New Testament Studies

 The New Testament is a compilation of letters and history and one book, the last, whose literary style (genre) is called apocalyptic, meaning it's full of visions of the end of time and the catastrophes that will come with that ending.

The first 4 books of the New Testament are called the "Gospels", the word "gospel" deriving from the Greek and meaning good news. They basically give us the life of Jesus from 4 different perspectives, which means that they contain shared material and also their own individual material. The first three Gospels, Matthew, Mark and Luke contain much more in common with each other than with John, the last of the 4 Gospels, and so they are sometimes called the "Synoptic Gospels".  Scholars are coming to the view that the Gospels were not the earliest part of the New Testament to be written down, although they are they are the first part of the New Testament. It is also thought that the Gospels may share certain older sources in common, although these sources are now lost to us.

The next book of the New Testament after the 4 Gospels is the Book of Acts, which is credited to Luke whom the opening verses of both Luke's Gospel and Acts credit with being the author. According to Acts, Luke was a travelling companion of Paul's and the book contains detailed accounts of Paul's missionary travels, as well as giving us an account of the days following Jesus' Resurrection and the start of the church. It also tells how Paul became a follower of Jesus.

After this the New Testament is  composed of letters from various individuals (Paul, Peter, James, John) on various subjects and written for a variety of reasons.

One of the main issues which the New Testament material faces is the question how much of it is original? That is, how much of it comes to us from the hands of those who are said to have written their pieces, or in the case of the Gospels, how much of it bears witness to the original words and deeds of Jesus?

These questions arise for various reasons. Sometimes the written material throws up sylistic differences which are in contrast to the main style of the writing we find them in. So for example we may find something in a letter which seems to be out of keeping with the style and vocabulary of the rest of the letter, so it is suggested that perhaps a later editor inserted the bit that doesn't fit so well. Sometimes the material contains apparently conflicting details, or jumps in continuity, and this leads scholars to suggest that they may be compliations from different fragments of letters, joined up to make one whole letter.

I'll give one small example of an issue regarding vocabulary. In Matthew's Gospel, in chapter 16 and in 18, we find the greek word "ekklesia". It's the word we translate as "church". You don't find it in any other of the Gospels. Given that the church didn't get started until after Jesus' Resurrection scholars think that it is a bit odd that it should crop up in Jesus' teaching. It was a word that would only have taken on the significance it did in the years following as the believers began to be organised into groups and meetings. Moreover, you might think it to say the least, interesting that in chapter 16 the word is being used to back up the position of Peter as foundational for the church. One way of solving the conundrum is to suggest that these were added in by later writers to give authority to both the church and Peter.

Some Christians argue that this kind of reading of the texts undermines the authority of the Bible. Why couldn't Jesus have forseen the emergence of the Church and talked about it? After all the Bible is surely the product of a divine and supernatural hand isn't it? So we can't submit it to the kind of investigation that we would use for ordinary ancient texts. Well, this would be fine if the Bible and especially the New Testament had come to us as a done deal, one book in finished form maybe a few years after Jesus' lifetime on earth. But it took a long time for the texts to emerge and then be agreed upon as being "sacred" and also "closed" - (by closed I mean that moment when the church decided that the material could not be added to or subtracted from). So, it is felt by many that we actually owe it to the text to study it and honour it by trying to get behind it so to speak, to know as much about its compilation and meaning as we possibly can. To do this we have to use the scholarly methods and research that we use on all ancient texts.

But this has implications for our everyday reading of the Bible. It means that often, to understand the whole text we need to know more than simply the surface meaning of the words. The opening phrase "the Bible says" will not do as a means of closing an argument. We need to be able to make use of the latest translations with their notes, or at least sit a little light to some of the more contentious moralising that is rooted in the far past and we need to be able to compare what we read in one part with what we know from other parts. In this regard, our treatment of both the Old and the New Testaments will be similar.