New Testament Basics: A Guide for Reading and Interpreting the Text

By Stefan Alkier and David Moffitt

New Testament Basics introduces college, university, seminary, and divinity school students to the study of the New Testament. Authors Stefan Alkier and David Moffitt adopt five major aims: (i) to explore how the Bible came to exist, dealing with the formation and significance of the Christian canon; (ii) to discuss the ways the Bible continues to exert influence on contemporary culture, demonstrating the ongoing value and importance of biblical literacy; (iii) to introduce readers to some of the most fundamental methods used in the study of the New Testament, including a substantial discussion of semiotics and its usefulness for New Testament interpretation; (iv) to provide a survey of central historical, social, and economic information as important contextual knowledge for interpreting the New Testament; and (v) to offer some brief discussion of the contents of several New Testament texts and consider ways they might inform theological reflection. In the end, Alkier and Moffitt's New Testament Basics fosters within students important competencies needed to read and interpret the New Testament for themselves.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fortress Press
• Release date: Oct 11, 2022
• ISBN: 9781506483382

Stefan Alkier

Dr. theol. Stefan Alkier ist Professor für Neues Testament und Geschichte der Alten Kirche an der Universität Frankfurt/Main.

Book preview

Cover Page for New Testament Basics

Praise for New Testament Basics

Stefan Alkier and David Moffitt have reinvented the genre ‘introduction to the New Testament.’ This is not simply a survey of the historical context and production of the NT writings. Instead, it is ‘A Guide for Reading and Interpreting the Text,’ recognizing both that the Bible is a richly polyphonic text and that we inescapably approach it from within a web of our own cultural assumptions and questions. Using a lively range of examples and illustrations, Alkier and Moffitt show how attention to semiotics can help us read the text in deeper and more nuanced ways. Especially significant are the authors’ emphases on Israel’s Scripture as the background for interpreting the NT writings, the ‘Jesus-as-the-Christ story and history’ as the unifying ‘red thread’ for the NT, and, in the concluding chapter, the possibility of moving toward a theology of the NT. Throughout, this book models interpretive charity toward others who read the text from different perspectives. This is a book to be pondered and savored not only by beginning students but also by all those who teach them.

—Richard B. Hays, Duke University

"In this truly helpful volume, Stefan Alkier and David Moffitt guide students with little or no formal training as they take their beginning and intermediate steps in New Testament study. Here is up-to-date scholarship on methods, backgrounds, theological work, and more in the service of newcomers to the fascinating challenges of engaging historically, intertextually, and theologically with these writings. New Testament Basics will serve well as a companion to more traditional introductions to New Testament literature—or it may signal a new approach to the basic textbook we use for entry-level courses."

—Joel B. Green, Fuller Theological Seminary

"New Testament Basics accomplishes a great deal. Following a student’s natural process of discovery, the authors proceed from the Bible’s influence on contemporary culture to a thorough, cohesive introduction of the critical issues, content, and theology of the New Testament. A focus on semiotic methodology equips readers with a robust—and charitable—hermeneutic as they engage conversations of biblical interpretation."

—Kathy Maxwell, Palm Beach Atlantic University

New Testament Basics

New Testament Basics

A Guide for Reading and Interpreting the Text

Stefan Alkier

David M. Moffitt

Fortress Press

Minneapolis

NEW TESTAMENT BASICS

A Guide for Reading and Interpreting the Text

Copyright © 2022 Fortress Press, an imprint of 1517 Media. All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations in critical articles or reviews, no part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without prior written permission from the publisher. Email [e-mail] or write to Permissions, Fortress Press, PO Box 1209, Minneapolis, MN 55440-1209.

Cover image: Clouds of Light. Escape to Reality series. Photography/Agsandrew/iStock

Cover design: Laurie Ingram Art + Design.com

Print ISBN: 978-1-5064-8337-5

eBook ISBN: 978-1-5064-8338-2

While the author and 1517 Media have confirmed that all references to website addresses (URLs) were accurate at the time of writing, URLs may have expired or changed since the manuscript was prepared.

Dedicated to our teachers, Prof. Dr. Erhardt Güttgemans (1935–2008) and Prof. Richard B. Hays. We are profoundly grateful for their wise and faithful instruction.

Contents

Preface

1 Introduction

2 The Bible: Useful Information about a Bestseller

3 The Bible Today

4 Methods of Biblical Interpretation

5 Rulers, Empires, Religions: Historical Contexts of the New Testament Writings

6 Thinking about a Theology of the New Testament

Glossary

Bibliography

Preface

This volume is a fully reworked and heavily revised English edition of Stefan Alkier’s German book Neues Testament in the UTB Basics series (published by A. Franke). Stefan’s German book first appeared in print in 2010. Since that time, the book has proven to be such a popular and helpful introduction to the basic concepts, methods, and historical matters important for studying and interpreting the New Testament that a second German edition is currently being produced.

Given the success of the original German book, Stefan began to think that an English version would be useful. He approached David Moffitt about the project since David had not only done some translation work for Stefan on other projects but also shared with Stefan a similar vision for the importance of intertextuality and semiotics for interpreting the New Testament. A brief conversation over dinner in the House of Blues restaurant in Chicago set in motion the process that eventually led to this volume.

We both agreed that many of the features of Stefan’s original book that set it apart from the many excellent introductory texts on the New Testament already available (such as the importance of intertextuality, the need to reflect on the cultural significance and history of the Bible, and especially the value of semiotics) would indeed be useful for English-speaking students and interested laypeople alike. We also agreed that important, recent work being done in German scholarship needed to be introduced more widely to English-speaking students.

We knew, too, that the English edition could not simply be a translation of the German book. Stefan’s careful attention to cultural matters, one of the distinctive features of his original book, made significant portions of the German book hard to relate to English-speaking readers. We knew that at least one chapter as well as a few sections would need to be written afresh with an eye to different readers and cultural contexts. Moreover, we agreed early on that David would have significant latitude to suggest changes and introduce different perspectives.

As we moved forward, it became increasingly clear that more substantial rewriting was necessary than first envisioned. While we found we agreed on a great many points, we naturally also found we did not see eye to eye on every point in the book. This began a mutually beneficial series of conversations on several of the topics covered in the book that involved give-and-take on both sides. This also led to what ended up being more of a new, coauthored book than a translation. We can say honestly that there are several aspects that have made it into the current book that each of us continues to disagree with the other about. Nevertheless, we found great joy and insight in the mutual back-and-forth of vigorous yet friendly and respectful dialogue. We are both delighted to see the fruit of our conversations and collaboration finally out in print. All of this is to say that this book has ended up being very different in significant ways from the original German version of Stefan’s book. The basic structure of the book follows that of Stefan’s original, but at a great many points not only does the content differ, but other perspectives are also present.

The process of producing the book involved first creating rough translations of Stefan’s original chapters and then thoroughly revising them. As noted above, it was often the case that significant parts of the original were deleted and/or completely new sections were written. The most revisions were made to chapters 1, 2, and 6, though much more thorough deleting, revising, and rewriting occurred particularly in chapters 1 and 6. Chapter 3 was written almost entirely from scratch with only some of the original German content retained. Chapters 4 and 5 were also heavily revised, but these chapters maintain relatively more translation of the original book than the others.

In addition to translation work done by David, a number of other people offered invaluable help along the way. We especially want to thank Max Botner, Ann-Catherine I. Wilkening, and Chance E. Bonar for producing initial working translations of chapters 2, 4, and 5 of Stefan’s original text. Given the level of revision and rewriting, we wish to make clear that any issues or errors in the current text are solely the responsibility of David and Stefan. Additional thanks go to Carey Newman, whose enthusiasm for the book helped bring this project to fruition, to Heidi Mann for her careful and thoughtful copyediting, and to Elvis Ramirez for working tirelessly to get the project finished.

It is our sincere hope that this book will prove a useful introduction to the exciting and stimulating field of New Testament studies. New and important methods and questions have been attracting attention in the field over the last few decades. While we introduce readers to many of the important methods of the past that continue to influence scholarly as well as lay and public engagement with Christian Scripture, our book especially highlights more recent developments involving linguistics, narrative studies, intertextuality, and semiotics. As we suggest in the book’s final chapter, these considerations open the door for another distinctive feature of this volume: Unlike many standard New Testament introductions, we attempt to provide some prompts to think theologically with and beyond the New Testament. No single volume can fully cover the entire field. This book, however, focuses attention on a number of elements sometimes overlooked in similar volumes. We believe that what we offer here will equip interested readers to engage in the fascinating endeavor of reading and interpreting the New Testament competently for themselves.

Stefan Alkier

David M. Moffitt

Chapter 1

Introduction

1.1. How This Book Will (and Will Not) Be Useful: Some Basic Guidelines

This book seeks to present an elementary, yet comprehensive, overview of the field of New Testament studies. We do not seek to induct students into all the nitty-gritty details of academic biblical research. Neither do we assume that our readers have already studied the original languages in which the Bible was written. Instead, our hope is that this volume will serve as a guidebook for college and seminary students who desire to know more about the basic historical, literary, hermeneutical, and theological knowledge that is foundational for competent study of the New Testament.

Guidelines for the Journey

Imagine, if you will, the following situation: A recent high school graduate decides she might be interested in studying the Bible at university, perhaps even the New Testament in particular. She goes online to buy a Bible, correctly reasoning that any serious student of the Bible ought actually to have her own copy close to hand. The startling variety of Bibles she finds, however, leaves her a bit baffled, even dismayed. Why are there so many different versions of the Bible available?

The second chapter of this book lays out some helpful information regarding this question. There we introduce the subject of New Testament studies—that is, the study of the New Testament as part of the larger biblical canon, or collection of books that make up the Bible. This point of departure will help us map out the history and materiality of the individual biblical texts, as well as some of their most distinctive theological particularities.

But a number of related questions must also be addressed by way of introduction. For instance, our inquisitive student might wonder when Bibles—that is, single volumes containing collections of the various individual books of Scripture—came into existence. Moreover, as she looks through different Bibles, she may wonder why not all Christians have the same collection of individual books in their Bibles. A host of other questions might follow: Do we have the original versions of the biblical books? On what basis were the different editions of the Bible compiled? How can the Old and New Testaments be held together when they seem so different? What do we do with all the tensions and apparent contradictions in the Bible? Do the various books in the Bible speak with one voice? If not, should we listen for all their different voices or try to harmonize them? How are we to evaluate this plurality of voices theologically? And, she may continue to wonder, what about the wide array of books that were clearly important for the development of early Christianity and helped shape important beliefs in the ancient church, but did not ultimately make it into the Bible? Does it make sense to bring these other texts into consideration when studying the Bible?

After our budding biblical scholar has thought a bit about questions such as these, she suspects she might eventually need to purchase several editions of the Bible. Settling on one, she starts reading and almost immediately begins to see in a fresh way just how prevalent aspects of it continue to be in our culture. The fact is, the individual texts that make up the Bible have not only played a fundamental role in shaping Christian belief; they have also shaped some of the most foundational tenets of our culture, from words and idioms in our language to political views we simply assume to be true. Even today, the Bible continues to be a bestseller. The third chapter of this book briefly surveys some of the more prominent aspects of the cultural, political, and theological significance the Bible continues to have in our world as a book that is still read, used, judged, and interpreted (often controversially). What’s more, we never read in a cultural vacuum, and this is especially true of the Bible. We read it in a context that is always already being shaped and influenced by other texts, values, signs, and symbols. Every time we read the Bible, our interests and questions affect our understanding and interpretation. We never come to a text as purely objective, neutral interpreters. We all bring our preformed perspectives, even our hopes and fears, to every text we read. That is to say, we all find every text we read already located within webs of traditions and relationships with other texts and aspects of our world.

When it comes to reading the Bible, it is important to realize that neither any institutional church nor any individual Christian holds a monopoly on interpreting its contents. In fact, whether one likes it or not, biblical texts are often read with little concern for their literary and historical contexts. This is not only true for people who read it to hear God speak to them. The Bible frequently shows up in pop culture. It offers grist for advertisements, television shows, songs, and movies. Few books are mined and used in such a wide variety of communities and contexts as the Bible is. Naturally, the Bible also continues to be a foundational text for Christian belief and practice. The centrality of the Bible for Christianity can even exert influence on interreligious dialogue when, for example, conversation partners from other faiths are asked to reflect on the way that their own Scriptures relate to one another and to their beliefs and practices. The Bible is truly a polyphonic text; that is, it is able to be read within a plurality of contexts and to be understood to speak in a variety of ways to a diverse culture.

The very diversity of interpretations and uses of the Bible that we have just been discussing might well lead our curious undergraduate to wonder whether there are any reasonable and sound principles she can learn and use when reading the Bible. Are there general characteristics or best practices that underlie methods for biblical exegesis? If so, what might they be? Why are there so many different scholarly methods in use? Why have some methods like the so-called historical-critical method so dominated biblical interpretation for the last two hundred years? And what is the historical-critical method anyway? (Any term printed in bold type also appears in the glossary at the end of this book. You can always look there for more information about these technical, historical, or foreign-language terms.) What can be said about some of the more recent methods that have challenged the historical-critical approach? Our fourth chapter explores some of the most important methodological questions and approaches used by scholars to help guide biblical interpretation or, to use the scholarly term for interpretation, exegesis. One such method to which we give particular attention comes from the field of semiotics—the study of signs and their meanings. One of the aspects of this book that distinguishes it from similar texts is the emphasis we place on semiotic-critical methods. Semiotic-critical approaches to biblical interpretation began to grow in popularity during the 1970s and have continued to offer alternative interpretive methods for exegesis that are particularly sensitive to some of the larger philosophical insights from what is called the linguistic turn and then later the cultural turn in philosophy.

After familiarizing herself with these various methodological matters, our young theologian has also begun to understand that good biblical exegesis requires a solid grounding in the historical and cultural contexts in which the biblical texts were written, collected, and transmitted. In order to help her out, we introduce in chapter 5 some of the most significant historical, political, economic, religious, social, and other cultural matters relevant to the times and places in which the New Testament documents were originally written. Good interpretation of any historical text requires a well-informed historical imagination, or what one might call a good grasp on the cultural encyclopedia of those who first wrote and read these texts.

The concept of a cultural encyclopedia, especially championed in the field of semiotics, is a helpful metaphor for conceiving of a culture’s conventional knowledge base—the sort of knowledge that anyone living in a certain time and place can be expected to know. This would include things like common language, institutions, and experiences—the momentous ones, like presidential elections or a terrorist attack, and the more mundane ones, like the typical American Thanksgiving dinner menu of turkey, green beans, sweet potatoes, pumpkin pie, or wearing paper crowns for Christmas dinner in England. Of course, some of what we know transcends our local culture because it has made an impact on the entire world (Covid-19). This body of knowledge shared by individuals who inhabit the same cultural context (some of it global, some of it national, some of it local, some of it familial) can be conceptualized as an encyclopedia—an ordered storehouse of cultural knowledge. Communication depends to a large degree on individual members of a given culture being able to access this encyclopedia that they hold in common in more or less the same ways. To those who know American culture, Turkey Day means Thanksgiving. References to Christmas crackers meaningfully activate notions of Christmas dinner for those living in Ireland, the United Kingdom, and several other countries with connections to the British Commonwealth of Nations. (They will also know that the crackers are not for eating!) Such references are obvious and can be assumed as people communicate with each other when and because they share the same cultural encyclopedia. Problems arise when we find ourselves outside our culture. Americans may puzzle over paper crowns and party crackers—what are these things and why are they connected with Christmas? Outsiders to a culture or those who are newly arrived in a particular cultural context may stumble in communication and understanding not least because the encyclopedia they know does not align with the one in which they now find themselves.

These notions are useful for thinking about reading the Bible, both in terms of providing ways to conceive of how we approach these ancient texts and in terms of providing a helpful word of caution as we read them. Naturally, the Bible’s influence on our culture means there are numerous points of contact between our encyclopedia and those of the biblical authors. We stand in a tradition that has partly been shaped by their ancient cultures. Nevertheless, all of us today stand at a great historical and cultural distance from the times and places in which these texts were first written and read. When we attempt to read the New Testament, which was written roughly two thousand years ago in Greek, it is helpful and important to remember that we do not inhabit or share the cultural encyclopedia of those who originally wrote and read these books (nor would they have had a clue about our cultural encyclopedia). Only by studying the ancient cultural artifacts, events, texts, and stories that we can access are we able to begin to reconstruct their encyclopedia. With good historical knowledge we can begin to imagine the kinds of assumptions and experiences that might have informed the first communities who read the New Testament texts. This is part of why historical work is so important for those who want to be competent readers of these texts.

So far our eager student has learned something about the history of the canon and about contemporary appropriations of the Bible. She has also been equipped to engage these ancient texts with some good methodological equipment and historical knowledge. Now she is eager to begin studying the twenty-seven books of the New Testament themselves in earnest. The final chapter of this book is intended to aid her endeavor by providing brief overviews of the structure, basic content, and rhetorical characteristics of the most central documents in the New Testament—that is, those texts that best illustrate key early Christian commitments and/or have had the most impact on the traditions that have shaped our cultures today. We discuss such introductory matters as the times and places in which these texts were likely to have been composed, as well as consider questions of authorship. These kinds of matters are intended to help contemporary readers locate these documents in what may plausibly be envisioned as their original settings. In addition to such historical concerns, we sketch out the most fundamental theological claims presented in these texts. All of this aims to help us imagine how the texts might fit and be understood in their original cultural encyclopedia, while also beginning to understand ways in which they shaped and might continue to shape our own.

We conclude the book with an invitation to all burgeoning New Testament scholars to engage in the larger task of moving beyond the perspectives of the individual texts toward a theology of the New Testament as a whole. In particular, we encourage you to consider the important question of the ways in which the New Testament documents relate to those of the Old Testament. Indeed, the whole of the book can be viewed as moving toward this basic exegetical and theological thesis: The red thread that runs right through the New Testament is the narrative that provides a meaningful picture of who Jesus’s early followers understood him to be. This is a story that develops out of the essential relationships between key events they took to be part of Jesus’s life—especially his crucifixion, resurrection, and ascension—that led them to conclude that this particular man is the Christ.

As an aside, the word Christ is likely familiar to all of us today—it is part of our cultural encyclopedia, even if only as a swear word. But what does it mean? In its original context, the word was a translation into Greek of the Hebrew term "Messiah—the anointed one. The Hebrew term is loaded and complex, but essentially it was a title that named the hoped-for Jewish ruler who would restore David’s kingdom and free the Jewish people from their gentile overlords (especially the Romans), whom some Jews viewed as not much better than the enslavers of their people in the past—Pharaoh and the Egyptians. This restoration of David’s kingdom, many hoped, would be linked with some new and wonderful expression of God’s presence in his temple, where he dwelt among his people, and even a renewal of creation itself. Christ is primarily, therefore, a title—a claim about Jesus in relation to Jewish hopes for David’s throne to be reestablished and the world set right again. Christ, therefore, is not a last name, as we might assume today when we hear about Jesus Christ. Already you can see just how important it can be to understand the ancient cultural encyclopedia of those who first began to proclaim Jesus, a teacher from the backwater of Galilee who was crucified by the Romans, the Christ."

But back to our red thread. We might call this unifying thread, which consists of two interwoven strands, the story and the history of the man Jesus, the Christ. This thread, however, can only be properly recognized and grasped when viewed in light of its meaningful connections with the texts we today know as the Old Testament. This should already be clear from our brief aside above. To understand what Christ would have meant to those Jews who looked for the coming Messiah, one needs to know something about the history of Israel: Who was David? What does anointing have to do with him? Why is the temple so important? What is the big deal about Pharaoh and the Egyptians? Why would a renewal of creation be desired, and what might it look like? All of these figures and ideas are found in the Hebrew Scriptures, which we often today refer to as the Old Testament. The texts of the Old Testament are the sine qua non of New Testament theology. These texts are among the most important elements of the ancient Jewish cultural encyclopedia within which early Christianity arose. The New Testament authors refer to them and assume them at almost every point.

Info Box

The Jesus-as-the-Christ Story and History

The red thread just discussed, including its two strands, story and history, is our attempt to explain and expand upon a phrase coined by the German New Testament scholar Eckart Reinmuth. Reinmuth speaks of the New Testament’s Jesus-Christus-Geschichte (the Jesus-as-the-Christ story and history). His aim in coining the phrase is to highlight the fact that the emphasis in New Testament texts on the man from Nazareth in Galilee, Jesus, flows directly out of their authors’ prior conviction that this man is the one whom God had appointed to be the Christ, the Jewish Messiah, whom some around the time of Jesus hoped would come and restore the kingdom of Israel. Reinmuth’s idea of the Jesus-Christus-Geschichte seeks to highlight the fact that when the New Testament speaks about Jesus Christ, it inseparably interweaves historical, narratival, rhetorical, and theological categories. This Jesus-as-the-Christ narrative is not, in other words, merely a story. At its core stands the history of the life and execution of a real, Galilean, Jewish man. Jesus really lived in a particular place at a particular time and was really crucified outside Jerusalem. Yet the story of Jesus is also not reducible to empirically verifiable, historical facts. To say Jesus is the Christ is not merely history. The consistent conviction in the New Testament that the resurrection and ascension of the crucified Jesus were acts of God that declare Jesus to be the Christ frustrates any attempt to gain direct, unmediated historical access to those events. When God works within the world in ways that transcend what we take to be the givens of the natural order, givens that we must assume when we view events analogically and thus historically, historical reasoning cannot adequately assess or provide unbiased and full access to such acts. The idea of the Jesus-as-the-Christ story and history names a theological interpretation of the New Testament that cannot be reduced only to a story or only to historical study. Rather, this story and history is best engaged and studied by way of interdisciplinary conversations that recognize the interwovenness of the story, the claims of early followers of Jesus about him, and the history, the actual events that we can examine and study with historical methodologies.

A Word about the Study Questions and Recommended Readings

As with any book of this kind, students will learn the most from this text by thoroughly studying, thinking about, and discussing its contents. In all likelihood, this will be done within a community such as a university classroom, or a small book group or church study. In order to facilitate this reflection and these conversations, we have included suggested study questions at the end of major sections. We think that the best way to benefit from these questions is actually to write out and discuss responses to them. If you are using this book for a college or seminary course, your professor may require you to do these as assignments. But even if that is not the context in which you are reading this text, you may find it useful to jot down your thoughts about and answers to these questions, perhaps in a notebook or a journal. We have also provided brief lists of some recommended texts for further reading at the end of each major section in case you might want to delve more deeply into the topic that was presented.

Our hope is that you will enjoy reading and engaging with this book. We view it as a springboard, not itself the goal of the journey. Diligent attention to the book, the questions, and some additional reading will both introduce you to the complex and controversial field of New Testament studies and provide you with a good grounding to study further your own particular questions about Jesus and the New Testament texts that were written in engagement with and response to him and the mark he has made in the world.

The Info Box

You will already have noticed the Info Box above. Throughout this book we use Info Boxes to offer brief, basic summaries of more complex themes or ideas that, in our view, are important for understanding the field of New Testament studies. We have also identified key points and important notes in various places as ways of helping to orient you to basic ideas or topics under discussion. In order to navigate the waters of this field, you need to expand your cultural encyclopedia! The glossary included at the end of this volume provides concise definitions, explanations, and additional information on technical terms, foreign words, and otherwise important nomenclature from the field of New Testament studies. To aid you in your use of the glossary, we have set initial or otherwise significant instances of terms included there in bold type.

We want to stress, however, that the best way to make the most of this short book is to read it in conjunction with the Bible itself. Go to the source! Read the New Testament together with the tools and interpretations offered here. Try them out. Are they helpful? Do they open new windows into the text and/or your own understanding of the world we live in? There is no substitute for your own study of the biblical texts, which are the real object of New Testament studies. Obviously, we cannot here engage every question, thought, or interpretation that you might have as you read the Bible. This, however, is precisely why we believe it is so important for you to do your own exegetical and theological reflection as you work through this book. The tools, methods, questions, and backgrounds offered here aim to help you unlock the New Testament for yourself. We hope that each reader will discover how exciting and revealing it can be to read these texts in ways that open up new vistas on the ancient and modern worlds. Studying the Bible, as with other great works of art, often reveals to us things about ourselves and our world that we have perhaps guessed at, but could not by ourselves see or say clearly. So, always go to the texts!

1.2. Exegesis in Context: The Importance of the Bible for Literary, Historical, Religious, and Theological Disciplines

The Bible deserves to be read and studied today for a number of significant reasons, some of which we have already touched on above. The Bible is at times an exciting and compelling read. It is a very diverse book. Without question, the Bible is part of the great corpus of world literature. To say this in no way implies one’s agreement with the Bible’s many points of view on any number of issues. At one level, to note the Bible’s importance as literature is only to note the obvious fact that no single book has exercised as much influence on what is traditionally knows as Western culture as has the Bible. Various Greek and Roman stories, books, and works of history have also exercised enormous and significant influence. But the Bible, because of the role of Christianity in the history of large parts of the world over the last two thousand years, has had a special place of influence. Even today biblical themes and language continue to pervade our culture, providing material for novels, fantasy literature, science fiction, sitcoms, pop songs, comedy, advertisements, and so forth. Simply as a literary work, the Bible has exerted seminal and unparalleled influence on Western culture. It is a truism to say that, particularly from the standpoint of art and literary studies, the Bible forms a cultural cornerstone for Western civilization. We cannot approach the study of Western literature or art competently without a good knowledge of the contents of the Bible and the ways that it has been read and received. Umberto Eco rightly noted during an interview in the German newspaper Westdeutsche Allgemeine Zeitung (December 29, 2009) that three-quarters of Western art, to give a rough estimate, are incomprehensible if one does not know the Old and New Testaments and the story of salvation they recount. Whatever one might think of that Western past, it is part of the history that has in no small way shaped who, where, and what we are today. When we go to the cinema, or watch videos online, or read the news, or turn on our television, aspects of the Bible are bound to show up. In order to understand better these elements of our culture, we need to know something about the Bible.

In a similar way, we cannot rightly interpret biblical texts without having some understanding of how to read literature. To read the biblical texts as texts—that is, to read them with a view to understanding their literary and rhetorical structures, to grasping how they seek to communicate their messages, to inquiring into their aesthetic, rhetorical, and poetic dimensions—these matters are hardly addenda to the task of exegesis. On the contrary, these concerns are foundational to exegetical thinking itself. This is why the insights of the linguistic turn in biblical studies (which occurred around 1965) and the cultural turn somewhat later (around 1980) have greatly influenced how we do exegesis today. These turns have made essential contributions to literary studies in general and have convincingly shown that questions of textual linguistics, narratology, rhetoric, metaphor theory, intertextuality, reception history, and general poetics are essential for human understanding and interpretation.

Historical Context

From its origins in the eighteenth century, the historical-critical method sought to apply literary-historical methodologies to the Bible in order to uncover the stages through which the biblical texts as we know them today developed. Source criticism, form criticism, and redaction criticism—all basic historical-critical methodologies that we discuss in this book—attempt to interrogate and understand the origins of biblical literature by locating them within what is assumed to be their original, ancient literary contexts. Historical-critical exegesis is, at its core, an attempt to understand ancient texts in terms of these presumed literary and cultural contexts. Interpretive approaches that seek to isolate and interpret individual literary units in biblical texts (for example, miracle stories, parables, controversy stories), as well as to better understand the genres of biblical texts as whole works (for example, the Gospels, the book of Acts, the Epistles, Revelation) are all, at their best, trying to grasp how these constitutive elements of texts would have developed and been understood in the contexts of their original cultures.

From the start, and closely bound up with these more literary-historical interests, historical-critical research also directed attention to questions of political history. Such matters are of essential importance for understanding how the New Testament texts developed and were read. In fact, both ancient Judaism and early Christianity, the latter of which gradually grew in the Greco-Roman world until it became the established religion under Constantine, exercised great influence on the course of ancient history. One can hardly be a competent scholar of ancient history without having a solid grasp of basic facts about ancient Judaism and early Christianity. In a similar way, without knowledge of the political, social, economic, and day-to-day realities of life within which early Christianity developed, one can hardly be said to have the basic foundational knowledge necessary to engage in competent exegesis of the New Testament. Early Christian literature was not produced and disseminated in a cultural or historical vacuum. These texts were written and read by people who lived in the everyday world of real life. It was every bit as mundane and exciting as our daily lives. That these texts even became some of the most influential communal and political texts is partly a function of the fact that they were originally used in the commentary, criticism, and establishment of communal practices and laws of their own times and places.

Religious Context

Religion was a keystone in ancient culture, just as it continues to be for many cultures in our own day. In addition to the study of ancient literature, therefore, historical-critical exegesis must also investigate the religious environment in which early Christians lived. This area of exegetical interest led to the rise of the so-called history of religions school during the second third of the nineteenth century. As was the case in the particular aspects of the historical-critical approach discussed above, the chief concern of this kind of research with respect to the New Testament was to locate the biblical texts within the framework of their historical culture. While literary approaches primarily examine the pre- and non-Christian literary culture in which early Christian literature was produced and circulated, history of religions approaches seek to understand Christianity as one religion among the wide variety of other religions that were part of the culture within which it grew and eventually flourished. These approaches often study the different Christian groups that we know existed in the early centuries of the movement in terms of religious phenomena that occurred in the midst of other religions and religious movements in antiquity. Such study typically compares the concepts and beliefs attested in early Christian texts with those of other ancient religions in an attempt to clarify their meaning and significance in their original context.

Theological Context

Exegesis done in an explicitly theological context can ill afford to ignore these historical-critical perspectives on the biblical texts. Such exegesis must evaluate these perspectives with a view to their significance for theology, but simply to ignore them risks being unable to engage with wider discussions about these texts and potentially cutting oneself off from the history that is part of the story of Jesus. Moreover, because there is a story in the New Testament, not simply history, such approaches should be interrogated with a view to assessing their significance for theoretical reflection on the practice and belief of the church, academy, and larger culture. Theologically interested exegesis asks about what might be important from the manifold findings of historical-critical research. It seeks to discern how the story and history of the New Testament Scriptures, particularly in their relationship to the Old Testament Scriptures, can be brought into conversation with contemporary culture, given the presuppositions of academic discourse and given the plurality of perspectives that shape our world today.

Explicitly confessional theology therefore seeks to influence modern life. While the academic fields of literature, history, and religion do not necessarily need to concern themselves with whether their results directly affect contemporary culture, exegesis that is done in a theological context is keenly interested in impacting culture. Because such an approach to studying the New Testament is oriented toward present-day practices, the question of truth is of central importance. This means that theological interpretation of the New Testament must be open to being pursued in terms of contemporary knowledge, contemporary ways of communicating, and contemporary ways of knowing. This not only implies that one’s own confessional perspective will always be open to scrutiny; it also implies that one’s confessional stance can itself supply critical perspectives on contemporary cultural practices and knowledge.

Historical Perspectives

When reflecting on the original cultures in which the New Testament texts were written, we will constantly want to keep the contexts of Jewish, Hellenistic, and Roman cultures in view, not only at the levels of political, social, and economic historical realities, but also at those of ancient religion, literature, art, and media. We are always trying to imagine ourselves into those ancient cultural encyclopedias. Similarly, when examining the reception of the Bible in schools, churches, and the wider community, contemporary culture must be taken into account. The phenomenon of lived religion, whatever we might think about this reality, must be considered from the perspectives of theological and religious disciplines. Part of the task, in other words, is not only to imagine ourselves into ancient cultural encyclopedias, but also to imagine ourselves into the cultures of those who have lived and those who still live in a world that holds the New Testament texts to be true and authoritative. If we already hold such commitments, this will require less imagination, though our fresh encounters with these texts may well challenge our understanding of them. If we do not hold such commitments, this will require, perhaps, more imagination—an orientation to a world we may not have lived within before. The fruit of the exercise is not necessarily agreement but, hopefully, new and fresh understanding of ancient, and perhaps contemporary, ways of life and interpreting the world.

Historical study emphasizes the ways religious, political, legal, economic, social, and aesthetic factors contributed to the construction of plausibility structures (that is, coherent ways of viewing the world that render it sensible and reasonable in terms of those structures) that the New Testament Scriptures both assume and seek to establish. The New Testament texts must, therefore, be studied as literature within the context of ancient understandings of textuality and communication. This demands additional study in the traditional introductory questions of genre criticism, form criticism, and rhetorical criticism, as well as research into a production-oriented approach to intertextuality (that is, an approach that considers the ways in which ancient authors accessed the common knowledge, or cultural encyclopedia, of their time and place). It is also, however, necessary to engage in culturally oriented approaches to the New Testament, approaches that examine the material culture (e.g., buildings, art, coins, tombstones) of antiquity by studying archaeology and art history, as well as the diverse ways ancient cultures made use of various media (e.g., inscriptions, statues, signage). The goal is to reconstruct as plausible and complete a picture as possible of the daily life of the earliest Christians and their theological commitments and convictions, within the contexts of their cultural encyclopedias—no small task!

Info Box

The Earliest Christians, Early Christianity, the Early Church

Language is far from a neutral instrument. We are more aware of this fact today than perhaps at any other time. We do not simply describe things as they are when we speak about them. Language can, therefore, easily mask assumptions. It shapes our thinking and our understanding of reality. This is especially true with respect to the language we use to describe history. To speak about the Dark Ages, or even to use the less-loaded term the Middle Ages, can implicitly support contemporary cultural assumptions about a given time in the past and its relationship to what we assume is our more enlightened present. We will from time to time offer brief explanations of our language in the hopes of making some of our key assumptions plain. Our choices are not the only ones that could be made, but we believe they are at least reasonable ones to make.

In this book we use the term earliest Christians to refer to those individuals and communities explicitly or implicitly inscribed in New Testament texts, who follow and worship the resurrected Jesus as God’s Christ. As we learn from those texts, the earliest followers of Jesus Christ were by no means a homogenous collective. The earliest Christians included very diverse individuals and communities who, like Peter and Paul (see Gal 2), had lots of conflicts with each other. We employ the language of early Christianity as an umbrella term with reference to the first three generations of Jesus’s followers. Both of these terms are anachronistic in the sense that (1) Jesus and his very first followers were Jews, and (2) there was no distinct religion known as Christianity at that time, although the term Christian had been coined by the end of the first century CE. Additionally, it is important to stress that this language should not be taken to imply that everyone in those first few generations shared the same basic beliefs, even those that one might today identify with Christianity. This is manifestly not the case, and we do not intend such homogeneity when we use the term early Christianity here. Nevertheless, shorthand terms are useful, and in spite of their potential problems, these terms offer language that is broad enough to encompass the variety of individuals and groups who celebrated, worshipped, and spoke about Jesus throughout the Roman Empire in the first century, while also highlighting the fact that these early followers of Jesus gave rise to Christianity in all its diverse forms today.

Along similar lines, we also speak at points of the early church. We use this term to refer to the period of time after what we have designated early Christianity. This is the time in which a transregional organization of Christian groups was being established. Core beliefs of the early church were to a large degree solidified with the great ecumenical councils in the fourth and fifth centuries (Nicaea in 325, Constantinople in 381, and Chalcedon in 451). As with the terms above, we do not intend to imply that this was a period of organizational unanimity and wholly shared ideas. In fact, this was a time of significant disagreement and argument. The councils themselves sought to address issues of great disagreement among Christian churches of this time. Again, however, this language has the advantage of underscoring the fact that many of the basic beliefs and organizational structures of Christianity have their origins in these first four centuries.

With these terms in place we can meaningfully observe that the texts of the New Testament come from early Christianity. The contours of the Christian Bible—that is, the decisions about which books would become part of the New Testament and thus canonical for Christianity—were set by the early church.

Reception-Oriented Perspective

The study of the New Testament must not, however, be limited to a production-oriented perspective. One should also inquire into questions concerning the conditions of the reception of biblical texts within cultural presuppositions both between those early centuries and us, and of our own time and place. The issue of the relevance of the biblical Scriptures for religious education as this occurs in various contemporary cultures and in the common practices of Christian churches today remains an essential aspect of this task. This may be more obviously relevant for countries and/or schools whose curricula include some aspect of religious education. But the recent rise in religious terrorism and at times the equally hostile religious responses to those who hold different beliefs only highlight the extent to which this perspective must move beyond simple description. Critical engagement with authoritative Scriptures, the communities that study them, and the place of those texts and theologies in the wider cultural discourse of our world must be as much a part of this endeavor as is the attempt to understand the scope and significance of the contemporary relevance of these texts.

We can pose a few useful questions to help us explore this dimension of interpretation: How are our contemporary structures of plausibility construed? And what happens when our understanding of what is possible, what is real, and, indeed, what is true, collides with the biblical texts? At just this point we can see clearly the necessity of engaging in interdisciplinary dialogue with the broader fields of religious studies and social sciences, as well as epistemology, hermeneutics, media studies, and reflections on how readers respond to texts.

A reception-oriented perspective on New Testament studies therefore requires one to broaden the scope of the material and concerns under consideration. It will not do to limit the field of New Testament studies only to the particular canonical texts themselves. We must also engage with the critical study of literature, visual arts, music, video clips, films, memes, and, for that matter, whatever newer forms of media may come along. Naturally, the political impact of religion on contemporary societies will form an essential aspect of this perspective. We live in a time when this is as clear and significant as it has ever been, whatever our own particular views of religion in general or of particular religions might be.

The unifying goal of New Testament studies as a theological discipline concerned with the production and reception of early Christian forms of communication includes maintaining and advancing correct and theologically sound readings of the biblical texts. This in no way assumes agreement with these texts or interpretations, though it also does not exclude such agreement. In this way the discipline aims to contribute an indispensable voice within the plurality of contemporary conceptions of truth and marks of cultural identification, not least because Christianity continues to be one of the most significant influences in the world today.

1.3. Exegesis, Hermeneutics, and the Difference between the Interpreter and the Text: What Academic Study Can Explore (and What It Cannot)

Exegesis

Exegesis, the use of sound methods of interpreting the texts of the New Testament, is a central concern of New Testament studies. As such, it is a highly complex discipline that has a foot in the fields of both theology and cultural studies. The discipline examines the host of intra-, inter-, and extratextual relations that constitute the texts of the New Testament in terms of religious communication. A biblical hermeneutic that is oriented by an interest in the way communication actually occurs must, in other words, have a double focal point. On the one hand, it is concerned with the cultural conditions for the production and distribution of the New Testament’s texts. On the other hand, it takes seriously the conditions for the reception of these texts in a given culture that reads and engages with them. This last point concerns past (including ancient) reception as well as our own reception of these texts today.

Hermeneutics

The task of hermeneutics is to reflect on the conditions and aims of human understanding. A theory of communication draws attention to the insight that all processes of understanding are sign processes. Semiotics, the study of signs, explains the formal and therefore necessary conditions for any and every use of a sign and so for all effective communication. A historical-critical approach to the hermeneutical task continually drives home the point that every process of understanding occurs in a given time and place, a specific cultural encyclopedia. It is important, therefore, for us as interpreters to have a degree of self-understanding regarding our own perspectives—that is, our own commitments, values, and assumptions. We need to take stock of our own cultural encyclopedia as we engage with another. We can never know in advance exactly how these perspectives will influence our interpretation, but academic exegesis should always bear in mind our own historical conditions. This can help us listen a little better to the voices of texts that come to us from different cultures, precisely because we are primed to recognize how easily we might mistakenly assume what a text means in terms of our own categories rather than in terms of those in which the text was written. Every act of interpretation participates in the process of communication. But we are not always good at hearing what another has to say, particularly if we assume in advance that the other is speaking from our own structures of plausibility and cultural assumptions. All of this implies an important conclusion: namely, that every interpretation is limited and requires a degree of humility on the part of the interpreter. The task of interpreting the Bible is, in other words, always timely and can never be assumed to be finished.

Distinguishing between Text and Interpretation

It follows from the preceding points that as interpreters, we must always be careful to distinguish between our interpretations and the text being interpreted. When we collapse the one into the other, we no longer allow any space for the text to speak. We enter a kind of echo chamber in which we already know in advance exactly what we will hear when we listen to the text—our own voices and words come right back to us. To maintain a distinction between the text and our interpretations of it is to recognize that the text is not under our control. We did not create it, and it may speak to us in ways we did not expect and, perhaps, have no desire to hear, accept, or affirm.

One of the valid insights of historical-critical exegesis is the fact of different presuppositions about reality in different times and different cultures. Those who lived before us or who even now live in different places (even on the same streets where we live) do not always hold the same assumptions and values as we do. To put a fine point on this: especially after the Holocaust we see a bit more clearly the ethical imperative to recognize and respect the other as other. For biblical interpretation, this means approaching the biblical texts as genuine acts of communication that contain the voice of another, a voice that does not simply parrot back to us our own views and perspectives on the world. To speak theologically, a concept of divine revelation entails that God speaks in Scripture—the voice that speaks is not only other, but because it is other, it must be heard and heeded. Even if one does not approach these texts as revelation, it is a basic act of respect to recognize that the voices of the texts can be distinguished from our own. In this way we allow the texts some space to be what they are without too quickly assuming we know in advance what they aim to say.

The biblical texts come to us from foreign times and foreign cultures. When we respect this historical distance, whatever our views about religion, a remarkable opportunity presents itself. We can see and experience within these texts different—even completely new—perspectives on the God they speak about, the world, and ourselves. This opportunity is not unique to reading the New Testament. This is part of what it means to read any text. We allow an opening for the voices of others to say more to us than what we already thought or knew they could. This distance between text and interpretation, in other words, enables the biblical texts to push back against us as interpreters. The more they can exert their own, foreign influence, the more they can help us learn to see the world and even ourselves with fresh eyes. Through a communicative and, of necessity, a historical-, theological-, and ethical-critical attitude that works in both directions—toward the text and toward ourselves as interpreters—New Testament studies engages us in one of its most complicated and also most appropriate tasks: the at times irritating duty of putting our own understanding of a matter into question by opening up to us afresh the foreign worlds of the biblical texts.

The Boundaries of Thought

It hardly needs to be said that when we are honest with ourselves, we recognize that we do not have full control over the potential of our mental and intellectual capacities. We cannot make unerring judgments, nor can we fully perceive and comprehend situations or the world. We certainly do not have control over the claims and arguments put forward by others, nor can we reduce the world merely to our descriptions and formulations (and if we could, would we want to live in that world?). These limitations are essential elements of the human condition. Fundamentalists of all kinds often make two major mistakes with respect to these elements.

On the one hand, they tend to overestimate the ability of human faculties of knowing (especially their own) to perceive truth fully and accurately. The way they interpret the world collapses into the world: there can be no other way to understand the world. This intellectual hubris