An Introduction to the New Testament by D.A. Carson (English) Hardcover Book

Publisher Description

"An Introduction to the New Testament" focuses on "special introduction" that has historical questions dealing with authorship, date, sources, purpose, destination, and so forth. This approach stands in contrast to recent texts that concentrate more on literary form, rhetorical criticism, and historical parallels - topics the authors don't minimize, but instead think are better given extended treatment in exegesis courses. By refocusing on the essentials, "An Introduction to the New Testament" ensures that the New Testament books will be accurately understood within historical settings. For each New Testament document, the authors also provide a substantial summary of that book's content, discuss the book's theological contribution to the overall canon, and give an account of current studies on that book, including recent literary and social-science approaches to interpretation. This second edition reflects significant revision and expansion from the original, making this highly acclaimed text even more valuable. A new chapter provides a historical survey examining Bible study method through the ages.The chapter on Paul has been expanded to include an analysis of debates on the "new perspective." The discussion of New Testament epistles has been expanded to form a new chapter. This new edition will help a new generation of students better grasp the message of the New Testament.

Author Biography

D. A. Carson (PhD, University of Cambridge) is research professor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School in Deerfield, Illinois. He is the author or coauthor of over 45 books, including the Gold Medallion Award-winning book The Gagging of God, and An Introduction to the New Testament. He is general editor of Telling the Truth: Evangelizing Postmoderns and Worship by the Book. He has served as a pastor and is an active guest lecturer in church and academic settings around the world. Douglas J. Moo (PhD, University of St. Andrews) is professor of New Testament at Wheaton College Graduate School. He is the author of 2 Peter and Jude in the NIV Application Commentary series.

Table of Contents

Contents Preface...9 Abbreviations...13 1. Thinking about the Study of the New Testament...23 2. The Synoptic Gospels...77 3. Matthew...134 4. Mark...169 5. Luke...198 6. John...225 7. Acts...285 8. New Testament Letters...331 9. Paul: Apostle and Theologian...354 10. Romans...391 11. 1 and 2 Corinthians...415 12. Galatians...456 13. Ephesians...479 14. Philippians...498 15. Colossians...516 16. 1 and 2Thessalonians...532 17. The Pastoral Epistles...554 18. Philemon...588 19. Hebrews...596 20. James...619 21. 1 Peter...636 22. 2 Peter...654 23. 1, 2, 3 John...669 24. Jude...688 25. Revelation...697 26. The New Testament Canon...726 Scripture Index...744 Name Index...758 Subject Index...765

Review

'...highly recommended. With its very careful, keenly nuanced, and extensively researched discussions, it may well be considered special in a way not originally intended by its authors. It deserves to be read not just by students but by all scholars of the New Testament.' * Review of Biblical Literature *

Long Description

An Introduction to the New Testament focuses on "special introduction" that is historical questions dealing with authorship, date, sources, purpose, destination, and so forth. This approach stands in contrast to recent texts that concentrate more on literary form, rhetorical criticism, and historical parallels--topics the authors don't minimize, but instead think are better given extended treatment in exegesis courses. By refocusing on the essentials, An Introduction to the New Testament ensures that the New Testament books will be accurately understood within historical settings. For each New Testament document, the authors also provide a substantial summary of that book's content, discuss the book's theological contribution to the overall canon, and give an account of current studies on that book, including recent literary and social-science approaches to interpretation. This second edition reflects significant revision and expansion from the original, making this highly acclaimed text even more valuable. * A new chapter provides a historical survey examining Bible study method through the ages. * The chapter on Paul has been expanded to include an analysis of debates on the "new perspective." * The discussion of New Testament epistles has been expanded to form a new chapter. This new edition will help a new generation of students better grasp the message of the New Testament.

Review Quote

"...highly recommended. With its very careful, keenly nuanced, and extensively researched discussions, it may well be considered special in a way not originally intended by its authors. It deserves to be read not just by students but by all scholars of the New Testament." - Review of Biblical Literature

First Chapter

An Introduction to the New Testament---Second EditionPeople have been reading and studying the New Testament for as long as its documentshave been in existence. Even before all twenty-seven canonical New Testamentbooks were written, some found the interpretation of the availabledocuments more than a little challenging (see the comment of 2 Pet. 3:15--16regarding Paul). A distance of two millennia, not to mention changes of language,culture, and history, have not made the task any easier. The torrential outpouringof commentaries, studies, and essays across the centuries, all designed toexplain---or in some cases, explain away---the New Testament documents,makes the task both easier and harder. It is easier because there are many goodand stimulating guides; it is harder because the sheer volume of the material, notto mention its thoroughly mixed nature and, frequently, its mutually contradictorycontent, is profoundly daunting to the student just beginning New Testamentstudy.This chapter provides little more than a surface history of a selection of thepeople, movements, issues, and approaches that have shaped the study of theNew Testament. The student setting out to come to terms with contemporarystudy of the New Testament must suddenly confront a bewildering array of newdisciplines (e.g., text criticism, historical criticism, hermeneutics), the terminologyof new tools (e.g., form criticism, redaction criticism, discourse analysis,postmodern readings), and key figures (e.g., F. C. Baur, J. B. Lightfoot, E. P.Sanders). Students with imagination will instantly grasp that they do not pick upNew Testament scrolls as they were dropped from an apostolic hand; they pickup a bound sheaf of documents, printed, and probably in translation. Moreover,the text itself is something that believers and unbelievers alike have been studyingand explaining for two millennia.The aim here, then, is to provide enough of a framework to make the rest ofthis textbook, and a lot of other books on the New Testament, a little easier tounderstand.Chapter OneThinking about theStudy of the NewTestamentPASSING ON THE TEXTAt the beginning of his gospel, Luke comments that ''many others'' had alreadyundertaken to write accounts of Jesus (Luke 1:1--4). Although some scholarshave argued that there was a long period of oral tradition before anything substantialabout Jesus or the early church was written down, the evidence is againstsuch a stance: the world into which Jesus was born was highly literate.1 Fromsuch a perspective, the existence of the documents that make up the New Testamentcanon is scarcely surprising.These documents were originally hand-written on separate scrolls. Thereis very good evidence that the writing was in capital letters, without spaces, andwith very little punctuation. Printing was still almost a millennium and a halfaway, so additional copies were made by hand. In theory, this could be done byprofessional copiers: in a scriptorium, one man would read at dictation speed,several scribes would take down his dictation, and another would check eachcopy against the original, often using ink of a different color to make the corrections.This kind of professional multiplying of copies was labor-intensiveand therefore expensive. Most early Christian copies of the New Testamentwere doubtless done by laypeople eager to obtain another letter by Paul or awritten account of the life, ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus. Thatbrought the price down: Christians were investing their own time to make theirown copies, and they were not having to pay large sums to professional scribes.On the other hand, the private copy made by an eager and well-meaninglayperson was likely to include more transcriptional errors than copies madeand checked in a scriptorium.How the New Testament canon came together is briefly discussed in the finalchapter of this book. For the moment it is sufficient to observe that as the numbersof copies of New Testament documents multiplied, three formal changeswere soon introduced. First, the scroll gave way to the codex, that is, to a bookbound more or less like a modern book, which enabled readers to look up passagesvery quickly without having to roll down many feet of scroll. Second,increasingly (though certainly not exclusively) the capital letters (scholars callthem ''uncials'') gave way to cursive scripts that were messier but much morequickly written. And third, because the early church, even within the RomanEmpire, was made up of highly diverse groups, it was not long before the NewTestament, and in fact the whole Bible, was translated into other languages.These ''versions'' of the Bible (as translations are called) varied widely in quality.2There were no copyright laws and no central publishing houses, so there weresoon numerous Latin versions, Syriac versions, and so forth, as individuals orlocal churches produced what seemed necessary for their own congregations.Today the printing press churns out thousands of identical copies. Wheneach copy is written by hand, however, if the work is of substantial length, eachcopy will be a little different than all others because the accidental mistakes introducedby successive copying will not all congregate in the same place. The challengeof producing a copy that is perfectly true to the original soon multiplies. Aslightly later Christian, making a copy of a copy, spots what he judges to be mistakesin the manuscript before him and corrects them in his fresh copy. Unfortunately,however, it is possible that some things he thought were mistakes wereactually in the original. For instance, it is well known that there are many grammaticalanomalies in the book of Revelation. The reason for this is disputed; thereare three major theories and several minor ones. But a later copyist might wellhave thought that errors had been introduced by intervening copyists and ''corrected''them to ''proper'' grammar---thereby introducing new errors.Two further ''accidents'' of history and geography have helped to determinejust what material has come down to us. First, just as the Roman Empire dividedbetween East and West (stemming from the decision of Emperor Constantineto establish an eastern capital in what came to be called Constantinople), so alsodid the church. In the West, because it was not only the official language ofRome but also tended in time to squeeze out Greek as the lingua franca, Latinsoon predominated in the church. Initially, there were many Latin versions, buttoward the end of the fourth century, Damasus, Bishop of Rome, commissionedJerome to prepare an official Latin version that would be widely distributed andsometimes imposed throughout the churches of the West. This Latin version,revised several times, became the Vulgate, which held sway in the West for amillennium. By contrast, Greek dominated in the East, in what eventuallybecame the Byzantine Empire. Inevitably, Greek manuscripts were used andcopied much more often under this linguistic heritage than in the West, untilConstantinople fell to the Muslim Turks in 1453. Many Eastern scholars thenfled West, bringing their Greek manuscripts with them---a development thathelped to fuel both the Reformation and the Renaissance.Second, the material on which ancient books were written (i.e., their equivalentof paper) decomposed more readily in some climates than in others. Themost expensive books were made of parchment, treated animal skin. Higherquality parchment was called vellum. More commonly, books were made ofpapyrus, a plant that grew plentifully in the Nile Delta. Papyrus has the constituencyof celery or rhubarb. Long strips could be peeled off, pounded, andglued together to make sheets.

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