NT Writings Research Articles

Crisis in Jerusalem? Narrative Criticism in New Testament Studies

HISTORICAL-CRITICAL STUDY of the New Testament recognized from the beginning that in the context of the great works even the best of NT writings cannot be considered For English speakers, the noble prose of the Authorized Version coupled with an idealized, romantic interpretation of the religious content of the NT kept this fact from the consciousness of literary critics and English departments that continue to treat the as literature within the boundaries of the Western literary canon. As a result, literary studies of the Bible are often considered spurious to the serious task of NT scholars: historical-critical analysis and theological interpretation. Though historical criticism tended to emphasize the development of NT writings out of smaller units of tradition and the correlation of such tradition histories with the emergence of distinctive religious language and theological ideas, it could not ignore altogether the challenge posed by ancient literature. What, if any, literary models did the various authors use in composing their works? How does a presumed genre shape the message which the author presents to the first-century reader? Attempts to answer these questions have created a flood of analyses of ancient literary remains that do not enjoy classical status, such as romances, fragments of ethnic histories, school books on rhetoric, papyrus letters, and the like. The study of ancient literary composition plays an important role in the task of redaction criticism. The exegete is asked to construct a theology of a given Gospel on the basis of the way in which the author has edited and arranged traditional materials. Usually such theologies

Luke and Isaiah

In the course of an inquiry into the origins of Luke's understanding of the poor I was forced to ask the question how far Luke might have been influenced not only by certain texts in Isaiah but also by wider themes. In answer to this question one is often referred to C. H. Dodd's According to the Scriptures, where he concluded that when NT authors quoted small OT texts they often did so with knowledge of larger passages or collections of passages from which the text was drawn. This principle has become a commonplace and is frequently used illegitimately to find ideas in the NT which are not otherwise discernible.1 The recent study of B. Lindars (‘The Place of the Old Testament in the Formation of New Testament Theology: Prolegomena’, N. T. S. xxiii (1977), 59–66) argues that NT writers had no interest in the meaning of the OT for its own sake, but simply quarried texts to support and illustrate a pre-existing NT theology. Both these views need to be kept in mind. It may be that each is correct in different places. What is needed is a closer study of the practice of individual authors and their use of different parts of the OT. Only then will it be possible to give any confident judgement of how much an NT author may have carried in the way of related ideas, theology and contextual understanding when he quotes or alludes to the OT.2

ΠΕΙΡΑΣΜΟΣ, The Lord's Prayer, and the Massah Tradition

Ch. Dodd in According to the Scriptures argues that the early Church had a distinctive method of biblical study. Quotations and citations of the OT were employed in oral tradition, and by some NT writers, as pointers indicating larger contexts or whole sections of scripture. That such sections of the OT were in common use is demonstrated by two or more NT authors independently referring to the same passage, although perhaps to different verses. Furthermore Dodd holds that the early Church used these longer passages to provide witness to ‘the determinate counsel of God which was fulfilled in the gospel facts’. This body of OT reference material, and its application to the NT events, underlies the theological expositions of the Church, especially that of Paul, the fourth evangelist, and the author of Hebrews.