Intro to New Testament

Week 2:
Hellenistic and Jewish Contexts
 Today:
*Activity: Exam Questions for Chapters 1 and 2
* Mini Review of the Basics
* Lecture: Hellenistic and Jewish Contexts (this lecture goes with
chapters 3 and 4 of your Ehrman textbook)
.
 Activity:
Table-time – Share, Redact, and Collect
your exam questions on chs 1 and 2
Review: There Would be no New
Testament without Jesus:
Who was he?
 EARLY IMAGES OF JESUS
• wandering philosopher, special teacher, dangerous criminal, charlatan, spiritual (not physical) presence,
son of God, savior, “Lord,” rabbi, sage, healer, magician ….and more!
• Even his close followers didn’t easily agree on who Jesus exactly was, for whom he was important, or
what his life and death meant. Christianity settled on Jesus as “messiah for all” but …
• unique messiah for all, typical messiah for Jews against Rome, eschatological messiah of Jews but with
benefits for all? (See textbook pages 1-10 for varieties of early Jesus followers.)

Jesus doing
“Alexamenos miracles with
worships his a magic wand
God” (c. 200)
 WHO WAS JESUS?

Sara’s definition: Jesus of Nazareth was a rural, peasant Jew in the first
century who had been a follower of a Jewish renewal prophet, “John the
Baptiser.” He became a leader in his own right after John was capriciously
executed. He led one of the many Jewish eschatological reform
movements of the day, gathered disciples, moved around teaching
countercultural lessons, telling witty stories, and performing healings. He
was particularly interested in critique of the current temple
administration and of inaugurating a “basileia of God.” He was eventually
found at the centre of dispute and controversy and ended up executed
by the Romans for sedition. Unlike other reformers, his movement
continued after his death and developed until he came to be considered
by many, most influentially Paul, to be a messiah chosen by the God of
Israel for not just Jews, but also non-Jews. The claims he made about
himself and the claims others made about him combined to create a
movement so attractive that it eventually broke away from Judaism and
became a separate world religion, whether or not the man Jesus of
Nazareth had envisioned it that way.
 WHO WAS JESUS?

• Jesus of Nazareth (how historians refer to him) – “Christ” isn’t a surname but a title
• rural, peasant Jew (think about how class affects message, interests, worldview, interpretation of scripture)
• in the first century (context: early Roman Empire, Augustan Reforms, 2nd-temple Hellenistic Judaism)
• follower of a Jewish renewal prophet, “John the Baptiser” (mentor)
• became a leader in his own right after John was capriciously executed under Herod (trauma)
• movement = eschatological reform movement (apocalyptic Judaism)
• actions: gathered disciples, itinerant, taught countercultural lessons, largely through witticism and story,
performed healings and exorcisms (the “science” of the day – daemons, amulets, spells, incantations, oracles,
people closer to gods)
• critiqued the contemporaneous temple administration (cared about proper Jewish ritual practice and was a
bit “conservative” about it)
• spoke of inaugurating a “basileia of God” (translated “kingdom” in English – more like rule or Empire)
• He was eventually found at the centre of dispute and controversy among different branches of Jews, and
ended up executed by the Romans for sedition (entered Jerusalem during pilgrimage – on purpose?)
 WHO WAS JESUS?

• Unlike other executed reformers and leaders, his movement continued after his death
• Followers stayed together and even attracted new followers
• Movement developed over the decades from virtually 100% Jewish membership to majority non-Jewish
membership (also: moved from rural to urban and uneducated to educated, + other shifts)
• The main influence for this may be Paul, who wrote many of the books in the New Testament and who was
on a mission to convince non-Jews to join
• While beliefs about Jesus were not set in stone until hundreds of years later, the general cluster of political
and theological ideas that were circulating about him were: he was a messiah (or the messiah – note the
difference), he had been anointed/chosen by the God of Israel to rescue Jews from oppression, some felt
(the winning group felt) he had also been chosen by the God of Israel to rescue everyone (universal).
• His successful teachings and acts while alive, coupled with the claims he made about himself, the claims
others said he made, and the claims others made about him, added to multiple resurrection accounts from
various sources and an ongoing experience of Jesus still being with them, coupled with Paul’s (and others’)
extremely energetic mission to spread the movement, all combined to make a movement so attractive that
it eventually broke away from Judaism and mushroomed, becoming a separate, major world religion,
probably quite different from the way the man Jesus of Nazareth had envisioned it.
 WHY (ELSE) IS THERE A NEW TESTAMENT?

• The reason the NT developed was that ancient Jews never ever STOPPED writing
scriptures. Early Jesus-believing Jews did the same. The Hellenistic period was a
time of literary flourishing and a time of lively inner-Jewish diversity and debate,
along with interactions with other groups (“cosmopolitanism,” pluralism)
• Those Jews who followed Jesus naturally added their own group’s authoritative
writings, as everyone was doing.
• NOTE: the idea of a “Bible” had not yet been invented (except Torah). Different
groups had different collections of separate scrolls, generally called “the scriptures”
(which just means “things written down”), but not with closed boundaries or a
certain order.
• There were many other early Christian writings – far more than got enclosed in the
NT. The NT represents a paring down of books in a process known as canonization.
A process that seeks unity, clarity, orthodoxy, unanimity, simplicity, order, and also
exclusion of disliked groups.
• At the very first (during Jesus’ life and right after) there were no writings, because
they held a belief that either Jesus would return very soon to save them, or the Day
of the Lord was coming soon and everything on earth would change (apocalypse),
but eventually when followers started to pass away naturally, they realized they may
have to preserve the teachings of the movement for posterity as the timeline wasn’t
the one they’d expected.
 SCRIPTURES FIRST
‘C ANON’ MUCH LATER
(SEE TEXTBOOK P. 13 -14)
 WHAT IS INSIDE THE
NT?

• 27 books
• not in the order in which they
were written (arrangement itself
is a “reading”)
• commonality: Jesus
• 4 genres
• gospels
• acts
• epistles (different kinds)
• and one apocalypse
 IN WHICH ORDER WERE THEY WRITTEN?

• 1 Thessalonians • Matthew • Acts

• Galatians • Hebrews • 2 Thessalonians
• 1 Corinthians • John • 1 Peter
• Philemon • Ephesians • 1 Timothy
• Philippians • Revelation • 2 Timothy
• 2 Corinthians • Jude • Titus
• Romans • 1 John • 2 Peter
• Mark • 2 John
• James • 3 John
• Colossians • Luke
 A NOTE ON AUTHORSHIP IN
THE NT

 Many NT documents are anonymous.

Paul?
 Anonymous manuscripts have no author mentioned. A name was added later (based on
guesses/tradition): earliest manuscript evidence for named Gospels is c. 200 C.E.
 Of the non-anonymous books, some were written by their stated author and some were
“pseudepigraphical.” Pseudepigraphy was the common ancient practice of writing a text in
the voice of an admired person or carrying on the tradition of the person.
 Example: the Gospel of Mark never says at the outset of its actual manuscript: “the gospel
of Mark.” It starts “The beginning of the good news of Jesus Christ” and that was probably
what the author named the book. But at some point before the 3rd century, it was believed
that Mark, an associate of Peter, wrote it OR the community felt that it was a gospel that
best embodied the tradition that had come down through a “Markan community”
Lecture: The NT Within Hellenism and
Judaism
HISTORICAL METHOD = CONTEXTUAL

“You can’t understand

something if you take it out of
its context. And so we begin
our study by situating the New
Testament in its own world,
rather than assuming that it fits
neatly into ours.”

~Ehrman, NT, p. 41
 HISTORICAL METHOD = CHRONOLOGICAL
AND CONTEXTUAL
“You can’t understand something if you take it out of its context. And so we begin our study by situating the New
Testament in its own world, rather than assuming that it fits neatly into ours.”
There are two contexts without which the New Testament cannot have historical
meaning. It can have other kinds of meaning, but not historical. They are discussed in
chapters 3 and 4 of your textbook. Reading the NT through these two lenses is
the only way you will get a historical interpretation. One of the lenses alone won’t
do. They are:
1) Hellenism
2) Judaism
The original creators and hearers of the NT texts were embedded in the
worldview(s) of the Ancient Mediterranean world (such as early Roman and post-
Hellenistic) and within that wider circle were participants in a narrower circle of
identity: Judaism (specifically pre-rabbinic, second-temple, Hellenistic, Judaism).
HISTORICAL METHOD = CONTEXTUAL
ROMAN BACKGROUND

See Erhman NT, p. 53

HISTORICAL METHOD = CONTEXTUAL
ROMAN BACKGROUND

Ehrman, NT p. 58
HISTORICAL METHOD: CONTEXTUAL
JEWISH BACKGROUND

 Jesus = Yeshua = Joshua: Hebrew = ַ‫ יְהֹושֻׁ ע‬Yehoshu'a, from ‫יְהֹו‬

(Ancient Israelite God) and verb ‫( י ַָשע‬to save) = Yah saves.
 Most of it was written by Jewish followers of Jesus
 Throughout, the NT is an example of intertextuality – harking back to
or reinterpreting previous Hebrew writings (inside or outside the
current Hebrew Bible) that were considered scriptural by various Jews
in the first century (see Erhman NT p. 62)
 The NT is a magnificent example for historians of Judaism because
we have enough different documents that we can see hints of the
kinds of inner-Jewish debates that were ongoing and the topics that
were important to them, such as resurrection, justice under
oppressive foreign powers, relationship to empire, relationship to non-
Jews, tensions over the temple leadership, how to follow Torah in a
pluralistic context, whether to conform to Roman moral codes or to be
set apart
 AN OVERALL STATEMENT:

The NT is part of the Bible for Christians, but the separate books were written
by people who were practicing within Judaism at the time, at a time when
reinterpreting Torah for their modern day was a popular Jewish practice. The
books were diverse theological readings of previous Jewish scriptures, but
the act of closing them into one “book” has worked to smooth the NT into one
theological reading that is ultimately no longer Jewish. The books of the NT
show first-century Jewish concerns, with the particular ethical and religious
dilemmas of living in a hellenized (pluralistic, cosmopolitan) world, in a
politically charged climate of occupation-with-benefits. The NT attests to a
strong belief in a divine revelation of Jesus as a Jewish Messiah (“anointed”),
a word with a complicated history then and now. At the very least, Jesus was
a remarkable person who somehow made a mark on enough people to
sustain a movement after execution. But according to the claims of
Christianity, he was also chosen by God at the same time as being God
incarnate, and his death and resurrection have eternal ramifications on the
relationship between human beings and their creator.
 Readings so far:

1. What is the New Testament?

2. Do we have the original New
Testament?
3. The Greco-Roman world of Early
Christian Traditions
4. The Jewish World of Jesus and his
Followers
 For next Tuesday:

Have read chapters 1 through 4 of the

textbook.

Tuesday: Bring (on paper to hand in)

two or more exam questions: one for
chapter 3 and one for chapter 4. Any
format is okay! Something you would
ask if you were the teacher. Include
the answer and the page(s).