Part 80
When Hyrcanus, Rabbi Eliezer's father, heard that he was studying Torah with Yohanan ben Zakkai, he declared: T shall go and ban my son from all my possessions.' They said: That day Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai sat expounding in Jerusalem with all the important men oflsrael sitting before him. When he heard that Hyrcanus was coming he set guards and told them: 'If Hyrcanus comes, don't let him sit down.' Hyrcanus arrived and they would not let him sit down, but he pushed his way up to the front until he found himself beside Sisit ben ha-Keset, Naqdimon ben Gorion, and Ben Kalba Shabna. He sat among them trembling. They say: On that day Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai fixed his gaze on Rabbi Eliezer and said to him: 'Deliver the exposition!' T cannot,' Rabbi Eliezer replied. Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai pressed him to do it, and the other students pressed him as well. So he rose and delivered a discourse on things such as the ear had never heard before. As each word came from his mouth Rabban Yohanan ben Zakkai rose to his feet and kissed him on the head and exclaimed: 'Rabbi Eliezer, my master, you have taught me the truth!' Before the session had ended, Hyrcanus, the father, rose to his feet and declared: 'My masters, I came here only in order to ban my son Eliezer from my possessions. Now all my possessions shall be given to Eliezer my son. All his brothers are disinherited and shall have none of them.'
2. Joseph and Aseneth, 7:1-11: Joseph's First Sight of Aseneth
(7:1) Joseph entered Pentephres' house and sat on a seat, and Pentephres washed his feet and set a table before him by itself, because Joseph never ate with the Egyptians, for this was an abomination to him. (2) And looking up, Joseph saw Aseneth leaning through (the window). And Joseph spoke to Pentephres and his whole family, saying, 'Who is that woman standing in the solar by the window? Tell her to leave this house at once.' (3) This was because Joseph was afraid lest she too should pester him, for all the wives and daughters of the noblemen and satraps of the whole land of Egypt used to pester him to sleep with him, (4) and all the wives and daughters of the Egyptians suffered badly when they saw Joseph, because he was so handsome. They used to send their messengers to him with gold and silver and precious gifts, (5) but Joseph sent them back with threats and insults, saying, T will not sin before the God oflsrael.' (6) And Joseph kept the face of his father Jacob always before his eyes, and remembered his father's commandments. For Jacob used to say to his son Joseph and to his brother, 'My children, guard strongly against associating with a strange woman, for she is ruin and destruction.' (7) Therefore Joseph said, Tell that woman to leave this house.'
Comment: Though doubtless embellished and obviously selfpromoting, the story reflects accurately social and historical realities. The loss of the labour of a full-grown son who wanted to go off to study at yeshivah could well have created tensions within poorer families. And the picture of the school in session is convincing. Immediately in front of the teacher sits a row of local grandees. They are not students, but wealthy supporters of the school, on whose contributions its existence probably depended, since the school is unlikely to have charged fees. Behind the grandees sit the rows of students. Not only the teacher lectures: students could be called upon to expound as well. Though the story comes from a fourthcentury source, it purports to speak about the school of Yohanan ben Zakkai in Jerusalem before 70 CE. Yohanan was a leading Pharisee, who after the destruction of the temple founded the school at Yavneh. His school in Jerusalem was probably bigger than most and had its own dedicated premises. The hostel mentioned may well have been attached to the school and intended specifically to house its students. On the 'Abot de Rabbi Nathan see MAJ GEN F.6-7.
(8) Pentephres said to him, 'My Lord, that woman you have seen in the upper storey is no stranger but our daughter, a virgin hating every man, and no other man has ever seen her save you alone today. (9) And if you wish, she will come and speak with you, because our daughter is like a sister to you.' (10) And Joseph was overjoyed because Pentephres had said, 'She is a virgin hating every man.' And Joseph said to himself, Tf she is a virgin hating every man, she will certainly not molest me.' (n) And Joseph said to Pentephres and his wife, Tf she is your daughter and a virgin, let her come, because she is my sister, and I love her as my sister from this day.'
Comment: When Joseph, who holds the position of vizier of Egypt, arrives at Potiphar/Pentephres' house with all his retinue, Aseneth coyly runs upstairs to avoid meeting him, but she cannot resist peeping out at the visitor and noticing how handsome he is. Joseph catches a glimpse of her, and demands that she leave the house, lest she seduce him into violating his father's command to keep away from women
G. Hagiography
1. Ezekiel the Tragedian, Exagoge, 68-82: The Apotheosis of Moses
In a vision I saw a throne on top of Mount Sinai, so great in size that it reached the clouds of heaven. (70) Upon it sat a noble figure, crowned with a crown and holding a mighty sceptre in his left hand, while with his right he beckoned me. So I approached and stood before the throne. He handed the sceptre to me and on the great throne
(cf. ANTH 0.3). The reference to Joseph's fatal attractiveness to Egyptian women is based on Gen 39:6-20, where Potiphar/ Pentephres' wife attempts to seduce him. Joseph resists, is slandered by the woman, and is thrown into jail. Curiously
827 POST-BIBLICAL JEWISH LITERATURE
the author of Joseph and Aseneth makes no direct allusion to these events. Perhaps he felt that to introduce Joseph's earlier life as a servant of Potiphar/Pentephres might have confused his story, though it could also have provided him with some interesting dramatic ironies: Joseph, now the secondin-command in Egypt, returns to the house of the master and mistress who had wronged him; having spurned the mother, he falls for the daughter's charms. Instead he generalizes the Potiphar/Pentephres' wife episode into a universal condemnation of the predatory behaviour of Egyptian women. The serious side of the story is seen in its stress on Joseph's piety: he resists the temptations that come from moving in Gentile society. He keeps the dietary laws and rejects the sexual advances of Gentile women. When he does marry a Gentile girl, she is a chaste virgin, and he only takes her after she has converted to Judaism. On Joseph andAseneth see MAJ GEN G.2.
Yebam. 4gb). It is probably alluded to in Heb 11:37. Hezekiah's desecration of the bones of his ancestors is also not biblical. Appropriately he is punished with impotence as well as exile.
Saints were often venerated because they were seen as being able to grant offspring to childless couples. On the Lives of the Prophets see MAJ GEN 0.3.
4. 4 Maccabees, 9:10—25: The Eldest Son Defies the Greek Tyrant
(9:10) When they had said these things the tyrant was not only indignant at the the youths' disobedience, but even more enraged at their ingratitude, (n) Then, at his command, the guards brought forward the eldest brother, ripped off his tunic, and bound his hands and arms on both sides with thongs. (12) When they had worn themselves out flogging him with whips, without achieving anything, they put him on the wheel. (13) Stretched on this, the noble youth's limbs were all put out of joint, (14) and as each limb was dislocated, he denounced the tyrant, saying, (15) 'Mostfoul tyrant, enemy of heavenly justice and pitiless, you punish me in this fashion not as a murderer or an impious man but as a defender of the divine law.' (16) And when the guards said to him, 'Consent to eat and you will be released from the tortures,' (17) he answered, 'Your wheel is not so strong, foul lackeys, as to strangle my reason. Cut off my limbs, burn my flesh, twist my joints,
3. The Lives of the Prophets, 1:1—13: Isaiah's Spring and Tomb
(1:1) Isaiah, from Jerusalem, was killed by Manasseh by being sawn in two, and he was buried beneath the Oak of Rogel, hard by the ford through the waters which Hezekiah stopped by blocking up their source (cf. 2 Chr 32:3—4). (2) And God worked the miracle of Siloam for the prophet, for, being faint before he died, he prayed for water to drink, and immediately it was sent to him from this source. Hence it is called Siloam, which means 'sent' (cf. Jn 9:7). (3) And in the time of Hezekiah, before he made the pools and cisterns, a little water came out in response to Isaiah's prayer, so that the city might not perish for lack of water, for the people were being besieged by foreigners. (4) For the enemy were asking, 'From where are they drinking?' (5) And, while investing the city, they were encamped at Siloam. (6) If, then, the Jews came, water would flow out, but if the foreigners came, it would not. (7) Therefore to this day it comes out suddenly, in order that the mystery might be made manifest. (8) And since this happened with Isaiah's help, to keep it in mind the people buried him nearby with great care and honour, so that through his prayers, even after his death, they might continue to enjoy the benefit of the water, for an oracle also was given to them about this.
(18) and through all these torments I will convince you that the children of the Hebrews alone are invincible defenders of virtue.' (19) While he was saying this they spread fire under him and, stoking it up
(?), they turned the wheel still tighter. (20) The wheel was spattered all over with blood, the heap of coals was being quenched by drops of gore, and strips of flesh were turning round the axles of the machine. (21) Although the ligaments joining his bones were already severed, the great-souled youth, true son of Abraham that he was, did not groan, (22) but as though being transformed by fire into incorruptibility, he nobly endured the rackings, saying, (23) 'Imitate me, brothers; never give up my struggle nor foreswear our brotherhood in courage. (24) Fight the sacred and noble fight for true religion, on account of which the just providence that came to our fathers' aid will show mercy to our nation and take vengeance on the accursed tyrant.' (2 5) And with these words the saintly youth expired.
(9) His tomb is hard by the tomb of the kings, behind the tomb of the priests in the southern quarter. (10) For Solomon made the tombs, following David's design, east of Zion, which has an entrance from Gabaon (Gibeon), some twenty stadia distant from the city, (n) And he made a construction with twisting passages, which to this day is unknown to most of the priests and to all of the people. (12) There the king kept the gold from Ethiopia and the spices. (13) And since Hezekiah had disclosed to the Gentiles the secrets of David and Solomon (cf. 2 Kings 20:12-18), and had defiled the bones of his fathers, God swore that, on account of this, his offspring would be enslaved to his enemies, and God made him impotent from that day.
Comment: Rather than eat 'unclean food' in violation of the Torah, the eldest of the seven brothers is prepared to undergo excruciating torture and finally death. In doing so he obeys a higher, divine authority than that of the tyrant, Antiochus, the limits of whose power he demonstrates. The stress on the gruesome details of the torture are noteworthy. They were to become typical of later martyr literature. They evoke pity and they highlight the triumph of reason over the passions, but they also appeal to a voyeuristic fascination with pain and suffering. The 'gratitude' of the king which the seven brothers spurn (9:10) was his offer that 'if you will renounce the ancestral law of your polity you will receive leading positions of authority over my domains' (8:7). On 4 Maccabees see MAJ GEN G.4, and 4 MACC.
Note: At v. II, some sort of souterrain seems to be envisaged.
Comment: The author regards the Pool of Siloam as being fed by a spring which was miraculously created by the intercessions of the prophet Isaiah, and which is maintained by his prayers even after his death. (He seems to be unaware of the fact that it is fed from the Gihon spring through Hezekiah's tunnel.) An important physical feature of the landscape is linked with a saint, who is shown in typical role protecting his devotees. The careful description of the location of the saint's tomb is presumably meant to assist those who wish to visit it. The saint in this case is also a martyr: he was sawn in two during the reign of wicked king Manasseh. The tradition is not biblical but is found also in the Martyrdom and Ascension of Isaiah, 5:1—5, and in the Talmud (y. Sanh. 10 (28c. 37); b.
5. Babylonian Talmud, Berakhot, 6ib: The Martyrdom of Rabbi Aqiva
Our rabbis taught: Once the wicked government issued a decree forbidding the Jews to engage in the study of Torah. Pappus ben Judah came and found Rabbi Aqiva publicly holding meetings and engaging in the study of Torah. He said to him: 'Aqiva, are you not afraid of the government?' He replied: 'I will tell you a parable. A fox was once walking alongside a river, and he saw fish darting in shoals from one place to another. He said to them: "From what do you flee?" They replied: "From the nets which men cast out for us." He
POST-BIBLICAL JEWISH LITERATURE 828
said to them: "Would you like to come up on to dry land so that you and I can live together in the way that my ancestors lived with your ancestors?" They replied: "Are you the one men call the cleverest of animals? You're not clever; you are stupid. If we are afraid in the element in which we live, how much more should we be afraid in an element in which we would die!" So it is with us. If we are in our present plight while sitting studying Torah, of which it is written, "It brings you life and longevity" (Deut 30:20), how much worse off would we be if we were to go and neglect it.'
the dish before!' He said to him: 'Kahana, are you there? Get out! This is not done (lit. not the way of the world)!' He replied: 'It is a matter of Torah, and I need to learn.'
Note: Abba ('Father') is here used by Kahana as a title of respect for his teacher.
Comment: The examples cited are exaggerated, in typical rabbinic style, and are doubtless meant to bring a smile to the faces of the 'pupils of the Sages', but a deeply serious point is being made. It is that Torah extends into all areas of life, and should govern even etiquette. The teacher embodies the Torah, and his actions should be observed and imitated, for they reveal the truth as much as his words. The same sentiment was later expressed in the modern Hasidic maxim that one goes to the Rebbe not just to hear his teaching but to see how he ties and unties his shoe-laces. See further MAJ GEN B.II, G.6.
They say that a few days later Rabbi Aqiva was arrested and thrown into prison, and Pappus ben Judah was also arrested and thrown into prison beside him. He said to him: 'Pappus, who brought you here?' He replied: 'Happy are you, Rabbi Aqiva, for you have been arrested for busying yourself with Torah! But alas for Pappus, who has been arrested for busying himself with trivial things!'
When Rabbi Aqiva was taken out for execution, it was the time for the reciting of the Shema. While they combed his flesh with combs of iron, he was taking upon himself the yoke of the kingdom of heaven. His students said to him: 'Our teacher, are you prepared to go this far!' He said to them: 'All my life I have been troubled by the words "With all your soul" (Deut 10:12; 26:16), which I understand to mean "Even if God takes your soul". I said: "When shall I ever have an opportunity of fulfilling this?" Now that I have an opportunity, shall I not fulfil it?' He prolonged the word 'one' and expired while saying it. A heavenly voice went forth and said: 'Happy are you, Rabbi Aqiva, because you expired with the word "one" on your lips!' The ministering angels said before the Holy One, blessed be He, 'Such Torah and such a reward! He should have been "one of those that die by your hand, Lord"' (Ps 17:14). He replied to them, "Their portion is in life' (Ps 17:14). A heavenly voice went forth and proclaimed, 'Happy are you, Rabbi Aqiva, for you are destined for the life of the world to come.'
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Comment: The Babylonian Talmud, from which this version of the martyrdom of Aqiva is taken was edited around 500 CE
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(MAJ GEN B.II), but it is given as a Tannaitic tradition, which, if correct, would date it to before 200 CE. The 'wicked government' is Rome, and the story purports to come from the time of the Hadrianic persecutions (132—5). The 'combs of iron' are a reference to a Roman instrument of torture known as 'the claws' (Lat. ungulae), which was used to flay the victim. The approbation of the martyr, either through a comforting vision or a 'heavenly voice', the dialogue between the martyr and bystanders/friends/pupils, and the comment of the angels became standard motifs of the martyr literature. See further
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It has been taught: Rabbi Aqiva said: 'Once I went in after Rabbi Joshua to a privy, and I learnt from him three things. I learnt that one does not sit east-west but north-south; I learnt that one does not evacuate standing up but sitting down; and I learnt that it is proper to clean oneself with the left hand and not with the right.' Ben 'Azzai said to him: 'Did you dare to take such liberties with your master?'—He replied: 'It is a matter of Torah, and I needed to learn.'
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It has been taught: Ben Azzai said: 'Once I went in after Rabbi Aqiva to a privy, and I learnt from him three things. I learnt that one does not evacuate east-west but north-south. I also learnt that one evacuates sitting down and not standing up. I also learnt that it is proper to clean onself with the left hand and not with the right.' Rabbi Judah said to him: 'Did you dare to take such liberties with your master?'—He replied: 'It is a matter of Torah, and I needed to learn.'
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Rab Kahana once went in and hid under RaVs bed. He heard him chatting [with his wife] and joking and doing what he required. He said to him: 'One would think that Abba's mouth had never sipped
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56. Introduction to the New Testament L E S L I E H O U L D E N
A. Introduction. 1. This article sets out to 'introduce' the New Testament. But in literature as in life, introductions may be of two kinds. At a formal lecture or public meeting, the speaker is usually introduced with a factual account of career and achievements. We receive in effect the speaker's credentials, flattering him or her and reassuring the audience as it settles to what lies ahead. Such introductions, with their battery of facts, generally bear no close relation to the substance of the ensuing utterance, except that they lead the listener to expect a display of some competence in, say, economics, but none in civil engineering.
occupied by the OT These writings vary in type (though most are either gospels or letters) and in length (from the 28 chapters of Matthew's gospel and Acts to the few lines of the 2nd and 3rd Letters of John). Though there are connections between some ofthem, byway of authorship (e.g. the letters of Paul) or in a literary way (dependence among the first three gospels and common material in Colossians and Ephesians), each is in origin a separate work, composed in its own time and place for its own particular purpose.
3. These writings differ also in accessibility: we are likely to feel most at home with the gospels and Acts, with their strong story-line, much less at home with some of the letters and the Revelation of John; and when we survey the list, there may be some titles that we have scarcely heard of. It is interesting then how rapidly diversity among these writings forces itself on our attention, even though we are attending to the NT as a single entity. Clearly this is not a single entity at all in some senses of that term, either in itself or in our awareness of its contents.
2. Introductions at social gatherings are of a different character. When we are introduced to someone, we do not expect a monologue of information about our new acquaintance to flow from the introducer, still less from the person who faces us. No, introduction is a mere beginning. It offers the prospect of conversation where we shall range around for points of contact and explore possible features of character and opinion; so that gradually, but quite unsy stematically, we may build up a picture of the one who has been introduced to us. If the introduction leads to sufficient interest, we shall hope that it leads to further meetings, so that our sketchy picture may become fuller and more exact. We shall take steps to ensure that the process continues from this propitious beginning. We shall certainly not expect that the first encounter provides more than a few unrelated bits of information and half-formed impressions. Loose ends will not worry us in the least.
4. The NT we think of is probably in the English language. But every bit of it began in the Greek language of the first century of our era (apart from a handful of words taken over from Hebrew, Aramaic, or Latin); so what we have is a translation, never a simple operation and always involving decisions that amount to interpretation. Until fairly recently, it would have been overwhelmingly likely that the NT in our hand or in our memory was the translation issued in England in 1611, usually known simply (and confidently) as 'The Authorised Version', or sometimes as the King James Version, after James I in whose reign and by whose authority the work was done.
3. This Introduction is of this second kind. At many points, the reader who is new to the subject will wish to question and clarify, and may even be frustrated by the incompleteness of what is provided. The aim, however, is to open subjects rather than to close them. Moreover, though a range of ideas on a particular subject will often be given, to indicate that it is not all plain sailing and where the rocks and shoals lie, this Introduction represents only one among the many possible perspectives on its subject. Further information on many topics comes in the detailed articles that follow, or else in other works of reference, such as Bible dictionaries or encyclopedias or in fuller commentaries on particular NT books. The aim here is to stimulate curiosity, even to incite to discontent, so that the New Testament may continue to fascinate as well as edify its readers.
5. In the last fifty years, however, a plethora of different translations has appeared, each attemptingthetaskinaparticular way or even looking at the NT from a particular doctrinal standpoint. Most aim to give a more modern English version than that of 1611: old words have changed sense or gone out of use, new ways of putting things have come in. Some recent versions do their modernizing in a way that stays close to the old version (e.g. the RS Version), others break right away from it (e.g. the NEB and the GNB). In a determination to make the NT speak today, they may go so far as to amend the strong masculine assumptions of former times, embodied in the Bible, by producing gender-neutral renderings simply absent from the original. Churches, using the NT in worship or for study by their members, take varying views about new versions, some favouring the resonance and familiarity of traditional language, others seeing it as an obstacle to the use of the NT by modern people.
B. The Idea of the New Testament. 1. It is natural to suppose that the NT is virtually as old as Christianity itself. It is equally natural to assume that the NT has always been part and parcel of Christianity, integral to its very being. It is refreshing to the mind to recognize that the truth is not so simple. We shall list some of the facts that cast doubt on those assumptions about the NT.
6. It is not just a question of modernizing the English or not, though often the subject is discussed as if it were. There are also issues of accuracy. For one thing, because of the discovery since the seventeenth century of numerous very old manuscripts of the NT, some going back to within a hundred years or so of the original writing, we have a better idea of the NT authors' precise wording than was available to our ancestors (Metzger 1964; Birdsall 1970). (Never lose sight
2. But first we should identify what we have in mind when we think of'the NT'. Most people will visualize a slim volume containing twenty-seven writings from early Christianity, or else think of the second part of the Christian Bible, most of it
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middle of the second century but probably earlier, as an element in the Christian gatherings for worship, where extracts were read to the community and were no doubt the subject of preaching. In this way, the parts of the NT were prior to the whole—that is, in the church's use of these writings. The more one looks at the matter from the point of view of use, the more the final production of a single entity, 'the NT', appears to be an afterthought, a tidying up.
of it: until the invention of printing, every copy of the NT was made by hand, with all the inevitable slips and blunders, and even the alteration of the text to bring it into line with what the copyist believed the scriptural writer 'must' or 'should' have put.) Despite this opportunity for a better informed judgement about the text itself, however, there remain numerous places of disagreement; and translations differ as they reflect differences of judgement in what are often nicely balanced decisions. All this is in addition to unavoidable variations of style and emphasis as translators view the text before them. Again, the NT is far from the stable entity that it appears at first sight.
10. That it was more than this is to do with the fact that an element of selection entered into the matter. The NT is far from containing the whole of early Christian literature (Schneemelcher (ed.) 1991, 1992; Staniforth and Louth (eds.) 1987). We know there were numerous other writings, from the second century if not from the first, because copies of them have survived, often in fragments and extracts. Some of them indeed are as old as at least the later of the writings included in the NT itself. It is apparent then that the authorized collection did not come together simply on the basis of antiquity—it was not just the early church's archives. It looks as if a number of factors played a part: simply, popularity and usefulness on a sufficiently wide scale; but also the attachment of an apostolic name, that is the name of one of the earliest Christian leaders, increasingly venerated as authorities, perhaps as martyrs, certainly as close to Jesus. These two factors were not wholly distinct: indeed it looks as if a bid could be made for the authoritativeness of a writing by attaching to it an apostle's name, whether Paul or Peter or John. It is not clear how far this was done in what we should regard as a deliberately fraudulent way and how far it was a matter of claiming the revered figure's patronage—this is what he would have written if he had been in our shoes. Both strategies can be paralleled in the relevant parts of the ancient world. It is not even wholly clear whether it is legitimate to draw a sharp distinction between them ('Pseudonymity', in ABD 5). However that may be (and modern literary ethics are surely inappropriate), there was a Christian literature far larger than the NT itself that failed to win general endorsement.
7. And there is more to come. Look at the NT historically. Only gradually did these writings come to be accepted in the Christian churches in such a way that they could begin to be seen as a single book with a name of its own. This is not the place to go into details of the process whereby this came about (von Campenhausen 1972; Metzger 1987). Suffice it to say that a collection of Paul's letters was probably made before the end of the first century; that the idea of Christians needing both a gospel (i.e. the story of Jesus) and Paul's letters caught on soon after; that the end of the second century saw the acceptance in a number of major Christian centres (e.g. Rome, Alexandria) of something close to the present collection (four gospels, Acts, Paul's and other letters; but that it was four centuries before most churches accepted more or less the set of writings that have remained to this day as those authorized for official use—it is a list that has survived (despite occasional marginal hesitations) all the great divisions of the church, the same for all. The negative corollary of this progressivist way of putting things is of course that the church, viewed as a whole, managed for four centuries or so without the NT as we know it.
8. Again it cannot be our concern here, but it is worth recognizing that there was no discernible inner drive towards the production of such a thing as the NT: that makes it sound much too purposive. Historically speaking, it was all more haphazard. It is more realistic to look at it this way: the Christian communities, widely scattered around the Mediterranean within a few decades of Jesus' lifetime, had certain needs that had to be met if their life and mission were to flourish and if they were to have any coherence as (despite their plurality) a single phenomenon—the Christian church, or even 'Christianity'. They needed first to communicate with each other and to profit from one another's experience and wisdom, not to speak of bringing one another into line. Hence the early importance of letters. Even if these originally addressed passing situations and had no eye on the long term, they might profitably be preserved against future crises or simply for encouragement and edification. Inevitably, they would be circulated and acquire authority, both forming and buttressing church leaders in their work.
11. In any case, it is evident that the NT grew piecemeal, both in its parts and as a whole. Evident too that it is an instrument of the church, which for all the authority that, in whole and in parts, it came to have in the church, came into being within the already existing life and work of the Christian communities. In so far as the church had a Bible from the start, it consisted of the Jewish Scriptures, eventually designated by Christians 'the Old Testament', which it interpreted in the light of the career and person of Jesus, seen as its fulfilment. More will be said about this at the end of this section.
12. If the church managed without a fully formed and authorized NT for its first few centuries, it is equally true that, in a contrary movement, the NT has undergone a disintegrative process in the last three or four centuries. This has not occurred primarily (often scarcely at all) in the official life of the churches, but in the realm of scholarship, itself church sponsored (especially in mainstream Protestantism) if not church endorsed in many of its results (Houlden 1986; Carroll 1991). During that period, the NT writings have been subjected to all kinds of analytical procedures. Almost all of these have involved treating them as separate units, often
9. The Christian communities also needed to have ways of recalling Jesus, both in his time on earth and in terms of present relationship with his heavenly reality. The content of the letters (e.g. of Paul) might often help with the second, as did the eucharistic worship and prayers of the church; the gospels were essential for the first. There is a question about how early this need came to be strongly felt; but soon the gospels were used as tools for teaching and, from at least the
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agents, the one divine 'pen' is at work—implies a transcending singleness of mind. But it is not wholly transparent that, even on such a strong view of inspiration, God necessarily favours singleness of statement at the expense of (for example) the emergence of truth by way of dialogue or controversy, even in early Christianity whose memorial the NT is. At all events, a candid historical view of the NT writings, while recognizing their overall unity of purpose and interest, is bound to recognize that they represent different viewpoints in the early church, and even that some of them look as if they were written to correct and refute others. For instance, it is likely that the Gospels of Matthew and Luke were designed, not simply to amplify but rather to improve on the Gospel of Mark, eradicating what were seen as its inadequacies. The formal opening of Luke, the first four verses, seems to suggest as much. And the Pastoral Epistles (i and 2 Tim, Titus) and perhaps Ephesians (as well as the latter half of Acts) were probably designed to put Paul in a different light from that in which his letters had come to place him: they smooth out the sense of him as a strident and pugnacious figure, ready to take on esteemed church leaders when in his view the gospel dictated it. The Letter of James seems to subvert one of the crucial emphases of Paul's teaching. The NTdoes not support the view that the early church enjoyed harmonious unanimity of opinion or homogeneity of teaching. Their disputes may often have related to issues long since dead, so that we tend to discount them, but the battles were real enough in their day, sometimes have modern counterparts, and in any case caution us against over-ready adoption of a particular idea or teaching as the NT view of the subject in question. On almost every topic of importance, there was diversity and conflict.
indeed identifying possible sources behind them (notably in the case of the gospels) or possible earlier units that have gone to form them as composite wholes (some of the letters, e.g. 2 Cor). Mostly, it has been a matter of attempting to suggest the original form, setting, and intention of each of the writings by the use of informed historical imagination and literary observation. Nearly always the effect has been to break down in the reader's mind the sense of NT as a whole, which was so laboriously built up in the early centuries. The NT comes to be seen very much as a collection of independent, or semiindependent, works, each to be examined in its own right as well as in relevant wider contexts.
13. The upshot is that, in the strict sense, the heyday of the NTas a compact entity (the book within the covers) was in the middle millennium of the church's 2,ooo-year history; even then, its most characteristic use, the form in which it was mainly experienced, was in bits—sometimes as little as a few words, that would support a doctrinal or ethical point, more often a longer section recited in liturgy or, especially in the later part of the period, used in private meditative prayer. It is interesting to note that for much of that middle period, Christian imagination was filled not only with material derived from Scripture but with legendary stories that the church had specifically rejected from the authorized canon. In for example, the sequence of windows at Chartres Cathedral, details of Jesus' family, birth, and childhood drawn from the Protevangelium of James (2 cent.) figure alongside those drawn from the gospels.
14. At the same time, in whole or in substantial parts, 'the NT' played a recognized part in Christian life. The NT as a volume came in medieval times to carry the sacred weight of an icon, as did the gospels, bound separately—to be reverenced, viewed with awe, even feared, as charged with numinous power. The ceremonial carrying of the book of the gospels in Eastern Orthodoxy and (much less often now) in the Western eucharistic liturgy retains this sense. So, at a more mundane level, still sometimes tinged with superstition, does the use of the NT in courts of law in some countries for the swearing of oaths. More grandly, the British coronation ritual includes the monarch's oath-taking on the fifth-century NTmanuscript (actually far from complete), the Codex Bezae. In these residual uses, 'the NT' survives in a way that our medieval ancestors saw as wholly normal: and notice, this use of it did not necessitate its being opened or read at all. Of course, for the many Christians who remain immune to the analytical endeavours of scholarship, the NT, in whole and in parts, retains its verbal authority, speaking to the reader as God's very utterance, with Paul and his fellow-writers as no more than instruments. There are of course many intermediate stages between such literalism and the recognition of variety within the NT, understood in the light of the diverse settings of the various writings (Houlden (ed.) 1995).
16. There is one more important point. Throughout this section we have had in mind the NTas a self-contained work, bound in its own covers, albeit a collection of twenty-seven distinct writings. But more often that not, we encounter the NTas the second (and much the smaller) part of the Bible: in sheer prominence, it can even look like a sort of adjunct to the OT From the fourth century, Bibles have been produced by Christians consisting of these two parts, and both parts have been in constant use in Christian worship and Christian study. This combination of the NT with the OT compels us to consider the relation between the two. It is impossible here to detail the many different ways in which that relation has been seen. But, despite the comparative brevity of the NT, Christians have always seen it as the climax and goal of the Bible as a whole. Most commonly (as was hinted earlier), they have seen the NTas fulfilling the OT; or, more precisely, Jesus as fulfilling the old Scriptures and the NTas commenting on the manner of that fulfilment. In the NT's own terms, the fulfilment was expressed by way of OT images and themes which were taken up and applied to him (e.g. king of Israel, son of God, lamb), often with startling paradox and originality; also by way of statements in the OT which were read through fresh eyes and seen as relevant to some aspect or detail of Jesus' life or teaching. Most NT books, most obviously the Gospels of Matthew (e.g. 1-2) and John, contain many such applications of OT quotations to Jesus (Lindars 1961). The modern reader who looks up the original OT context will often see audacity (or even fraudulence) in many of these applications—a difficulty removed or at least alleviated once it is
15. This brings us to the final recognition that tends towards the breaking up of the NTas we may now read it. Once we attend to the likely origins of the various writings, we find that they do not all sing the same tune. Certainly, we must abandon any idea that they were the result of some kind of collaborative exercise—an impression that the single, tightly bound volume easily creates. It may be retorted that divine inspiration—the idea that, through the various human
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Temple in Jerusalem, built just before Jesus' time), leisure provision (amphitheatres, games), commerce and language (Greek inscriptions on buildings and burial urns); in matters of the mind, so that for example the old Jewish tradition of wisdom writing (classically represented in Proverbs) seems to have absorbed elements of Greek thought (e.g. in Job and Eccesiasticus). While politically the area that would later be called Syria Palestina was, in Jesus' day, part of the Roman empire, its Herodian rulers and many aspects of the Jewish life over which they presided were in practice deeply affected by Hellenistic culture especially in the upper reaches of Jewish society. It is much less clear how far the countryside was affected: throughout the Mediterranean world, old indigenous cultures tended to survive intact outside the limits of the towns and cities. The town of Sepphoris, only a few miles from Nazareth, was being rebuilt along Hellenistic lines in the years of Jesus' youth, but it is impossible to be sure how far such a place would radiate its influence and in exactly what respects. Certainly it is never referred to in the gospels. We shall discuss the setting of Jesus' own life later: suffice it to say here that the extent of his exposure to things Greek may have been minimal.
understood that the NT writers are using techniques of scriptural interpretation current in Judaism at the time, and applying them creatively to their own subject-matter. Again from a modern point of view, it is necessary to recognize that they were reading Scripture as sheer words, God-given, with only a minimal sense of historical context such as modern scholarship has so vigorously pursued. So words that originally related to the birth of a child in the royal house in Jerusalem in the late eighth century BCE (Isa 7:14) are applied to the birth of Jesus many centuries later and taken to illuminate its character (Mt 1:23; Brown 1993).
C. The Background of the New Testament. 1. So far we have considered the idea of the NT. In terms of introduction, this has been the stage of sizing up the new acquaintance. Another important aspect of introduction lies a little behind the scenes and is often slow to emerge. It concerns the world and the culture from which the new acquaintance comes. Only if we find out about that will the introduction progress and lead to understanding.
2. As we face this matter, we immediately encounter what can seem a puzzling fact. All the NT books were written in Greek (though just possibly Hebrew sources lie somewhere behind one or two of them), but their culture is chiefly Jewish. There are in these writings only occasional instances of Hebrew or Aramaic (the Semitic vernacular of the area), the words of Jesus from the cross in Mk 15:34 (Aramaic = Mt 27:46 Hebrew) being much the most extensive. In one way this creates an obstacle—when for example we hope to read the very words of Jesus. While (as we shall see) there is a chance that Jesus knew some Greek, the overwhelming probability is that the main vehicle of his teaching was Aramaic. Therefore, at best (i.e. even if no other factors are involved) we have in the gospels renderings of Jesus' words into a foreign tongue—with the distortions that translation cannot but entail.
5. Secondly, in the Diaspora (i.e. among the Jews living in the cities of the Mediterranean world), Greek was the predominant medium—even the Scriptures had been translated (the Septuagint); and it is this more firmly Hellenized Judaism that forms the background for most, perhaps all, the NT writers and their books. That does not imply total cultural homogeneity: there were many styles and grades of the conditioning of Judaism by Hellenistic thought and Greek language, and the early Christians whose outlook is encountered through the books of the NT differ a good deal along these lines. None of them displays more than a perfunctory acquaintance with Greek literature (Acts 17:28; i Cor 15:33): overwhelmingly their literary formation comes from the Jewish Scriptures, mostly in their Greek form, and often with emphasis on some parts more than others—depending perhaps on the availability of expensive and cumbersome scrolls.
3. It is worth noting at this point that, apart from a few words and references to a few military or legal institutions, Latin culture has left little mark on the NT: these writings reflect life in the eastern half of the Mediterranean world, parts of the Roman empire with their own strong and often mixed cultures, with Greek as the dominant force in many areas of life. True, descendants of Roman army veterans with Latin names (e.g. Tertius, Rom 16:22) appear in the church at Corinth; Roman officials are not inconspicuous in Acts, Pilate is a key figure in the gospel story, and the empire sometimes broods over the scene, as in Revelation, or is an acknowledged presence, as in i Peter and Philippians; but even so, Roman cultural penetration is not deep in the circles from which the NT comes.
On the other hand, some of them show knowledge of Greek literary forms. Thus, there is a good case for saying that the gospels have affinities with Roman and Greek lives of celebrated figures (Burridge 1992). To judge from books of the period, Luke's preface (1:1—4) indicates that he saw himself as providing a kind of handbook about Jesus, whether for the Christian community or for a wider public (Alexander 1993). Mark shows signs of a degree of training in rhetoric as taught in the Greek schools of the period (Beavis 1989), and the same may be true of Paul (Betz 1979). These writers, for all the Jewishness of their thought and culture, were dependent also on the Greek culture of the setting in which they had been formed—and unselfconsciously so. In their very different ways—and the same variety is found among Jewish writers of the period—they drew upon Greek models. They were part and parcel of their habitat. Partly because of this close interweaving of Judaism and Hellenism by this time, it is not always easy to assign a given feature of a NT book to Jewish or Greek influence. It can still be discussed, for example, whether the prologue of the Gospel of John owes more to the Jewish tradition of 'wisdom' writing or to Greek philosophical discourse of a Platonist kind; and though current
4. Yet the obstacle referred to above is modified once we realize that in the first century there was no impenetrable wall between Greek language and Jewishness, or indeed between Jewish and Greek cultures. It is only fair to say that some aspects of the first-century situation, even quite important ones, remain obscure and contentionus. But two major facts are clear. First, Palestine, at least as far as the towns were concerned, had become deeply affected by Greek culture during the three centuries before the time of Jesus. It showed itself in public matters such as civic architecture (e.g. Herod's
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is biblical from end to end, and the characters they depict evoke familiar scriptural figures, most obviously Hannah (i Sam 2) in the case of Mary, but also couples such as Abraham and Sarah and Manoah and his wife (Jdt 13), who serve to create an ethos of profound biblical piety and solid embeddedness in history for the life of Jesus which follows. Luke is deeply imbued with biblical language and the biblical story.
opinion tends to the former opinion, the matter is immediately complicated by the understanding that the wisdom tradition itself had already been open to strands of Platonist thinking (Hengel 1974; Meyers and Strange 1981).
6. Attempts to produce more exotic sources for central early Christian ways of thinking or behaving have failed to earn a permanent place in our picture of the time. The suggestion is made that Paul's ideas on baptism, seeing it in terms of dying and rising with Christ (Rom 6:3-11), and perhaps John's on the eucharist, in terms of eating and drinking Christ's flesh and blood (6: 51—8), have links to supposed beliefs of mystery cults or other esoteric sects, but the chronological difficulties in making some of these connections (especially if gnostic links are introduced) can scarcely be removed and the match of mental worlds is a long way from being exact (Wagner 1967; Wedderburn 1987). At points like these, there must be space for real Christian originality. On any showing, Paul and John were figures of great creativity. Equally, whatever the roots and affinities of his teaching, the impact of Jesus and his followers in the years following his lifetime was so great and so novel that it is vain to hope that every aspect of thought about him, every item of Christian observance, can be shown to be derived easily and directly from phenomena already present in one circle or another in the vastly diverse religious scene of the first-century Mediterranean world. Jesus, the new, unique factor, produced new patterns, new ways of looking at the world. In the gospel's own words, it really was a case of new wine even when there might be old bottles to contain it.
9. The latter comes out in passages such as Stephen's speech (Acts 7), with its survey of Jewish history presented in a manner reminiscent of numerous Jewish writings (most notably and extensively the contemporary historian Josephus), including its mixture of example and warning. In the NT, the same feature appears in Hebrews, most explicitly in ch. ii.
10. In the NT it is plain that we are reading the work of people soaked in the stories, images, themes and language of the Jewish Scriptures (chiefly in their Greek translation). This sense of thorough permeation comes across nowhere more strongly than in the Revelation of John, where there are no quotations yet almost everything is owed to a disciplined reflection on the books of Ezekiel, Zechariah, and Daniel in their own symbolic and linguistic terms. To call it pastiche would be to undervalue the degree of ingenuity and visionary creativity displayed in this reminting of old motifs in the light of Jesus and beliefs about his person and significance (Farrer 1949; Sweet 1979). 11. The Jewish background of the NT writings comes out as clearly and distinctively as anywhere in the cosmic framework within which their reflection on Jesus and his achievement is set. It is true that much Jewish religious energy went into the minutiae of the application of the Law to daily living, both in spheres that we should call secular and in matters of plain religious observance: Judaism drew no line between the two as far as the applicability of the Law was concerned. In other words, Judaism was (and is) a faith and a lifestyle that viewed the present with intense seriousness and subjected daily conduct to the closest scrutiny (Sanders 1985, 1992).
7. Let us look a little more closely at some of the varieties of Hellenized Jewishness, now Christianized, that are visible to us in the NT. With the possible exception of the author of Luke-Acts (and even he was imbued with Jewish lore and culture), every one of the main NT writers was almost certainly Jewish in birth and upbringing. But they exhibit a variety of styles of Jewishness as currently found in various parts of the Jewish world. None of them matches the sophisticated Platonized mentality that Philo of Alexandria was bringing to bear on traditional Jewish themes and biblical texts at precisely the time of Christianity's birth. But Matthew's gospel, for example, with its many scriptural quotations, is the work of someone skilled in the contemporary scribal techniques of biblical interpretation, as abundant examples in the Dead Sea scrolls have demonstrated (Stendahl 1968; Goulder 1974). The kind of training to which they testify, in a work written in Greek, comes most naturally from a Syrian context, affected by the methods elaborated in nearby Palestine and by issues (of law observance) that were hotly debated in the sectarian life of the Jewish heartland in the period (Sanders 1992). Paul and John show similar expertise in the handling of scriptural texts, and the former tells of his background in Pharisaism (Phil 3:5), which operated in a thought-world of such interpretation. John's gospel can be seen as a thoroughgoing reworking of scriptural themes and symbols (light, life, bread, shepherd, lamb), applying them to the determinative figure of Jesus.
12. But alongside this concern with the details of present living, and to our eyes perhaps at variance with it, we find, sometimes (as at Qumran) in the same circles, an equally intense interest in the future destiny of the individual, of Israel, and indeed of the world as a whole. This concern with the future and with the cosmic dimension is part and parcel of the Jewish mentality which the first Christians inherited, and both in many of its characteristics and in its strength it differentiated Judaism from other speculative systems and 'endexpectations' of the time. This strength is generally thought to be closely related to the cohesiveness of the Jewish people
(despite geographical dispersion) and to the many national catastrophes and disappointments they had endured. These pressures gave rise to extravagant and even desperate hopes of divine intervention and the restoration of Israel. But the power and grandeur of this understanding was enhanced by the strong underlying tradition of monotheism. It was the one God of the universe whose purpose would soon be fulfilled (Rowland 1982).
13. Christian expressions of this world-outlook, centring on the figure of Jesus as God's agent in the hoped-for intervention, are to be found in one form or another in most of the NT books, most notably in the Revelation, a work that is (apart
8. Luke's reliance on the traditional Scriptures comes out in an ability to write in a Septuagintal style where the context demands it. So, while the stories of the birth of John Baptist and Jesus (1-2) contain no biblical quotations, their language
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about the appropriation of the old Scriptures—the agreed data—to their picture of things; no wonder the Scriptures were the battleground in the struggle to decide whose right it was to inherit the mantle of Israel's history and God-given privileges.
from the letters in chs. 2-3) wholly couched in the idiom of apocalyptic, focused on the heavenly realities and the consummation about to be revealed.
14. But this perspective is by no means confined to Revelation. Jesus himself is depicted as imbued with it in all the gospels, but especially in the first three (Mk 13; Mt 24; Lk 17, 21; but also Jn 5:24—7). Not only does it therefore carry his authority, but its presence as an important constituent in these works lends to each of them as a whole an apocalyptic character: if the modern reader is inclined to skip over these passages, that is simply a symptom of the gap between then and now. Moreover, the actual expression of this feature goes well beyond the chapters that are formally labelled 'apocalyptic', extending, for example, to parables which look forward to cosmic judgement (eg Mt 13:36—43; 25:1—46; Lk 12:35—40). This placing of apocalyptic material cheek by jowl with narrative is already found in Jewish models such as Daniel and serves to place the story as a whole against a cosmic backcloth: we may seem to be reading about events in Galilean villages, but in fact the story is set in the context of the whole universe, heaven and earth and Hades. What is being described has a meaning far beyond that of earthly events and words, however impressive or profound. Further, while the Gospel of John has little explicit apocalyptic material in a formal sense, and its precise literary background is not easily defined, there is a good case for saying that in this work Jesus is seen in his entire career as a manifestation of the divine from heaven—with the consummation of God's purposes both embodied and so concretely anticipated in his life and death. It is a revelatory work par excellence (Meeks in Ashton (ed.) 1986; Ashton 1991). 15. Paul too clearly works within an eschatological framework that is apocalyptic or revelatory in character, that is, he sees history, under God's energetic providence, moving rapidly to a climax of judgement and of renewal for his people; and in expressing this conviction he uses the revelatory imagery familiar, in various forms and combinations, in Judaism. There will be judgement according to moral deserts (2 Cor 5:10; Rom 2:16); there will be a resurrection seen as the transformation of God's faithful ones into the form of spiritual bodies (i Cor 15:35-56); there will even be what amounts to a new creation (2 Cor 5:17; Gal 6:15).
17. The attaching of a hitherto future hope to the career of Jesus, now past, and to the life of the church, the people that stemmed from him, was a decisive shift; all the more so when (as we shall see) that career was by no means the obvious match to the terms of that hope. In order to accomplish the shift, the apparatus or imagery of apocalyptic was the most readily available tool. So: Jesus was cast (and had perhaps cast himself) in the role of instigator of the fulfilment of God's purpose; the resurrection process began in his own rising on the third day; the Spirit of God, whose outpouring in a new God-given vitality was associated with the coming consummation, was already experienced in the Christian groups (i Cor 12:1—13; R°m 8); judgement could be seen as linked to the act of adherence to Jesus or the refusal to make that act—to accept the shelter of his gift of overwhelming grace was to come safely to the far side of judgement and into a state of reconciliation with God (Rom 5:1—11; 2 Cor 5:17—21; Jn5:24). It made a breathtaking offer and no wonder it was put in the most audacious terms.
18. Paul and John saw the implications of this reworking of old categories more clearly than others: it is certainly carried through in their work more thoroughly than in any other of the NT writings. For both of them, concentration on the decisiveness of Jesus is combined with a sense of driving on towards an assured end. The Jewish framework of the one God of the universe, the achieving of whose purpose of salvation will assuredly be realized, is preserved intact. What is new is, first, that it centres on Jesus and is seen as visibly guaranteed by his life, death, and resurrection (and that very attachment to an actual human career, capable inevitably of numerous assessments, opened the door immediately to controversy); and, second, that the fulfilment now has both an urgency and an institutional frame (the church). Only the Qumran sect could rival it in Judaism in this sense of urgency and expectancy, and that group lacked universality of vision and missionary drive, so that its failure to survive the Jewish rebellion of 66—73 CE is in no way surprising. By that time, the followers of Jesus, with their openness to all-comers, Jew and Gentile alike, were well established in the main towns and cities of the Mediterranean world.
16. For both Paul and John, especially, this picture is linked strikingly to the coming of Jesus and in effect given a new shape as a result of the conviction that the fulfilment of God's purpose centres on him. This conviction necessitates an intensifying of the apocalyptic sense and a shift in its temporal framework. If Jesus is the decisive revelation of God and agent of his purpose, then the process of cosmic consummation is already under way and those who adhere to him embody the fulfilment of Israel's hope. Here is the essential (and radical) amendment to the Jewish picture of things that makes for Christian distinctiveness. It may have taken some decades to be widely manifest and institutionally plain, but from our earliest source (the letters of Paul) the Christian movement was on its own new path. From a Jewish point of view, this was a fatal distortion of the heritage—especially when, already for Paul, it involved the free inclusion of Gentiles within the new people of God. From the Christian side, it is the goal to which all has tended. No wonder Christians immediately had to set
19. Only in some of the later books of the NT (i and 2 Tim, Titus, 2 Pet) do we begin to get a sense of the slackening of the kind of dynamism we have been noticing, a loss of the creative theological vision which had set the people of Jesus on their own distinctive path. The church is here just beginning to be the defender of a system, of both thought and organization, rather than the originator of a novel response to God's action in the world. Sociology teaches us to see such a development as inevitable (von Campenhausen 1969; Holmberg 1990). It is a remarkable fact about the Gospel of John that, in these same last years of the first century, it is able to produce a more thoroughly creative reworking of the traditional Jewish pattern of history, in the light of Jesus, than any other early Christian writing. Anyone inclined to think in terms of singletrack, linear development should reflect that, with regard to
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the basic perspectives that we have been discussing, we find an essential community of mind between Paul, the first Christian writer of all, and John, writing towards the end of the period.
problems, such as divorce and the scope of generosity. While the Christian churches were a far closer network than any other organization of the time that is at all comparable (and this is surely a major factor in their success, both now and later), held together by visits, letters, and a measure of supervisory responsibility felt by founders and leaders and by one church for another, they were nevertheless often strung out across great distances and surely were compelled to engage in much independent decision-making. As letters such as Galatians and i Corinthians show very well, the independence and the supervision couldfind them selves on acollision course. Many of the NT writings were indeed both an instrument of cohesion (as in due course they recommended themselves to a variety of communities) and a product of difference (in so far as they were designed to meet local and transient needs, or to counter or correct lines taken in other writings and places).