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The New Testament Story

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The New Testament Story is an impressive survey. Starting from important historical considerations, such as the methods of writing during the gospel period, the author develops a consistent story of (1) how the New Testament (NT) canon developed, and (2) how the knowledge of Yeshua (or Jesus) grew in gospel times. I highly recommend this book because of the amazing way the author ties together ALL of the NT books, while keeping a consistent Jewish and historical perspective.

In some ways Prof. Witherington is an ideal candidate to write this text. He has written a many commentaries about important books in the NT; you will find a sampling of his work on these documents (Mark. Acts, Romans, and Revelation, just to name a few). In addition, Prof. Witherington has also done extensive "historical Yeshua" research.

The book is divided into two parts. The first part is a survey of the documents of the NT. The first chapter, which discusses writing in gospel times, is required reading. Prof. Witherington then discusses each NT scroll in chronological order. Generally he has early dates, and does provide reasons for all of them. Major themes for each scroll are given, as well as intended audience. The second part of the book builds a picture of major themes in NT stories. There is a large and useful chapter about how the NT writers and Yeshua used stories and concepts from the Tanach (or Old Testament). There is a large discussion about Peter and Paul. The book closes with major discussions about how both non-gospel (ie Paul, Acts) sources describe Yeshua and also how gospel sources describe Yeshua.

The strength of this book is the way Prof. Witherington ties everything together. Rather than just looking at how one author wrote about the Messiah, we can see how all of them did. You can really see how the message of the Messiah develops because the documents are discussed in chronological order. Prof. Witherington does a superlative job of linking all the documents together. Additionally, because he is a good historian, Prof. Witherington is well aware of the Jewish context of the Scriptures.

I was especially happy that the author chose to take a high view of Scripture. By this I mean that whenever a "problem" seems to manifest, he doesn't chicken out and say the Scripture erred. Rather, the author simply looks deeper, and resolves several problem passages. This is a good source of "Bible difficulties," although it is hardly encyclopedic.

You might not agree with all of his assertions. For example, I'm not so certain that Mark was really the first gospel. And people can argue all day about exact dates. But you will find that this is a solid conservative, historical, and biblically accurate description of the corpus of literature we call the NT. It is not a detailed NT introduction such as the excellent work by Cason, Moo, and Morris. But for a good handle on the historical background of the NT and how it ties into the entire canon, this is one of the best books around. I highly recommend this work for the beginner as well as the scholar.

I bought this book, looking for a textbook to teach a course "Survey of the New Testament" at a theological school in Nairobi, Kenya. Having read some other books by Witherington, I was expecting more. He spends some time discussing the story of how the New Testament came together, but doesn't really address the story told within the New Testament. Certainly, he briefly covers all of the New Testament books, but he doesn't tell us how these different writings tell the one story of Jesus and the meaning of his life, death and resurrection.

It seems that this small book came out of the research that he had done for the many commentaries and writings on Jesus and Paul that he has done. In other words, he didn't seem to do fresh research and thinking in putting this book together. He's simply assembled and simplified the findings that he'd done in his other work.

It's not a bad read, and one can learn from it. It's not particularly difficult. I don't think it is suitable as textbook for a New Testament Introduction course. But I'd recommend the writings on the New Testament from NT Wright over this book.

Excellent book for study along with Witherington's New Testament History! A necessary supplement for the serious Bible student!