A Short History of the New Testament

Halvor Moxnes

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN:
  9781780766072
• eBook ISBN:
  9780857735522
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Storia
• Subtopic: Filosofia delle religioni

Few documents in world history can match the inspirational impact of the New Testament. For all its variety - gospels, letters and visions - this firstcentury collection of texts keeps always at its centre the enigmatic figure of Joshua/Jesus: the Jewish prophet who gathered a group around him, proclaimed the imminent end of the world, but was made captive by the authorities of Rome only to suffer a shameful criminal's death on a cross. When his followers (including former persecutor Saul/Paul) became convinced that Jesus had defeated extinction, and had risen again to fresh life, the movement crossed over from Palestine to ignite the entire Greco-Roman Mediterranean world. The author shows how the writings of this vibrant new faith came into being from oral transmission and then became the pillar of a great world religion. He explores their many varied usages in music, liturgy, art, language and literature. In discussing its textual origins, as well as its later reception, Moxnes shows above all how the New Testament has been employed both as a tool for liberation and as a means of power and control.

Part 1

BEGINNINGS

FROM JESUS TO THE GOSPELS

Jesus was before the gospels, but we only know Jesus through the gospels. That is the paradox we face when we speak of ‘the historical Jesus’. By this we mean the person we can reconstruct using historical methods, evaluating and combining available sources, some of which are Jewish and Roman. The Jewish historian Josephus c. 90 tells that Jesus was crucified by Pontius Pilate, and that he still had followers. The Roman historian Tacitus writing about Nero, c. 115, observed that the Christians, who were accused of having started the fire that destroyed Rome, had their name from a certain Chrestus who was executed by Pontius Pilate. Thus, these sources tell us that Jesus was a historical person who was crucified, but they do not say much about who he was. For that we must use the gospels as sources and, by comparing and sifting through them, we can deduce some information that seems trustworthy: Jesus was a Jew who grew up and lived in Galilee (his birth in Bethlehem may be a later tradition). He was, at some point, a disciple of John the Baptist, but started his own group and activities that included preaching – the coming of the Kingdom of God was his main message. This message was associated with his activities as healer and exorcist, as well as with an inclusive meal praxis that included ‘sinners’. Because his position was so counter-cultural, it seems likely that he left his own household and called at least some of his disciples to do the same, living a life as itinerant and homeless. His main activity was in Galilee where, although accepted by many, he faced criticism and resistance from synagogue leaders and scribes. At some point he decided to go to Jerusalem, where the conflicts with the Jewish leadership increased and the disturbances that he caused during a sensitive period (Easter was a celebration of the liberation of the Judeans from Egypt) led to the Roman authorities crucifying him, probably with some involvement from the Temple leadership.

Figure 1. An early portrait of Jesus from the Comodilla catacomb, Rome, late fourth century.

For this information about Jesus to be meaningful, it must be placed within a geographical, political and religious context. Although not correct in historical details, the well-known introduction to the birth narrative in Luke’s Gospel (2:1–4) provides this information. It tells that Jesus was born under Augustus’ reign of the Roman Empire, in a landscape that administratively was part of Syria; his hometown was Nazareth in Galilee, but his father hailed from Judea. The next historical vignette in Luke 3:1–4, from a later date when Tiberius had become emperor, describes the political situation of the area in more detail. The areas that had been ruled by Herod, as a vassal king under the Romans, had now been divided – the southern part, Judea, was directly ruled by Rome with a governor, Pontius Pilate; Galilee was ruled by Herod Antipas (a son of the previous Herod) as a Roman vassal; and other regions to the east and south were ruled by his brothers. We must not imagine that these regions were nation-states in a modern sense; they were under personal rule, in this case divided up by the Romans, in other cases gathered through internal power struggles, conquest or marriage. The Judeans, descendants of the ancient Israelites with memories of the great kingdoms of David and Salomon, had for generations been conquered and ruled by different empires, mostly through vassal rulers. In addition, when the Romans had direct rule, as in Judea, they let local forms of rule continue, as long as they kept peaceful control over people. In Jerusalem that meant that the high priests of the Temple (Luke 3:2), were also political rulers, the Temple being the central institution of power (a power that in modern days has been separated out in political, economic and religious sectors). The northern region, Galilee, that for many hundreds of years had a separate history, had some generations before the time of Jesus been re-populated by Judeans, but it was still a border area towards Hellenistic towns and pagan cities, such as Tyre and Sidon, to the North.

Map 2. Palestine at the time of Jesus.

With this information we can better place Jesus in his context. That Jesus was known as a Galilean indicates that he was a Judean from a region outside the heartland of Judea. The tradition in Luke’s Gospel that he was born in Bethlehem, the ancient town of David, linked him to the dreams of the times of the great king David and to the hopes of a new Messiah (that is, an anointed one; Christos in Greek) who would re-establish the Davidic kingdom. These expectations also form a backdrop to Jesus’ central message of God’s kingdom or empire, but this kingdom did not conform to expectations; it appeared to be both contrary to the expectations of the Judeans and critical of the rule of the Roman Empire. Instead, Jesus appears to have proclaimed a Kingdom of God that responded to the needs of people, with healings of the sick and exorcisms of the possessed, feeding of the poor, preaching a reversal of power structures and breaking traditional rules of purity. This is such a consistent picture in the gospels that it must go back to the earliest memories of Jesus.

Thus, it is possible to imagine Jesus as the leader of a ‘kingdom movement’ that, although peaceful, caused turbulence, gathered crowds around him, and created expectations that Jesus might be the Messiah. If this reached a climax in Jerusalem at Easter time, when the city was full of pilgrims, it is not difficult to understand the concern of both the Temple leaders and the Romans, under Pontius Pilate, and the Romans’ decision to execute him.

The resurrection of Jesus cannot be verified as a historic event by normal historical criteria. But that the disciples and first followers of Jesus experienced encountering Jesus as risen may well be historical; there are many and diverse memories of such encounters both in the gospels and in Paul’s letters. We cannot say anything about the character of these experiences, but they must have made it possible to overcome the trauma of the death of Jesus and the loss of the expectations that his disciples had in him. The result was a continuation of the Jesus movement, and now not just with the message about the Kingdom of God, as preached by him, but proclaiming Jesus as the Messiah (the Christ) as the central message of the Kingdom.

It was this message that seemed to rapidly convert the Jesus movement into a missionary movement; it spread from Jerusalem and Galilee to the Jewish Diaspora in the East, to Egypt in the South and to Asia Minor, Greece and even Rome within a few decades. We know about this mission towards Asia Minor and Greece primarily through Paul’s letters and, at a later stage, through an idealised description by Luke in the Acts of the Apostles. Since Paul’s letters are the earliest writings we have, we shall start with them. In the New Testament they follow the gospels (and Acts), in which we get a full picture of Jesus. Therefore we easily overlook that in his letters Paul tells next to nothing about Jesus’ life: only that he was borne by a woman, under the Law (Gal 4:1–2), that he instituted the new meal of the Eucharist (1 Cor 11) and that he was crucified (1 Cor 1). This lack of information is so surprising that we are left to wonder what Paul had told them when he preached and gathered new Christ followers, and how they preserved and retold stories about Jesus.

At some point the Jesus followers must have felt the need to write down these stories and memories of him, but that is most likely to have happened a generation after Paul wrote his letters. And again we are in for a surprise: we have not just one collection of words and memories about Jesus, but four: Mark, Matthew, Luke and John, partly related and reworked, partly independent of each other. If anything, this shows that there must have been diversities and different emphases in the Jesus movement from its beginning.

In the last chapter in this section we shall see that these diversities among the Christ groups continued in the second century, with a proliferation of memories about Jesus, in many cases spoken of as ‘gospels’. However, at the same time we see attempts to control the traditions; we encounter terms such as ‘Apocrypha’ and ‘canon’, reflecting the beginning of a process of the inclusion and exclusion of writings in the ‘New Testament’.

1

BECOMING CHRISTIANS: LETTER WRITING AS COMMUNITY FORMATION

COMMUNICATION AND LETTERS IN FIRST-CENTURY MEDITERRANEAN CULTURES

In the New Testament we have a selection of early Christian letters (often called epistles) from the first century AD. At least seven of them were composed by the Apostle Paul, and they represent the earliest scriptures in the Christian tradition. Written by Paul and other missionaries to the first groups of Christ believers, in a formative period in the lives of these groups, these letters make up a unique collection. We only have one side of this dialogue: the correspondence sent to Paul and the other New Testament authors are lost to history. Even so, through the advice in the letters, we are afforded glimpses of these groups as they come into being: as they struggle to form as social units, organise worship, find ways to express what they believe and discuss moral issues. While community formation was an important purpose of the letters, they also reveal information about the relationship between the writers and their audience. The letters sometimes read like the kind one would expect of correspondence between friends, but there are similarities with official letters, too, as the authors attempt to establish their authority over the groups they address. What becomes obvious through these writings, whether one focuses on their personal or official dimensions, is the transformative nature of their faith in the risen Christ, and their struggles to live in their existing social world guided by the light of faith.

Paul’s letters to the various newly founded communities are about giving shape to a life centred on faith in Christ. The letters address organisational issues, difficult relationships within the various communities and their interaction with the wider societies in which they lived. These issues of community formation and orientation will be foregrounded in this chapter – rather than the more traditional focus on the theological content of Paul’s writings – as the basis for a future theological system.¹

This is not to marginalise theology: there have been great changes in the interpretation of Paul and his theology in the last generation of scholarship, and these changes are discussed in Chapter 9. What I want to show in this chapter is how Paul’s theology developed in the process of responding to practical situations which arose within the communities with which he corresponded. But before we explore the letters, we must ask: Who was this Paul?

WILL THE REAL PAUL PLEASE STAND UP?

Paul is the only New Testament author who can be securely identified, but to understand who he was we have to distinguish between at least four different pictures of him: the modern Paul, the Paul of the New Testament (of which there are two), and Paul as he actually was, as a historical figure.

The ‘modern Paul’ is Paul as he is understood today, although a plurality of modern perspectives on him exist. Just two will be summarised, both of which emphasise his historical influence, albeit for different reasons. For many people, especially in Protestant churches, he is the founder of Christian theology and one of the most important authorities for Church teaching. Others see him in a less favourable light, as a major source of religiously mandated prejudice and discrimination, especially towards women and homosexuals.

In the New Testament itself we find two presentations. One comes from the Acts of the Apostles, where the largest part, Chapters 13–28, tells the story of an evangelising mission ‘from Jerusalem to the ends of the earth’, in which Paul is the main protagonist. This narrative is strongly coloured by Luke’s wish to place Paul in a positive light, and to portray him as a loyal Jew. In Acts we learn that he studied with Gamalial in Jerusalem, that he was a Roman citizen and that he started his mission in the synagogues. But this information comes from Acts alone; it is not verified in the sources for our third picture of Paul – his letters.

Figure 2. Icon of the Apostle Paul, c. 1550, The Ecclesiastical Archeological Museum of the Moscow Theological Academy.

Paul’s letters are the best sources we have for his life and character, but he does not give a systematic account, or even chronological outline, of his life. Nor can we assume that all the information Paul does provide is factual: like many writers, Paul constructs a picture of himself which corresponds to the persona he wanted to project. For instance, the biographical description in Galatians 1:11–24, which tells the story of how he was called by God in the same way as God called the prophets, supported his claim that he had the right to be an apostle, a term that many would restrict to the 12 disciples of Jesus. Paul’s obvious interest in securing his apostolic authority raises the suspicion of modern historians as to whether this is indeed an autobiographical reflection, or an apologetic invention. To a considerable degree, the historical figure of Paul remains elusive; nevertheless, there is scholarly agreement on many aspects of Paul’s life, and it is to these that we now turn.

PAUL’S LIFE AND LETTERS

With a great deal of certainty we can say that Paul was a Jew from the Diaspora, possibly Tarsus in Asia Minor (modern Turkey); that he self-identified as a pharisee; and that he partook in the persecution of members of the movement that was to become Christianity, before having a vision, or some experience, of the risen Christ that radically changed the course of his life, which henceforth was that of a fervent Christ believer (Gal 1:11–17, 1 Cor 15:8). We also know that he made long missionary journeys in the Eastern Mediterranean, through Asia Minor and Greece. In Chapter 15 of his letter to the Romans, he looked back upon his completed mission to the Eastern Mediterranean and looked forward to travelling to the West: to Rome, and further still to Spain. But first he planned to visit Jerusalem, where he intended to deliver a collection to the poor of the city as a sign of the unity between gentile followers of Christ and the Jewish part of the community in Jerusalem. This visit resulted in conflict, Paul’s arrest and his deportation to Rome where he most likely was executed c. 64.

The chronology of Paul’s life and letters cannot be established with any certainty, but a historically plausible sequence of the latter is as follows:

The First Letter to the Thessalonians, c. 50–1

The Letter to the Galatians, c. 54

The First Letter to the Corinthians, c. 53–5

The Second Letter to the Corinthians, c. 54–6

The Letter to the Romans, c. 57

The Letter to the Philippians, c. 56 or c. 62.²

The Letter to Philemon, c. 61–3.

THE FORM AND FUNCTION OF PAUL’S LETTERS

So why did Paul write letters, and what are the key characteristics of letters as a form of communication? A letter is different from a narrative text in that it is explicitly part of a communication between two parties: a letter is one half of a dialogue, and a substitute for personal presence. Hellenistic letter writing provides the closest model for Paul and other early Christian letters, and the study of Hellenistic letter writing has made it possible to study Paul’s letters as the ‘occasional writings’ that they were, within their own historical context.³

In the Hellenistic world of the first century letters were a popular genre, and many letters from this period are preserved. They range from the personal to the official and business orientated, where we learn about daily life, family relations, friendships and financial dealings. The Roman Empire produced many letters, from the emperor himself to governors and administrators who, in turn, wrote back with necessary reports or to ask for advice. There were also official and open letters, where the emperor or governor wished to address an entire city. This type of letter was a way of keeping the Empire together and, with a good system of roads and horse messengers, they were an efficient mode of communication between the imperial powerbase and the more distant parts of the Empire. Another notable use of the open letter during Paul’s time was that favoured by philosophers and other public intellectuals, who would offer reflections and advice about moral values, or comment on the social and political norms of a place, in order to create or solidify a school of thought, or to influence public opinion.

Letters composed in this era had seve...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title page
• Dedication
• Copyright
• Contents
• List of Maps and Illustrations
• Preface
• Introduction: What is a History of the New Testament?
• Part 1: Beginnings
• Part 2: Shaping History
• Part 3: Reading and Meaning-Making
• Further Reading
• Notes