Customer Reviews

Survey of the New Testament, A

5 star:		(14)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Zondervan's entry in the NT survey textbook field has many features to commend it: an opinionated evangelical scholar who writes well and is not afraid to share his conclusions even while acknowledging other viewpoints, a good number of photos and illustrations (thank you, Zondervan), and a good size for either a one-semester or two-semester survey course. The bibliographies feature some good selections for further reading.

Gundry is at his best in the early background chapters of the book. While much more could be given by way of background, Gundry does a relatively good job of providing a brief, concise overview of several topics. His chapters on the gospels and Acts are suitably detailed.

Nonetheless, there are significant flaws. First, the level of detail drops off dramatically when Gundry gets to Paul's epistles. Second, Gundry occasionally promotes some ... well, interesting (to be charitable) but uncommon viewpoints, as in his comments regarding the author of the Gospel of John's calculation of time. (Gundry's system puts Jesus on the cross in the early morning hours even though he admits that this would not have been a standard reckoning of time.)

The book's biggest drawback, though, comes from its narrow perspective: Gundry only in the briefest sense touches upon current issues in biblical criticism. Consequently, the reader gets a good sense of some of the traditional views (particularly those common to non-denominational evangelicalism) but is given little sense of other traditional views or contemporary challenges to those views. For example, Gundry rarely tackles challenges to traditional views of authorship, and when he does so, it's in the most superficial sense imaginable. Another example lies in his treatment of the book of Revelation: Gundry outlines differences among premillenialists quite well, but you'd never know from his discussion the reasons why other evangelicals take other millenarian positions.

In the end, Gundry provides an engaging overview of some evangelical points of view, but not others, and without tackling many non-evangelical viewpoints. For what it is, this is a very good textbook; you just may be left wishing for more.

The book is an excellent survey of the New Testament text. The book presents various opinions on issues presented that are relevant to the study of the New Testament such as the various types of higher criticism. The book also highlights many of the important theological themes throughout the New Testament from an orthodox evangelical prespective. I have gone through the book three times now and I have benefited from reading it every time. The book presents a historically accurate and orthodox survey of the New Testament. This has been confirmed to me by reading various books on Church history such as "The Story of Christian Theology" by Roger Olson and "Gods Peoples" by Spickard & Cragg.

An excellent book that sets out explains to the reader the history of the New Testament as well as carries on a dialogue with the text itself in which the book focuses on theology, major themes, and background for the reader to better understand the text. A fantastic feature of this book is that it contains many different points of view on the various subjects. I highly recommend this book to anyone who wishes to read an Orthodox survey of the New Testament.

I am a bit disappointed that the index of this book is three pages long. There is a ton of info but you can't access it easily unless you want to spend countless hours flipping pages or trying to practice your photographic memory skills. The Glossary of Pronunciations is longer!! I realize this is a textbook but I have read other textbooks on the New Testament that were easier to digest. I do like the end of chapter study guides and discussion but you get 5 stars on the snooze factor for the format.

As far as "textbooks" go, Gundry shows mercy on students by making a textbook that I actually look forward to reading. I have no problems with the book whatsoever but I just could not bring myself to give a "textbook" 5 stars. First, the pictures he uses -and there are a lot of them- really bring the New Testament-times scenery to life. Especially considering my Old Testament Survey class textbook was all black-and-white...uh, can you say bo-ring? Also, I like the way the chapters begin with study goals so that while you read the chapter, you always have in mind the main points to remember. The chapters all end with a list of the "People [and Terms] to Remember" which is a great study tool as well as the discussion questions. There's also a list of references "For Further Investigation" listed each chapter's end that comes in real handy when searching for sources for a research paper.

A Survey of the New Testament: 4th Edition (Kindle Edition), Robert H. Gundry.

Some philosopher with too much time on their hands said that if you gave 1 million monkeys 1 million type-writers they would eventually come out with the full works of Shakespeare. Apparently due to an overly-optimistic misunderstanding of this saying, one of those monkeys was employed as the editor of the Kindle edition of this book. Someone showed the monkey how to cut and paste, then left it to its work.

It's unfortunate, as the book is a valuable introductory college-level textbook, and I'm sure the printed edition must be much better. Luckily one of the early chapters teaches a bit on textual criticism, and these skills must be used to glean the original, un-jumbled text from the mangled mess that is presented on my Kindle screen.

Footnotes appear in random positions mid-text. Spaces are added mid-word and missed out in other places. Some headings appear in the same font as body text making section changes difficult to spot. Fragments of text from several paragraphs previous appear inserted without warning in the middle of later paragraphs. Words are end-of-line hyphenated in the middle of the page. The diagrams and photos are almost completely illegible. You can't navigate to the table of contents from the `Go to' menu. Seriously Zondervan, you should be ashamed to publish a book in this condition. Would you publish a bound copy like this and put it on the shelves at Borders? I know the Kindle places limitations on what publishers can do, but I've read similar textbooks on Kindle that are presented much more clearly and error-free.

One other minor gripe: the text is littered with `helpful' pronunciation guides that would have us all drawling like George Bush (Via Dolorosa: VEE-uh doh-luh-ROH-suh). We're not all Americans you know! These pronunciation guides, seemingly intended to be footnotes, also pop up in totally inappropriate places in the body of the text.

Other than all these faults, this is a good introductory text. I disagreed with many of Gundry's interpretations, particularly of parables, and I wish he would give more consideration to other interpretations, especially as this is written as an introduction for students largely unfamiliar with the Bible.

This study guide is definitely good, but it lacks things. It would be nice if the author would've provided the definitions of a lot of key terms and places. This guide also lacks a lot of dates which are in the textbook. Although, it does sum up each chapter of the textbook really well, it needs a lot more in it. Buy it if you wish, but you will be disappointed because of the lack of detail.

While I would give the book itself (which I also own) 4 stars, I can only give the kindle version 2. The book itself is a good solid survey of the New Testament. It contains many beautiful charts, pictures, and maps. The introductory material about the social, religious, and historical background of the New Testament is almost worth the purchase price alone. The chapters on the books of the Bible were of uneven quality. Some were amazingly deep and of high quality. Others were surprisingly shallow.

The reason that the kindle version gets only two stars is that although the text is there, the charts, maps and pictures are tiny and there is no way to make them larger. In fact, the charts, which are definitely one of the highlights of the book, are unreadable they are so tiny. In addition, the captions of the pictures are too small to read. Perhaps I'm just not smart enough to figure out how to make them larger (neither making the page full screen nor changing the font size has any effect on the pictures). Like I said, I also own the book and only bought the kindle version because the book is too heavy to tote around the globe with me.

I'm not sure who is responsible for producing the kindle version of the book, but it's pretty disappointing.

I believe that Robert Gundry has written the best introduction to the New Testament for several reasons:

1. easy to read, but not lacking in content
2. not intimidating, yet still academic
3. wonderful pictures! :)

I read the 3rd edition when I was in college. However, I like the 4th edition much better. Compared to other surveys... this one is an over-all superb treatment of the New Testament. There are plenty of illustrations, maps, timelines, and charts. The fourth edition has updated bibliographies, maps, pictures, and pronuciations of important terms. This introduction will help the reader to enter into the context of the New Testament and will strengthen your knowledge of the situations and circumstances of the original biblical author.

I recommend this book to the common man on the street... as well as the student who is able to give his time and energy to the study of the wonderful world of the New Testament.

I also recommend reading:
Grasping God's Word: A Hands-On Approach to Reading, Interpreting, and Applying the Bible
Apostle of the Crucified Lord: A Theological Introduction to Paul and His Letters
Holman Illustrated Bible Dictionary
Theology for the Community of God
The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?

Its a quick but effective outline of the new testaments main points, very good study guide tool and just to brush up on the basic main things when the mind begins to forget some things. It is worth to have.