The New Testament in Antiquity: A Survey of the New Testament within Its Cultural Contexts

Gary M. Burge, Lynn H. Cohick, and Gene L. Green, The New Testament in Antiquity: A Survey of the New Testament within Its Cultural Contexts (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2009).

There are a myriad of introductions to the New Testament and each has its own special niche audience or purpose. The volumes by Werner Georg Kümmel, Helmut Koester, or Raymond Brown are written with academic interests in mind and are heavily footnoted. There are a host of mid-level introductions by scholars like Luke Timothy Johnson, Carl Holladay, David deSilva, Carson/Moo, and Achtemeier/Green/Thompson. Bart Ehrman and Stephen L. Harris have both published popular introductions suitable for non-confessional undergraduate courses. Texts by Robert Gundry, Elwell/Yarbrough, and Berding/Williams have been used for evangelical undergraduate courses. This very brief survey is just scratching the surface.

The New Testament in Antiquity is most at home in an undergraduate course on the New Testament at an institution with a high view of Scripture. It should also be useful within a number of seminary settings. All three authors—Gary M. Burge, Lynn H. Cohick, and Gene L. Green—teach at Wheaton College. They maintain a high view of Scripture which is evident in this volume: “Thus, it is appropriate for us to refer to the New Testament (as well as the entire Bible) as Scripture, or the divinely inspired Word of God” (16). For this reason, The New Testament in Antiquity would not be a very fitting textbook at a non-confessional institution.

What I see as the main distinction between this textbook and its competitors is the clear emphasis on material culture. Nearly every page features a photograph, map, or other graphic designed to shed light on the New Testament’s ancient context. I’m sure many numismatists will welcome this book as well (cf. page 93). Of course other textbooks have incorporated similar items, yet I have not seen another book that does it to the same extent as The New Testament in Antiquity. To better understand the book’s layout and visual features, see the following two adjacent pages (350-51) on Philippians that I included below:

Whenever I receive a new book, I often look closely at the quality of its construction. As one who has done quite a bit of bookbinding, I am usually disappointed with the poor quality of books produced by a lot of publishers—even hardcovers. Yet The New Testament in Antiquity is a full-color edition printed on solid, thick pages and the binding is actually sewn together. This is a volume that should last awhile. Considering the number of images, maps, and charts included in this book, the retail price of $49.99 (much less at Amazon) is very reasonable.

The book’s chapters are given in the following sequence (I also included the initial of the author’s last name to indicate who wrote each chapter):

1. Studying the New Testament (B)
2. The Historical Setting of the New Testament (B)
3. The World of Jesus in His Jewish Homeland (B)
4. The Mediterranean World of the Apostle Paul (G)
5. Sources for the Story of Jesus (B)
6. The Story of Jesus (B)
7. The Teachings of Jesus (B)
8. The Gospel according to Matthew (C)
9. The Gospel according to Mark (B)
10. The Gospel according to Luke (G)
11. The Gospel according to John (B)
12. The Acts of the Apostles (G)
13. Paul of Tarsus: Life and Teachings (G)
14. The Letter to the Galatians (C)
15. 1 and 2 Thessalonians (G)
16. 1 Corinthians (G)
17. 2 Corinthians (C)
18. The Letter to the Romans (B)
19. Ephesians and Colossians (C)
20. Philippians and Philemon (G)
21. The Pastoral Letters (C)
22. The Letter of James (C)
23. The Letter to the Hebrews (C)
24. 1 and 2 Peter and Jude (G)
25. The Letters of John (B)
26. The Revelation of John (C)
27. Preservation and Communication of the New Testament (BCG)

As one can see from the table of contents, there are a number of introductory chapters to help contextualize the message of the New Testament in its historical, cultural, and literary settings. The first third of the book deals with background before a single book of the NT is discussed at length. Though I understand this to be an advantage, teachers looking to use this as a textbook for a course will need to keep that in mind. The actual order in which this volumes deals with the NT books is a little strange. First, the Gospels and Acts are discussed in canonical order. But when one gets to the Pauline letters, it becomes clear that chronology, rather than canon, dictates the order. Why did they prefer chronological order here, but not in the first five books? Why isn’t Luke-Acts treated together? In the Pauline section, I do commend them, though, for not sticking with the old Colossians/Philemon grouping, but reading Colossians with Ephesians and Philemon with Philippians. The book’s last chapter is a nice survey of how the New Testament was written, transmitted, canonized, edited, and translated today. The usual indices follow.

One will also notice that the three authors have each tackled a variety of topics. Each author writes on at least one Gospel, one of Paul’s epistles, and one of the catholic letters. They all share the burden of the final chapter, “Preservation and Communication of the New Testament.”

The contents of a typical chapter of The New Tstament in Antiquity usually include a short outline of the NT book, a survey of the NT book’s contents, and various sidebars or excurses that deal with cultural or theological matters. Each chapter ends with miscellaneous data such as authorship and date, discussion questions, a short bibliography including introductory and advanced secondary sources, and footnotes for the chapter. The authors have done a good job of limiting the number of footnotes to only a few per chapter and the bibliography usually points to a few monographs from a wide spectrum of scholarly sources. It is a little odd that they discuss the authorship and date at the end of each chapter and not the beginning, but I think it works well since it acquaints the reader with the content of the NT book before telling them about debatable circumstances of its origins.

The authors do a decent job of discussing various views, and it is not surprising that they generally come to optimistic conclusions about the text. In the section on the sources of Jesus, the authors address the synoptic problem and survey the usual findings of source criticism on the Gospels; they conclude that we should approach the hypothetical Q with caution. On the usefulness of the Fourth Gospel for reconstructing the historical Jesus, they argue that John should be read in a rabbinic context and “[t]he best reconstructions of Jesus’ life today take seriously John’s claim as an eyewitness of that life” (117). This, of course, is probably a reference to Bauckham’s Jesus and the Eyewitnesses. In the chapters on Paul, they address issues of authorship and give reasons for and against various letters’ authenticity, but ultimately they do not question Pauline authorship of the Deuteropaulines or the Pastorals.

Here are a few more loose thoughts on The New Testament in Antiquity. The choice of using the TNIV was a good move, but an obvious one for a Zondervan publication. There is a nice short introduction to the New Perspective on pages 264-65. The chapter on Revelation is put together well; it contains various ways of reading the book and discusses some of the eschatological theologies that have arisen out of the book.

Overall, I highly recommend The New Testament in Antiquity for both individual study and classroom use in Christian colleges and seminaries. The aesthetic appeal is matched by what I think is a nicely written and thorough introduction. I cannot endorse the use of visual media enough. The photographs, maps, coins, charts, and drawings are outstanding and can only help students better understand the ancient world of the NT. Though the book’s conclusions come down to the right of mainline scholarship, they are generally fair to varying opinions keep the student on track. I suspect that this fall professors in introductory NT classes will view this as a useful textbook as well.

Zondervan has also posted an interview with the authors on YouTube here.