The New Testament : History, Literature, And Theology By M. Eugene Boring

The authors set the groundwork in the first two chapters for the reader to have comprehension and understanding for the rest of the book. Therefore, the basis of the book is helping the reader to interpret and study the Bible. Fee and Stuart thoroughly discuss the process of interpretation. They stress the importance of correctly understanding what the reader is saying. Fee and Stuart stress that correct interpretation “brings relief to the mind as well as a prick or prod to the heart”

When we think of the prophetic books of The Bible, James is not one that tops the list.

Those readers who have attended Bible college or seminary will likely have used a New Testament or Old Testament introduction. Such books provide a survey of each book of the Bible, considering questions of date, authorship, occasion for writing, an outline and overview of the contents, and so forth. Such works, which are frequently academic in nature, typically give significant space to technical matters related to critical theories regarding date and authorship.

In Chapter 2 of Encountering the New Testament the author talks about a few of the different practices that unified the Jews as well the different religious groups that had different beliefs. Judaism was unified in the beliefs that they had been chosen by God, they were waiting for the messiah to come, they respect the synagogues, they shared the same laws and traditions of elder. Although these beliefs were unifying there were seperate religious groups and leaders that held different beliefs. Probably the most well known group of religious leaders were the Pharisees. The Pharisees were a small group of religious leaders that believed in God, and the coming messiah. Although many of the Pharisees did live good lives many of them were

Throughout time biblical scriptures have been interpreted differently by different religions, scholar’s, and languages. Many theologians have provided different interpretations based off their mentors and time they lived. Using works from the Sacra Pagina Series, Norton Bible scriptures, and excerpts from Matthew, Mark, Luke, and teaching of John Calvin this essay will show the vast differences of interpretations in just one biblical scripture let alone throughout the entire bible and its many interpretations.

The Bible is divided into two sections, the Old Testament and the New Testament. This paper mainly focuses on the Old Testament. The Old Testament has 39 books in total which is also subdivided into four categories namely; Pentateuch books (5 books), the historical books (12 books), the poetic books (5 books) and the prophetic books (17 books). The Old Testament books were written back in 1400 B.C. The Pentateuch books were written by Moses during his time in Canaan, while the other 34 books were also written by different authors at different stated time. The aim of this paper is therefore, to analyze the authorship, dating, content, outline, themes, and unique features of one book of the Old Testament, and the book chosen is the book of Leviticus.

Author John N. Oswalt begins The Bible Among the Myths: Unique Revelation or Just Ancient Literature? with a concise and well-written introduction that whets the reader’s appetite, compelling one to continue reading. He begins by informing the reader that his novel has been in the works dating all of the way back to the 1960s, when he attended the Asbury Theological Seminary. Oswalt quickly points out that one of the main points that the book will focus on is determining if “the religion of the Old Testament [is] essentially similar to, or essentially different from, the religions of its neighbors.”1 Oswalt is swift to acknowledge a major difference between the Old Testament and the religions of the Israelites Near

The history of how the Bible came into existence has been explored for centuries and is an active area of study today. There are many facets to the Bible and each has its own set of unique characteristics and teachings. The Old Testament is considered a contemporary guide for daily living, even though it was composed hundreds of years ago. Where did the Old Testament come from? What are some of the influences that shaped the Old Testament? What are the significant events of the Old Testament? In order to gain a better understanding of the Old Testament and its message to Christians, special consideration is given to its historical and cultural context, and to the major milestones in its development. Personal application of the teachings offered in this section of the Bible should be the aspiration of all Christians today.

He argues that the New Testament studies are “dislocated from the social and intellectual history of its times.”(118)The tendency of these models to be anachronistic is what Judge opposes. These methods impose a contemporary model of social science onto a first century context. Judges reduces these methods to what he calls the “sociological fallacy” which is “an importation of ideas and social models without serious regard to the social facts if life characteristics of the world to which the New Testament belongs.”(128)

Before the gospels and Pauline epistles, early church Christians related to the Old Testament as Scripture and viewed their Christian walk as the fulfillment of the promises made to Israel from the Old Testament, which foretold of the coming age of the Messiah. The first New Testament Christians understood the importance of the Old Testament; it was their “Bible” they preached from. Just as in the early church, Christians today need the Old Testament for preaching and in which to reference and understand Christ’s purpose for why he came.

When born-again Christians consider how the Bible is the truthful Word of God, accepting it is fairly easy on the surface level. However, when they must give an account for their belief, words do not come so easily. This explanation of the nature of the New Testament will proceed from the presupposition that God does exist. Other works have taken the time to defend this, but for the sake of this work’s focus, if God exists and is who He is described as in the Old Testament, He is the ultimate authority. Thus, through the discussion of two topics, Divine inspiration and inerrancy, the defense of the New Testament’s authority can begin. By seeing that the New Testament is the Word of God and without error, its readers can understand that what it communicates is truth and thus authoritative.

This paper will discuss the book of Hebrews with an in-depth look at the authorship and Hebrews 11. The book of Hebrews has fallen into a category of its own. The book quotes extensively from the Old Testament. It proclaims that Jesus Christ is superior and Christianity over other religions, including Judaism. The author demonstrates ways for following Jesus. It speaks to anyone who is wondering why they should follow Jesus. For some twelve hundred years from 400AD to 1600AD the book was commonly called the Epistle of Paul to the Hebrews. When we take a look at the letters of Paul. They form some of the most famous yet recognized letters of the New Testament. However, there are another group of eight letters. Hebrews being one of those letters. It is thought that these letters are not truly letters. But a set of tracts or even written versions of sermons aimed at the early Christian communities (Davis, 1998). According to Davis, Hebrews was probably aimed at Jewish converts to Christianity. Because few non-Jewish Christians of the early period would not have understood references to Noah, Abraham, Lot and other familiar Israelites.

It would be erroneous to assume that just one background fits the mold of Scripture, for a book with 3500 years of history, spanning many cultures and traditions, the Bible stands as a permanent record of God’s interaction with His creation. Taking no relevance of interpretation away from the Greek and Roman backgrounds, the Jewish or Hebrew background was most crucial to the understanding of doctrines such as law, faith, salvation, perseverance, and most importantly, love (E. Tolbert, personal communication, August 22, 2014). The Jewish background also gives way to understanding the work of the Great Advocate in both the Old and New Testament Times. In consideration of all these insights, the Jewish background garners most relevance as it draws clear connection between the Old and New Covenants (Hill, 2014, post 12). For without understanding of the old, there can be no understanding of the new (Sneed, 2014, post 9).

The book assigned for my evaluation is John Goldingay’s Old Testament Theology: Israel’s Gospel. There are several kinds of concerns that John Golidngay addresses, in relation to the Old Testament, in the introduction of this book. The first statement that stood out to me was, “The expression ‘Old Testament theology’ suffers from a number of disadvantages and ambiguities, but I have retained it in the title for this book because of its value connotations with regard to my subject (though for some people these are negative value connotations).” (15) In this statement the author speaks about the term Old Testament, which often bringing forth various preconceived notions that individuals bring as they read it. Similar to the issue we discovered in Old Testament Theology class, we all came in to the class with our ideas of what represented the Old Testament. Bringing preconceived notions of reading often limits the reader, if the reader is not open to learning additional information about the text. The author states, “I do not care for the phrase ‘Old Testament,’ which we inherit from some time in the patristic period, because it rather suggests something antiquated and inferior left behind by a dead person.” (15) What the author states shows that he wants the readers to be open minded and expand their thinking of the Old Testament to more than a time period or something that is no longer relevant. The author also

To speak of the Hebrew Scripture is to speak of story, a story stretching from the very beginning of time to only a few centuries before the beginning of the Common Era. It is to speak of richness of content, of purpose and of reality and to engross oneself in an overarching narrative that, depending on your personal convictions, continues to the present day. Within this richness is found a wide variety of different events and experience, told through a series of genre ranging from foundational myth to apocalypse, law giving to poetry, genealogy to wisdom and many more. Within this diversity however, three broad sections can be discerned that speak to a shared purpose and content, these are the sections of Law, Prophecy and Writings. It