Interpreting the New Testament

Francis J. Moloney, Sherri Brown

• Publisher: Eerdmans
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781467456463
• Topic: Teologia e religione
• Subtopic: Studi biblici

A succinct and accessible text for teaching students how to interpret the New Testament

This new textbook effectively introduces students to the art and craft of biblical interpretation. New Testament scholars Sherri Brown and Francis Moloney begin by orienting students to the world of the Bible, exploring contemporary methods for interpreting the biblical literature, and showing how the Old Testament is foundational to the formation of the New Testament.

The book proceeds to lead readers through the books of the New Testament by genre:

* The Narratives: Gospels and Acts

* Paul and His Letters

* Hebrews and the Catholic Epistles

* Apocalyptic Literature and the Book of Revelation

Unlike book-by-book introductory textbooks that tend to overshadow the primary biblical text with lots of detailed information, Brown and Moloney's Interpreting the New Testament actually facilitates the study of the New Testament itself. Their concluding chapter reflects on the challenge of the New Testament to our present world.

CHAPTER ONE

The Origins and Development of the Bible

PURPOSE Chapter one discusses the Bible as the sacred Scripture of Christianity by introducing the concept of canon and surveying the history and development of the Jewish and Christian canons. Understanding the complexity of the biblical collection of texts will allow for a more detailed discussion of its contents and their interpretation.

As we introduced in the previous chapter, both the Jewish and Christian traditions use the term “sacred Scripture” to refer to those writings the community of faith has set apart as holy. Scriptures arise in religious communities to serve their particular needs as they struggle to understand their experiences of God and define themselves in relationship to the rest of their society. Since the Christian Scriptures are made up of both the Old and the New Testaments, we can discuss the composition of each part as well as how they came together to form the Bible.

Scripture and the World That Gave Us the Bible

In the ancient world where some 90 percent of the people could neither read nor write, shared history in relationship with God was passed down through the generations by word of mouth. Only particular forces, either internal, external, or both, compel these communities to find the resources to record and preserve their oral traditions in more permanent written forms. As we will see in this chapter, the Jewish people began to pull their traditions together into a written narrative around 1000 BCE, during the reign of King David. This time of peace and prosperity in the kingdom of Israel allowed for reflection and collection of traditions as part of court records. Some five hundred years later, however, the external forces of the Babylonian Empire imposed upon the kingdom, overrunning the land and sending the people into exile from ca. 587–538 BCE. This dark period in the history of the Jewish people was a key factor in solidifying the composition of their Scripture. To keep the hope of their religion alive, the people told stories and recorded them in written form for posterity. Across the next five hundred years, as the people restored their homeland and developed their particular religious sensibility, they continued to preserve their experiences in written form.

Likewise, as Christianity developed, the disciples and apostles of the early movement passed on their experiences of Jesus Christ and his teachings orally as they moved from town to town sharing the good news and founding Christian communities. As we discussed in the previous chapter, Paul began the writing of the Christian tradition with his letters to communities as he traveled through the Roman Empire on missionary journeys. The Gospels, however, were not composed as fully developed narratives until the community felt the need to preserve them. We will discuss this in more detail in chapter four, but we can note here that by 70 CE, about forty years after the crucifixion of Jesus, the community of believers was experiencing the death of their first generation of disciples and leaders. This internal force of loss was compounded by the devastating external consequences of the First Jewish Revolt against Rome, which lasted ca. 65–70 CE. Although the Jewish people led a valiant strike against the empire, the Romans eventually surrounded Jerusalem and, after an extended siege, broke through the city walls and burnt everything in their path. The Jewish Temple was destroyed, and both Judaism and the burgeoning Christian movement were in danger of fading into the shadows of history.

Josephus and His Writings

Flavius Josephus (37–100 CE), a Jewish scholar and eventual military leader who was forced to surrender to the Romans, recorded the many events of the First Jewish Revolt against Rome (66–70 CE). The book is called The Jewish War and is a striking record, even though it is written in support of the Roman offensive. He also wrote a long history of Israel called Jewish Antiquities. These works aid scholars in studying ancient Judaism.

The Jewish people dealt with this blow in their own way, which we will discuss in the next section, while the Christians began to compose their stories about the life and teachings of Jesus in written form. The Gospels and other writings that eventually became part of the New Testament were written ca. 70–110 CE and circulated throughout the Christian community to share the message and affirm the faith of believers.

The World of the Text and the Canon It Produces

The question of how an authorized collection of these writings known as sacred Scripture developed is a question of the canon. In the end, a canon is a list of books that have authority for a given community. The word “canon” comes from a Greek word that means “rod” or “reed.” Such canons came to be used for measuring. When the word is applied to a list of books, the implication is that these books are the “standard of measure” for the community. The term “canon” can also suggest a plumb line, a weight on a string used to make sure a wall is straight. A canon of Scripture therefore also ensures that the life and thought of Christians are directed by the word of God to be correct or “straight.”

Canons of Scripture develop on the basis of a perceived need for authority. The claim is sometimes made that the Christian canon was imposed by authorities such as bishops or emperors. As we will see below, it worked the other way: Christian people gave authority to the books that made most sense of their attempt to live and believe in a Christian way. As with the writing of Scripture, factors, sometimes internal to the group and sometimes external to it, generated questions in the Christian communities that had to be answered. They eventually became so important that leaders across early Christian communities reflected upon which books were to be “in” the canon and which books would be excluded. This section discusses the formation of the Christian canon by surveying the history of the development of the books as well as the process that led to the acceptance of some books as “inspired Scripture” and the rejection of others. This is called the process of canonization. Declaring people “saints” by canonization is a different process. Here we are discussing the establishment of a small library of books that the early Christians considered authoritative and called their canon of sacred Scripture.

The next two chapters will present the narrative history preserved in the Old and New Testaments in more detail. Our task here is to give a rapid overview of the pertinent history and development of the books that became the Christian Bible. The first step in the canonization process in the Jewish and Christian traditions is the grassroots perception of certain writings as sacred— as inspired by God and thus set apart as Scripture. Because of this “grassroots perception” as the starting point of the process of canonization, the idea that the canon was imposed on believers is incorrect. Over time, however, this “grassroots perception” was followed by the felt need to set boundaries on authority. Internal and external factors, such as dissension within the community or pressure or persecution from outside the community, compelled community leaders to determine which texts had authority for the community, which texts might be helpful but did not determine the teachings of the community or status in the community, and which texts were to be rejected as potentially destructive, or at least not helpful, to the community’s well-being and belief system. For an overview of the process of canonization of the Bible into the volume well known today, we will begin with the sacred texts of Judaism and then follow with the development of the specifically Christian component of the biblical canon.

The Jewish Scriptures and the Old Testament

The biblical narrative begins in the book of Genesis with the story of God’s act of creating the cosmos and everything in it. The first eleven chapters of Genesis deal with what is sometimes described as the “prehistory” of Israel. In Genesis 11, the figure of Abraham appears. Thus, the story narrates the development of the world as we know it, first following the expansion of humankind and the society it forms, then more narrowly focusing on God’s choice of Abraham as the righteous man through whom God will form a covenant and through whose descendants a faithful people will form. The faithful descendants of Abraham are traced through their patriarchs and matriarchs, then through prophets, leaders, and judges, like Moses, Joshua, and Samuel, until the people call for a king and the nation of Israel is formed.

Literacy and Orality in the Ancient World

Most people in the ancient world were not able to read or write. A current estimate is that about 5 percent of the people in the cities could read and write, but it may have been a bit higher. Almost no country or village person, as in many civilizations today, was literate. It was ...