The Face of New Testament Studies

1011 Pages·2004·26.146 MB·English

by  Scot McKnight, Grant R. Osborne

A Survey
of Recent Research
ace o
A SurveyR ecenRte search
o
£,dired by
ScoMtc Kniht
g
and
GranRt.O sborne
]8)
Baker Academic
diyj$k>no fBa �erPl lblishln9 Group
a
Graoo Rapids. Michigan
© 2004 by Scot McKnight and Grant R. Osborne
Published by Baker Academic
a division of Baker Publishing Group
P.O. Box 6287, Grand Rapids, MI 4951 6-6287
bakeracademic. com
ww.w
Ebook edition created 2011
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored
in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means for
example, electronic, photocopy, recording without the prior written
permission of the publisher. The only exception is brief quotations in
printed reviews.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is on file at the Li­
brary of Congress, Washington, D.C.
CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
List of Contributors
Preface
List of Abbreviations
Part Context of the New Testament
1:
Galilee and Judea: The Social World of Jesus
r.
Sean Freyne
The Roman Empire and Asia Minor
2.
David A. Fiensy
Part New Testament Hermeneutics
2:
3· Textual Criticism: Recent Developments
Eckhardj. Schnabel
4· Greek Grammar and Syntax
Stanley E. Porter
5· General Hermeneutics
Greg Clark
6 . Embodying the Word: Social-Scientific Interpretation of the New
Testament
David A. deSilva
7· The Old Testament in the New
Craig A. Evans
Part Jesus
3:
Jesus of Nazareth
8.
Scot McKnight
Modern Approaches to the Parables
9.
Klyne Snodgrass
The History of Miracles in the History of Jesus
I
o.
Graham H. Twe!ftree
John and Jesus
II.
Craig L. Blomberg
Part 4: Earliest Christianity
Acts : Many Questions , Many Answers
I2.
Steve Walton
James, Jesus' Brother
I3.
Bruce Chilton
Matthew: Christian Judaism or Jewish Christianity?
I4.
Donald A. Hagner
5 . Paul: Life and Letters
I
Bruce N. Fisk
Paul's Theology
I6.
james D. G. Dunn
Luke
I7.
Da rre II L. Bock
The Petrine Epistles: Recent Developments and Trends
I8.
Robert L. Webb
Mark's Gospel
I9.
Peter G. Bolt
Hebrews in Its First-Century Contexts: Recent Research
20.
George H. Guthrie
The Johannine Gospel in Recent Research
21.
Klaus Scholtissek
Recent Trends in the Study of the Apocalypse
22.
Grant R. Osborne
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22
Notes
Subject Index
Author Index
Scripture Index
CONTRIBUTORS
Craig L. Blomberg (Ph. D . , University of Aberdeen) is distinguished pro­
fessor of New Testament at Denver Seminary, Denver, Colorado.
Darrell L. Bock (Ph. D., University of Aberdeen) is research professor of
New Testament studies at Dallas Theological Seminary, Dallas, Texas.
Peter G. Bolt (Ph. D . , University of London) is head of New Testament at
Moore Theological College, Sydney, Australia.
Bruce Chilton (Ph.D., Cambridge University) is Bernard Iddings Bell Pro­
fessor of Religion at Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, New York.
Gregory A. Clark (Ph. D . , Loyola University Chicago) is professor of
philosophy at North Park University, Chicago, Illinois.
David A. deSilva (Ph. D . , Emory University) is professor of New Testa­
ment and Greek at Ashland Theological Seminary, Ashland, Ohio.
James D. G. Dunn (Ph.D., Cambridge University) is Emeritus Lightfoot
Professor of Divinity at the University of Durham, England.
Craig A. Evans (Ph.D., Claremont Graduate University) is Payzant Distin­
guished Professor of New Testament at Acadia Divinity College,
Wolfville, Nova Scotia, Canada.
David A. Fiensy (Ph. D., Duke University) is professor of New Testament
and Greek at Kentucky Christian College, Grayson, Kentucky.
Bruce N. Fisk (Ph. D., Duke University) is associate professor of New
Testament at Westmont College, Santa Barbara, California.
Sean Freyne ( S .T.D . , Saint Thomas University, Rome) is director of
Mediterranean and Near Eastern studies at Trinity College, Dublin, Ire­
land.
George H. Guthrie (Ph. D . , Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary) is
chair and Benjamin W. Perry Professor of Biblical Studies at Union
University, Jackson, Tennessee.
Donald A. Hagner (Ph.D., University of Manchester) is George Eldon
Ladd Professor of New Testament at Fuller Theological Seminary,
Pasadena, California.
Scot McKnight (Ph.D., University of Nottingham) is Karl A. Olsson Pro­
fessor of Religious Studies at North Park University, Chicago, Illinois.
Grant R. Osborne (Ph.D., University of Aberdeen) is professor of New
Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield, Illinois.
Stanley E. Porter (Ph.D., University of Sheffield) is president, dean, and
professor of New Testament at McMaster Divinity College, McMaster
University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.
Eckhard J. Schnabel (Ph. D . , University of Aberdeen) is associate pro­
fessor of New Testament at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, Deerfield,
Illinois.
Klaus Scholtissek (Ph. D., University of Munster) is professor of biblical
theology at the University of Cologne, Germany.
Klyne R. Snodgrass (Ph.D . , University of St. Andrews) is Paul W. Brandel
Professor of Biblical Literature at North Park Theological Seminary,
Chicago, Illinois.
Graham H. Twelftree (Ph.D., University of Nottingham) is professor of
New Testament at Regent University School of Divinity, Virginia Beach,
Virginia.
Steve Walton (Ph.D., University of Sheffield) is senior lecturer in Greek
and New Testament Studies at London School of Theology, England.
Robert L. Webb (Ph. D . , University of Sheffield) is adjunct professor of
New Testament at Tyndale Seminary, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
PREFACE
One of the editors of this volume has a friend who is a touring profes­
sional golfer, Kermit Zarley. He once asked Kermit a question about
putting. What Kermit said was impressive indeed, but the editor had no
idea what he meant by his careful description. And it certainly did not
help the amateur in his amateurish putting. Many students of the NT are
similarly bewildered in reading commentaries, monographs, and journal
articles. They ask, "Who is this scholar? What is that movement of schol­
arship about? Where do I find that source? How can I figure out what is
going on?" But it is not just students who are bewildered by the intri­
cacies and delicacies of scholarship. Fellow scholars are often bewildered
by their comrades in pens! What the Jesus scholar says can be totally per­
plexing to the Pauline scholar and to the J ohannine scholar and to the
Petrine scholar and to the scholar of the Letter to the Hebrews, to name
but a few.
The contributors to this volume provide "macroscopic" overviews of
the field and give students a handle on the most important voices in the
The Face of Old Testament
discipline. Our purpose in this companion to
Studies
( ed. David W. Baker and Bill T. Arnold) is to provide students and
scholars alike with a handbook of "what is going on" in NT scholarship.
What is going on is mentioned briefly in the first paragraph: NT schol­
arship is neatly divided into groups of scholars who (to continue with our
athletic metaphor) are sitting in their respective and highly respected (! )
box seats in the front row of the "game of scholarship." They tend to chat
only with those nearby, but they know scholars who are sitting elsewhere.
There are special sections for historical Jesus scholars, scholars on indi­
vidual Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke , John), some generalists on the
Synoptic Gospels, Pauline scholars, scholars of early Christian history,
Petrine scholars (with a very few who focus on Jude or Peter) , scholars
2
on the Letter to the Hebrews, Johannine literature scholars, and experts
on the Apocalypse ( Revelation) . Surrounding these boxed sections are
other scholars who watch from their own special seats. Some are gram­
marians of NT Greek, who have mastered the Greek language, or NT tex­
tual critics, who study the thousands of ancient manuscript witnesses to
the NT text. Others focus on (what used to be called) "backgrounds"­
they know the OT (and how it is used in the NT), Jewish sources (OT
apocryphal or pseudepigraphical writings, the Dead Sea Scrolls, or the
various layers and types of rabbinic literature) , archaeological/
epigraphical sources, or Greco-Roman sources. Others apply modern
theories of knowledge (say, sociology) to ancient texts. And then there are
the very few who sit in the upper deck and discuss NT theology and
whether one "does NT theology" by synthesizing the various authors or
by setting them all out in separate boxes. This, then, is how the seats are
organized around the scholarly field of NT studies.
The most intelligent way for students to find out what is going on, at
New Testament Abstracts
the specific level, is to read (to name but one
New Testament
abstracting source) and to read the best studies firsthand.
Abstracts,
published three times per year, uabstracts" virtually all journal
articles and books that appear in a given year. The volumes now average
about two hundred pages, and combined they abstract some two thou­
sand articles and around a thousand books per year. Each abstract is a
NTA
short paragraph. A year with does not a scholar make, but it makes a
student aware of what scholars are doing. However, it is often wiser for
the student to get the bigger picture before plunging into the intricacies
of scholarship, and we seek to provide that bigger picture in this volume.
Since scholars are organized by fields, it is the scholars in their boxes
that is the organizing principle of this volume. In what follows we have
asked well-known scholars to provide for students and scholars alike a
summary of what is going on in their respective fields of expertise. We