The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings

Greek Koine and Biblical and Medieval Greek
1

Hello,

Would this be the balanced introduction it purports to be?

Bart Ehrman: The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/New-Testament-Historical-Introduction-Christian/dp/019020382X/ref=sr_1_5?keywords=oxford+introduction+to+bible&qid=1580636829&s=books&sr=1-5

I thought I’d finally like to get an idea of the what the New Testament is and where it comes from. I take the publisher’s name - Oxford University Press - as a guarantee of at least some quality, but I know that the whole subject is a mine field. I hear that Ehrman is a somewhat controversial figure, but I guess that’s the rule rather than the exception in Biblical studies. So I’m ok with the writer having personal opinions, as long as he’s erudite, presents the evidence and gives a reasonably balanced presentation. What I don’t want to read is a bigot of any confession (not even of the Richard Dawkins sort).

Thanks!

2

I’m sure it’s reasonable scholarship, and not bigoted. The worst critique I have of his academic work is his tendency to warm over stuff that is decades (or centuries) old and to give the impression that it is cutting edge and new.

You could review this one and tell us though.

3

I second Joel. Not that I’ve read the book. He’s written so many. He never tires of milking the wholly unremarkable fact that NT manuscripts show textual variation, a discovery that purportedly lost him his faith in the truth of Scripture. For evangelical and fundamentalist Christians he’s a real bete noire, which makes him (and them) very marketable. There’s no end to the stuff that’s churned out.
But no doubt this is as reliable an account as you’re likely to find. I have to say, though, that on early Xn and paraXn writings and beliefs Elaine Pagels is much more interesting and less tiresome.

4

You’ve gotten responses from two people now who have not read the book, and now a third. The reviews I’ve read indicate that it’s a fairly standard historical-critical introduction, nothing special about it. It was written more as a textbook than as a partisan apologia, which is really what many of Ehrman’s writings are about. As such it may give you a fairly decent introduction to that perspective on the origin and development of the NT texts.

5

Thanks. It seems to be the book I’m looking for then. A standard introduction is what I want. Maybe I’ll take a look at Elaine Page if the subject if I’m still interested in the subject afterwards…

Joel: warming over stuff that’s decades or centuries old is not necessarily bad in this field, unlike in medicine for instance… Take a look at West and his writings about Homer.

6

It’s some time since I read this book, and I think I promised a review of sorts. I’m not really competent to judge how reliable this book is in its scholarship, but I can sincerely recommend this book for what it aims to be, with just a few reservations, on which on concentrate here.

For someone like me who didn’t know much about the genesis of the New Testament, this was an eye opening book, presented with great clarity. At the same time, I can understand that someone like mwh will find it tiresome. It seems to have been written with a very naive reader in mind, and Ehrman actually explicitly says in the preface that his primary audience are nineteen or twenty year old college students. Especially in the first half, everything is explained in very plain English and at length; there is a lot of redundancy for anyone who knows anything about the history of ancient texts, but I think that even for the benefit of the intelligent general reader who doesn’t know much about such things, the book could have been abridged considerably without really losing anything. Since Ehrman has the reputation of being an atheist bete noire, I was surprised to find how much space he devotes for placating Christians who might eventually take offense. For an example, see the excursus on “The Historian and the Believer” (p. 16). At several places thoughout the book Ehrman stresses the idea that historical enquiry and faith don’t necessarily contradict each other, which I think really begs the question. At many places, I find the book downright condescending:

“One of the hardest things for modern people who are interested in Jesus to realize is that he lived in a completely different culture from ours, with a foreign set of cultural values and norms – so much so that people commonly claim that he did not (or rather could not) have meant what he said.” (p. 294)

Stuff like this abounds (italics mine). At the end of each chapter, there are exercises under a heading “Take a stand”. Just one typical example, to illustrate: “Pick one of the early Christian groups other than the porto-orthodox and suppose that it had won out to become the dominant form of Christianity. How would the world we live in today be different? Would it be a better place or a worse one, in your opinion? Why?”

But as far the factual content and its presentation goes, it’s excellent. All important questions - the historical context of different books of the NT, how they relate to, how they differ from, and how they contradict each other, the forms of Christianity that didn’t survive (“heresies”), etc., all is addressed with eye-opening clarity. All books in the New Testament, as well as a number of other early Christian writings that weren’t take into the cannon, are discussed.

In a word, this is a book written very well, but written for children, and it’s very condescending at many places. If you can accept that, it’s a very good book. Personally, I would have enjoyed the adult version, but since I’m not aware of one that actually exists, this one did it’s job quite well.

The page numbers refer to the 6th edition which I read, not the 7th which is latest. I don’t think there’s much of a difference. The 6th edition for example incorporates “a new excursus on various approaches to studying the New Testament, including feminist, post-colonial, and liberationist perspectives” - an addition that responds to current sensibilities, but seems a rather unnatural and doesn’t really have anything to do with the rest of the book.

7

I skimmed it the other week, and was going to reply as well, though I think that Paul’s overview is much better than mine.

I was disappointed that it rarely discussed the history of the critical ideas being presented, who proposed them, when, and what motivated them. Every occurrence of “some scholars” could profitably be replaced with more specific information. Similarly with frequent fudges like “exuberant” and “extravagant” when applied to arguments.

The Q section is entirely anchored on 1) Markan priority (extremely likely), and 2) the sequence argument (credulous). But that is to be expected.

8

That’s a an important point I forgot to make yesterday. At the end of each chapter some suggestions for further reading are given, but I don’t think the book ever cites a specific scholar behind a particular idea; as Joel pointed out, these are replaced by ”some scholars” and ”most scholars” throughout. In the introduction, Ehrman explains that writing a history of Biblical scholarship was beyond his aim (which is reasonable), but that hardly justifies not giving any sources at all.

As I wrote yesterday, this is a book for children. If anyone knows a similar book for adults, I’d happy to take recommendations. And also for similar books on the Old Testament!

9

I’m not well-read in such things, but I thought John Collins’ Introduction to the Hebrew Bible did a pretty good job. And I was very impressed by the notes to Robert Alter’s recent translation.

10

I don’t know whether you found this reading Ehrman’s book, but I’ve always thought the history of the formation of the canon is more interesting than the textual issues themselves. It throws up lots of questions about authority that are relevant to people’s daily experience of using these texts and is less mired in “Monsters and the Critics” style bumf. “My collection of books is better than your collection of books” is a human story I can really get into.

The Text and Canon of the New Testament by Alexander Souter (of the lexicon) is quite old but still the best single volume I’ve read in terms of presentation. Metzger’s The Canon of the New Testament (1987) covers most of the same ground but updates various things. I have no idea how scholarship has developed since 1987.

You might also find it interesting exploring (perhaps Ehrman covers this) the relationship between the Dead Sea Scrolls from Qumran and early Christianity, and Josephus’ account of the Essenes. Trying to answer questions like ‘Who were the Pharisees?’ and ‘Is Paul representative of the Hellenistic diaspora experience?’ also takes you down interesting side-roads in the history of the texts.

11

Guthrie’s Introduction to the New Testament, while written from an evangelical perspective, does much of what you want, while interacting a great deal more with the history of scholarship on various issues, so that you get more than one perspective. For cultural and historical connections, Ferguson’s Backgrounds of Early Christianity is quite good. If you have a good foundation in Classics, much it will be review, but still helpful for getting a feel of the interaction of Christianity with the broader world.

12

I second Sean’s recommendation of Metzger on the NT canon—so much more interesting than textual issues in the corpus. (Canon formation is still all the rage in modern literary studies beyond the bible, as Sean will know.) I’d add that Elaine Pagels is good on pre- and para-Christian stuff, esp. gnosticism.

Children are of course not the target audience of Ehrman’s book, Paul, even though it may well seem that way. Do you know there’s something known as evangelical textual criticism?! Most of what’s written about the NT these days is dispiritingly mindless. The OT is much better served, esp. if not approached as the OT (i,.e. from a Christian point of view) but as the Hebrew scriptures.

13

In addition to whatever book you end up choosing, Yale has all the lectures and course work from its Introduction to the New Testament History and Literature course available here: https://oyc.yale.edu/religious-studies/rlst-152

I listen to it a few years ago: it seemed very middle of the road and I found it very informative.