Matthew's own religious interpretation of the story of Jesus points in the direction of one. It may seem strange to begin an introduction to the New Testament with a discussion of the principles to be followed.
A Historical Introduction to the New Testament by Robert M. Grant
Part One: Prolegomena
What the New Testament consists of -- The Cannon
When dealing with the New Testament canon, we must start with some rather negative statements. Another was orthodoxy, not in a rigid sense, but in the sense that most of it was apocryphal.
Materials and Methods of Textual Criticism
Here we note that the earliest witnesses to the 'only begotten God' were the Gnostics of the second century. They are not part of the original text and belong to the history of the Church and not to the New Testament.
The Nature of Translation
We need to say something about what we do know about New Testament Greek. Although none of the books of the New Testament were written in Aramaic, the authors of some of them thought, at least sometimes, in Aramaic.
Literary Criticism
Some of the points may be arranged differently, but it is clear that a carefully planned arrangement does exist. Such acknowledgments often suggest themes that are later incorporated into the body of the letter itself.
Historical Criticism
Therefore, the Gospels are important witnesses of the life of the Church at the time in which they were created, as well as of the life of Jesus, which the Evangelists try to describe. It is obvious that by talking about development and changes we have approached the question of the environment or environments of the New Testament writers. On the other hand, we can come to useful negative conclusions from the study of the environment.
We have almost shown that a historical understanding of the New Testament is impossible. In addition to the question of Hellenization, there are of course other features of the life of the Church that deserve attention. First, there is the nature of the preaching of Jesus, as remembered by the Church.
Sixth, what is the difference, if any, between New Testament writings and those of the Apostolic Fathers and the Apologists.
The Necessity of Theological Understanding
Historical criticism by itself can never provide a guide to the theological understanding of the New Testament. In other words, the New Testament writings cannot be understood separately from the life of the apostolic and post-apostolic church. What we have tried to indicate is that the object of study in the New Testament is the understanding of the New Testament.
Regarding the New Testament, then, the first question to be raised is this: 'What is the New Testament?' To answer this question requires us to investigate the history of the New Testament canon (Chapter 1). But there is also the second context, which, for the New Testament writers themselves, was the more important of the two. This is the context provided by the life and thought of the early Christian church.
Without the "hypothesis" of the Church, the New Testament documents are like isolated pearls without a string.
Part Two: New Testament Literature
The Gospels
It is an accurate account of the Lord's words and deeds, although not 'in order' or complete. Modern study of the prologue places it in the fourth century, or even later. (See E. Van Papias, then we get information, possibly correct, about the origin of Mark's gospel and of some of the material in Matthew.
What notable historical events may have prompted the writing of the oral tradition? Of these two, the death of some of the apostles was probably the most important. Essentially, the main evidence of the correctness, or at least the literary adequacy, of Mark's sketch lies in the fact that it recommended itself, with minor changes, to Matthew and Luke.
It generally represents part of the reservoir of oral tradition from which both Matthew and Luke draw some of their material, though some of it may have been available to them in written form.
The Gospel Of Mark
We should only add here that the phrase "the beginning of the gospel" is well compared by A. This comparison suggests that Mark 1:1 is the title of a book which is a simple treatment of the gospel for converts. But despite the fact that the disciples had received the secret teaching, they did not understand Jesus' purpose.
Given Mark's explicit mention of the hidden meaning of the two feedings (8:17-21), we can hardly doubt that it is his arrangement. Two cycles of stories lead to Peter's recognition of Jesus as the Christ and to the story of. He finds the key to the gospel in the call of the apostles (although this is not in 7:1).
Therefore, we are probably justified in placing the gospel in the seventh decade of the first century.
The Gospel of Matthew
In the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus states that he has come to "fulfill" the law of Moses, of which not the smallest fragment will pass away until the end of time (5:17-18). Anyone who breaks one of the least commandments will be called least in the kingdom of heaven (5:19; Matthew replaces "God" with "heaven"); what is sacred should not be given to dogs, i.e. he may have included them simply to illustrate the universal scope of the gospel, on which he lays great emphasis at the end of his book.
There he instructed them to make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit and teaching them to obey his commandments; He is strongly interested in the end of the age, when the angels will finally separate the bad from the good, and the nature of the end is illustrated by the parables of the wise and foolish virgin (25:1-12) and of the sheep and goats at the last judgment (25:31-46). Therefore, Matthew's special material and his religious interpretation of the story of Jesus point in the direction of an.
This finding, however, does not mean that the materials and accents were necessarily chosen because.
The Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts
Moreover, it must be said that he was almost certainly unaware of the modern distinction between "faith" and "history." This means that he believed that the events, if represented correctly and in order, at least pointed in the direction of the Christian gospel. Such theories possess all the allure of the absolute -- in this case, the absolutely hypothetical.
Two views, with various modifications, have been held regarding the relationship between the two types of text. Why did Conrad usually use the third person in The Daffodil's Negro, but occasionally speak of "we." The main difficulty in the first part of Acts has to do with the conversion of Cornelius, described as chieftain of the Italian cohort (10.1).
At the time it was written, two questions were especially important: (1) the time of the coming of the end, and (2) the relationship of the Gentile mission to the Jewish law.
The Gospel of John
Particularly characteristic of the vocabulary of the Gospel are words that have significance for the revelation of Jesus. However, the most common way to indicate the meaning of Jesus is in the use of the nominative personal pronoun 'I' (120 times). Colwell (The Greek of the Fourth Gospel), who showed that the passages were not very obscure and that the Greek was characteristic of Koiné.
Confessions (fourth century) we read of disciples of the Baptist who regarded him as the Christ. The synoptists place the cleansing of the temple just before the passion narrative; John makes this early and insists that the true temple is the body of Jesus (2:13-22). It is quite clear that the opening verses of the Gospel are somewhat different in atmosphere from the rest of the book.
According to a tradition certainly existing in the middle of the second century, its author was John, the disciple of Jesus—perhaps the son of Zebedee.
Aprocryphal Gospels
In many of Thomas' statements we also find reflections of the Semitic parallelism that is found not only in the Synoptics, but also in the Old. Many of the sayings in the Gospel of Thomas are very similar to those found in the four gospels, especially the synoptics. Some of the sayings he tells are attributed by the Church Fathers to oral tradition; others are found in Gnostic sources that quote the Fathers.
In the synoptic gospels this parable ends with a mention of the foundation stone that the builders rejected (Mark 12:10 and parallels). This notion, perhaps developed from Paul's words in Galatians 3:28 ("in Christ there is . . . neither male nor female"), is also found in the apocryphal tradition reflected in II Clement 12:2 and in the Gospel of the Egyptians. Another view of finding the Kingdom is presented in terms apparently derived from the Gospel of Hebrews.
The main problems raised by the existence and character of the Apocryphal Gospels – especially Thomas – concern the historical and theological value of traditions not preserved in the canonical Gospels.
The Pauline Epistles
Perhaps because of the existence of forged letters, Paul signs the letter with his own hand. The "regulatory" nature of much of the letter is evident from what Paul specifically prescribes: This term is applied to 'persons employed in the domestic and administrative establishment of Caesar' (Beare).
We also know that Aristarchus and the author of the 'we passage' (which we take to be Luke) went with Paul to Italy (27:2). The difference between Paul's teachings and those of the Stoics lies in the motivation involved. The unity of the Church is the result of 'growth into the head', by ethical.
The most important difference between Colossians and Ephesians is in the teaching of the Church.
The Non-Pauline Epistles
The possible place of the Pastoral Epistles in the Beatty codex of the third-century Pauline letters raises some fascinating problems for ancient books. The words "new" generally reflect a level of literary culture higher than that found in either Paul's other letters or the rest of the New Testament. The historical situation implied by the letters cannot be reconciled with anything in Paul's other letters or in Acts, although there are some parallels.
As to the religious outlook of the author of the Pastorals, it is somewhat different from that of Paul, as expressed in the other epistles. Epistles must remember (1) the difficulty of proving inauthenticity by means of statistics, (2) the genuine gaps in the knowledge we possess of early. Pastoral letters are in no way the same as those expressed in any of the earlier letters, or in the earlier letters as a group.
The close affinities of the author's thought with Philo's point in the same direction.
