Earlier this year, publicist Emily P. Varner of AcademicPS kindly sent me an unexpected package from Zondervan containing one of their newest textbooks: The New Testament in Antiquity, edited by Wheaton College professors Gary M. Burge, Lynn H. Cohick, and Gene L. Green. While I would have loved to read it straight through, time has militated against that desire. I have had to approach it in chunks, which on reflection seems to be a handy approach.
Instead of summarizing the volume in one fell swoop, I thought that instigating a new BlogThru series – with the recognition that I have not yet completed the Future Grace and Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood series – could be the best way forward.
The textbook’s subtitle specifies its task: “A survey of the New Testament within its cultural contexts.” Its first four chapters set the stage for the rest of the book, laying out a broad panorama over which the more specialized subsequent chapters can be teased out in greater detail.
1. Studying the New Testament
2. The Historical Setting of the New Testament
3. The World of Jesus in His Jewish Homeland
4. The Mediterranean World of the Apostle Paul
Emanating from the pens of Wheaton College professors, you would expect this textbook to treat the historical reliability of Scripture as seriously as possible, and you would be correct. As the authors explain in their preface, this volume is “responsive to the confessional commitments of the evangelical tradition. Too often academic treatments of the New Testament view faith commitments as passé.” Not so here. The deeper you read into the book, the more devotional it becomes.
If you are like me, and you have been craving a deeper look into the world and culture Jesus inhabited two thousand years ago, The New Testament in Antiquity is the book for you.
