Customer Reviews

The Untold Story of the New Testament Church: An Extraordinary Guide to Understanding the New Testament

5 star:		(29)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Most Christians have no idea what really happened in the first-century church. In fact, we have many misconceptions about the early church because our approach to the New Testament is misguided.

The reason for this is simple, yet mostly unknown. The books of the New Testament are not arranged in chronological order! Paul's letters, for instance, which make up most of the New Testament, are arranged according to size instead of chronologically. Therefore, it's difficult to know what happened when because we don't read our New Testaments chronologically. To put it another way, we simply don't know "the story" of the first-century church because we have never read it in its historical order.

Further, because our New Testament is not in chronological order, we cannot understand the letters from the perspective of the people who received them. Nor from the perspective of those who wrote them. We are ignorant of the cultural, the social, and the political environment behind the New Testament books. Instead, we learn chapters and verses, out of context. This is one reason why there are so many divisions in the church today. It is because anyone can prove any doctrine or practice by cutting and pasting verses together when they are lifted out of their historical, chronological context.

There is now a remedy for this. Frank Viola has written a masterful New Testament handbook that puts the entire first-century story together in an understandable way. In, The Untold Story of the New Testament Church, Frank takes all the New Testament books and puts them in their proper chronological order. He then "fills in" all the historical details behind each book, giving us a complete picture of what really happened in the first century. The book of Acts is weaved together with all of the New Testament letters, giving us a first-hand "you-are-there" narrative of the entire saga of the early church. The book includes maps, dates, and much more. After reading you feel as if you were transported back in time. Now each NT book comes alive, you understand what is going on, why Paul or James or Peter is writing these letters.

This book revolutionized my understanding of the New Testament, and I believe it will do the same for all who read it! We have used this book as a family reading through it from cover to cover. The book has the NT books listed in their order and we at each point stop and read that NT book from chapter to chapter. We have thoroughly enjoyed reading the NT using the book as a handbook.

I have to disagree with the previous reviewer. I have read Gene Edwards books on the early church and there is a night and day difference between this volume and those books. Viola documents his narrative with a vast amount of scripture and historical texts that appear in endnotes after every chapter. This book draws heavily from the research of Frederick Fyvie Bruce, who I studied in college. I have a friend who teaches seminary and he is using this volume for his course on New Testament survey. If you are looking for a well-researched, documented narrative of the early church as well as a complete picture of the historical setting behind each epistle based on solid biblical scholarship, this book is a great starting point.

This book is one of the best pieces of biblical scholarship I have seen in years but it reads very easily. I felt like I was watching a movie and was carted back into the firstcentury meeting the characters of the new testament. It gave me a very different look at the new testament. I kept saying to myself, how did I miss this? I never saw that before? The endnotes are especially interesting because they give a whole lot of historical references and added information. The only fault I give this book is that a lot of the information in the endnotes should have been added to the body of the book. It took some time to keep flipping back to the endnotes to see what was all there as I was reading. This didn't affect the score. It's still a great book. Anyone who likes to study the bible indepthly should read this book. It will give them a whole new view.

The "Untold Story of the New Testament Church" is one of the best written, most informative books I've ever read. It is eye opening, I would like to get it into the hands of every pastor and elder I know. I have already purchased three additional copies to pass around. This is must reading for anyone wanting to come into a deeper understanding of the early history of the church.

I have always had trouble understanding the Bible. I grew up in the church and was always puzzled by the complexity of the sacred book. Someone recommended this book to me and I read it in one day!! I literally couldn't put it down! It was an experience of being brought back to the early church and watching the whole drama play out like a movie. After reading this book I can read the Bible (the New Test. portion) with ease. I feel like I personally know the characters. I can't say enough about this book. I just wish I had read it many years ago. It has changed my entire outlook on the Bible. I also recommend Blue Like Jazz which was another wonderful read.

I will never read the New Testament the same after laying my hands on this work. I've studied holy scripture since I was in high school, and after reading this historical masterpiece I felt as though I had never understood the thought of scripture before. The book opened up a new world for me. This book and Velvet Elvis are classic mind-openers.

I have been a Christian since I was a child and grew up learning the stories of the Bible. It is only after reading this book that my entire view of scripture has been re-adjusted and changed. The Bible is now a living book for me. For the first time I actually feel like I undertand Paul's letters. I just read the reviews and am unsure why Amazon put that critical review as the spotlight especially when there have been so many positive reviews on this book. I too have read Gene Edwards and this book is nothing like them. If you want to understand Paul's letters this is the book to get.

Viola's epic volume "The Untold Story of the New Testament Church" is absolutely the best little guide to understanding the order of events in the life of the first-century ekklesia!

Viola relies on the scholarship of F.F. Bruce, Donald Guthrie, and A.T. Robinson for the dating of the books. He wonderfully weaves together the book of Acts with the Epistles to create one amazing story. Viola follows the story of the church according to Acts and successfully places the epistles in their historical-cultural context. Enabling the reader to better apply the Scriptures to their life.

The New Testament comes alive in movie form as Viola uses some of the best N.T. scholarship to reassemble the entire story of the church as it happened in the beginning! I found that this book was able to give me deep insight into the lives and the circumstances behind the writings of the letters of the Apostles.

Viola helps the reader along with his use of maps and background information on people and places. His book is easy to read. You follow his graphic retelling of Acts and stop to read an epistle at every point in time the book was believed to have been written. His book is fluid and he makes little to no assumptions about the chronology of the events.
(I strongly recommend you read a contemporary translation like the NLT or the Message when following along in the N.T. in order that you might receive a fresh glimspse into the motivation and passion behind the letters. We tend to only see what we've always seen when we read from the same translation.)

I connected with Paul's trials and tribulations in ways I never had before. Many times I had to stop reading just to reflect on the sufferings of Paul and ask myself if I could have endured what he endured.
From the conflict and turmoil of the immature and immoral at Corinth... to the Judaizers and "super apostles" who opposed Paul at every turn... you will not want to stop reading until the story is complete.

However, as Viola points out, the story is not complete. The Bride of Christ is still in a battle bewteen good and evil. The story of the early church is a reminder of the trials that are inevitable for the Christian. Yet... the Bride will endure and will persevere unto the end. This is not a fairy tale or an ancient bedtime story for the religious. It is the ongoing story of the New Testament church. It is our story!

I also want to recommend:

Going to the Root: Nine Proposals for Radical Church Renewal
The Centrality of Jesus Christ (Works of T. Austin-Sparks)
Rethinking The Wineskin: The Practice of the New Testament Church
Pagan Christianity: Exploring the Roots of Our Church Practices
Paul's Idea of Community: The Early House Churches in Their Cultural Setting, Revised Edition


NOTE: Viola includes Paul's brief trip to Spain. There is little evidence for this and it is certainly a debatable claim among scholars. Some scholars believe that Paul was never released from Rome for a fourth apostolic journey and the letters to Timothy and Titus were written during his initial house arrest in Rome before his death under the reign of Nero.

This is a fantastic book. If you really want to understand the New Testament, you can glean bits of information from a sermon here, a convention there, or get it all mixed up by watching a movie (normally not concerned with accuracy as much as drama). But you can save yourself time and frustration by reading this well-written, engaging, and often fascinating book.

This last year I have been exploring the Hebrew roots of Christianity, reading somewhere between 75 - 100 books. (Such books as Our Father Abraham: Jewish Roots of the Christian Faith, New Light on the Difficult Words of Jesus: Insights from His Jewish Context and Yeshua: A Guide to the Real Jesus and the Original Church, excel, filled thoroughly with information on their specific topics.) But even after so much reading, I've highlighted nearly every page of this book! The interplay with society and history, and the original meaning and progression of the New Testament letters is thought-provoking and motivating.

This book's clear, enlightening manner will answer questions you've had since becoming born-again (for me that's 29 years). More importantly, it will help correct thinking you were sure you were right about.

For your personal study and understanding, I recommend this book right up there with getting a Concordance!

Pastors, Bible Study leaders, Youth group leaders - prevent misunderstandings of the New Testament from taking root early, or help your students uproot wrong ideas. Though this is not a text book (and the writing is fluid and accomodating) it could easily be used as one. Get this book. See for yourself that it is a crucial addition to your ministry material.

I have to admit, I was very disappointed by this book. I expected a lot more after reading "Pagan Christianity" "Reimagining Church" and the many positive reviews on this site. I expected my view of the NT to be completely revolutionized. But in my case, that just didn't happen. In fact, I feel that this book just doesn't live up to all the hype. There are several reasons why I didn't care for this book.

First, I thought this book was set up and written very strange. Many times, this book read more like a novel than anything else. I know this book was never intended to be a scholarly work, but I think this information could have been made a lot more interesting. I found myself getting bored. I also found the information to be repetitious, there was nothing new here. You can get the same information from the book introduction of any good study Bible. I expected to be underlining almost everything in this book, but the truth is, I underlined very little. There were a few things that I found interesting, but no where near what I expected. This book just wasn't able to hold my interest.

In my opinion, this is not one of Viola's strongest works. This book is okay. But in my opinion, there's nothing here that's earth shattering. My advice would be to skip this book and pick up a copy of "Pagan Christianity" instead.