“false messiahs”) and many of these, too, obtained a following, some of them even obtaining entrance into the Church. Indeed, disturbances-political, social, and economic-created a mighty impetus for a belief in a better world to come, the new Kingdom of God, a new era of hope and joy. Incredible as it may seem, many in the Movement had to be warned to keep from steadily peering into the heavens and awaiting the appearance of the heavenly deliverer momentarily. Hence, the doctrine that the Messiah would come unbeknownst and secretly, by surprise like a thief in the night, when we would least expect him.

Paul was a scholarly Pharisee, born a Roman citizen, who had become a Christian through a dramatic conversion. Since Greek was an international language, Christianity was preached and spread in that tongue. Paul would invariably visit the synagogues first to spread his message, but he also chose pagan areas in which to preach. Thus it is that he became hunted and repeatedly persecuted by both Jewish and pagan authorities. Paul even had his enemies in his own Church, the orthodox Jewish-Christians, who believed the very essence of Christianity was the Mosaic Law and the Judaic heritage. They found most unpalatable Paul’s rejection of circumcision and the dietary laws as prerequisites for conversion to Christianity. Faith in Christ, a normal life, baptism in the Spirit, and the eating of animal blood were the main requirements he preached. There is good evidence that the apostle Peter was at the head of the orthodox Jewish-Christians and Paul at the head of the newly converted Gentiles (non-Jews), and that both of these great men might have been rivals. There are lines in Acts that reveal a Petrine-Pauline rivalry in spite of the many attempts at covering up such evidence, attempts at healing the breach, that all was not rosy in the early Church. Paul’s epistles (letters) to various individuals and churches show great skill in organizing the unorganized, in uniting the schismatic, in harmonizing the discordant, in healing the imminent breaches in the Church-in short, a genius of teaching, administrating, and preaching. His epistles follow the book of Acts in the New Testament; here is some of the greatest and most fervid writing in the New Testament.

Christians refused to worship the Roman emperor as the incarnate god; to the pagans an oath of loyalty was mere lip service to one god of hundreds available to them.

Only a fanatic would take such oaths seriously. Well then, the early Christians were fanatics-many refused to take the oath, even if non-compliance meant death. One recalls how easy it is today to take a non-Communist oath, whatever the job, and one recalls with what horror we view those “fanatics” who refuse today to take a loyalty oath to their own government. The Christians, besides, were often confused with the Zealots, who believed in the imminent overthrow of the Empire by the coming Messiah, and actively helped prepare his way. The Emperor Claudius ordered the expulsion of foreign Jews from Rome because of the messianic agitation. Paul himself was arrested as a fomenter of revolt, a ringleader of the Nazarenes (Acts, chapter 24, verse 5, hereafter written as Acts 24:5). Their enemies accused the Christians of perverted practices at their love-feasts (Agape), of immorality, and even cannibalism. Nevertheless, the movement spread among the lower classes especially, for it offered salvation from sin, immortality in heaven, brotherhood, and communism in life. Slaves were not barred and were free in Christ; but many of the unwanted and unwashed were attracted to Christianity (remember the Salvation Army converts in the Bowery of New York.), causing much trouble and pain to the Movement. In 64 A.D. Nero persecuted the Christians for having (so he said) set fire to Rome; later the movement was even outlawed by the Flavians, thus cleansing the Church of much riff-raff. Read the epistles of Judas and II Peter.

Paul’s concept of Christ was more esoteric than the rather human figure of the synoptic (Matthew, Mark, and Luke) gospels. His Christ is a pre-existent being, the man of heaven created by God before the creation of the world, the very Pattern of the universe itself; this archetypal Son of Man and Son of God was incarnated into Jesus at his baptism by John. This mystic Jesus appealed both to Paul and the writer of the gospel of John. In the Acts this “Chist of Glory” and Spirit was the Force that inspired and led the disciples in their tribulations and trials.

After a bitter siege by the Roman armies, Jerusalem fell in 70 A.D., an important date to both Jews and Christians, and readers of the New Testament. The Antichrist had triumphed; the great and glorious Coming had not occurred; the situation was more desolate than ever before. No wonder then that many of the believers hearkened to various heresies and sundry expressions of semi-pagan doctrines. The Christian Gentiles became anti-Jewish in the sense of disowning the Judaic heritage initially, so important a part of the Christian doctrine. Heresies like the gnostics, the Docetists, the Marcionites, etc., sprang up like weeds everywhere. A reading of the epistles gives one a strong introduction to this phase of the struggle.

Towards the end of the first century a new persecution commenced, its Satan and Antichrist being the Emperor Domitian. He demanded worship as a god. In the last book of the New Testament, the Book of Revelation, better known as the Apocalypse, the author (who is called John) constructs a glorious vision of the New Jerusalem and the coming Judgment; but he also prophesies ruin and damnation for the Antichrist Rome and its emperor. After John’s great work the Movement consolidated and grew stronger, constantly rejecting major heresies like gnosticism and Marcionism. By the early part of the fourth century Christianity was the state religion of the Roman Empire.

MANUSCRIPTS AND TEXTS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT

The various writings were collected together on Easter Day in A.D.367, 27 books in all, and the collection was called, for the first time, the New Testament. A process of collection and selection accompanied by much discussion and even violent quarreling had been going on for more than 200 years before certain books were selected as canonical, and others were left to join the legion of the New Testament Apocrypha (see Dictionary for definition of all unfamiliar terms). After the death of Jesus the words of the Saviour and of his disciples were maintained as oral testimony only. Soon a great need was felt for preserving those words and explaining them; hence, our gospels were all written down by the end of the first century. Naturally there has been much addition and interpolation by later editors, since such activity was not considered reprehensible. The study of such editorial additions and interpolations as well as downright forgeries is a complicated study in textual problems with which only Biblical experts can deal. Needless to say, not one original manuscript of the gospel exists. What we have are manuscript copies of the original documents:

1. Manuscript Aleph: The Codex Sinaiticus (4th Century), N.T. in full.
2. Manuscript A: The Codex Alexandrinus (5th Century), N.T. almost complete.
3. Manuscript B: The Codex Vaticanus (4th Century), N.T. almost complete.

The two best manuscripts and the most dependable are the Codices Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, both copied from copies of further copies of the original first-century documents. When more than 200 years intervenes between a manuscript and its copy of copies, one can expect changes of various kinds. But most orthodox scholars insist that the Codices are accurate copies of second-century texts, which themselves were copies of the originals. Establishing the correct text from the different available Codices is a thorny problem. For one thing a vast and intimate knowledge of Koine Greek is required in order to translate the Greek; but in addition a good knowledge of Aramaic (the language Jesus and his contemporaries spoke) would be invaluable, along with a firm foundation in Hebrew and Latin.

The New Testament was written in Greek because that was the world language of the time, and the authors wanted a language that was understood by the many foreigners in the movement; moreover they wanted a language that surmounted political barriers, a language spoken by most of the people of the Roman Empire.

A NOTE TO THE READER

The quotations are taken from the King James version of the Bible (1611), because that version has entered our language most deeply and intimately. All obsolete and unfamiliar words are immediately translated in parentheses. The most complete commentary to th...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• 1) Life of Jesus: An Introduction
• 2) A Dictionary Of Terms Widely Used In The New Testament
• 3) Matthew: Textual Analysis
• 4) Mark: Textual Analysis
• 5) Luke: Textual Analysis
• 6) John: Textual Analysis
• 7) Acts: Textual Analysis
• 8) The Epistles: Textual Analysis
• 9) A Preface
• 10) Essay Questions And Answers
• 11) Bibliography