Unit 13 · The New Testament in Its World

The Gospels tell their stories in a small corner of the Roman Empire. Rome took control of the region in 63 BCE. It ruled through local kings at first. The best known is Herod the Great, a king who rebuilt the Temple in Jerusalem on a grand scale. Matthew 2 sets the birth of Jesus in his reign. Herod died c. 4 BCE, and Rome split his kingdom among his sons.

Galilee, in the north, went to Herod Antipas. Luke 3 names him as ruler when John the Baptist begins to preach. Judea, in the south, soon came under a Roman governor instead. The governor in the Gospels is Pontius Pilate. He held office c. 26 to 36 CE. All four Gospels say Pilate ordered the death of Jesus. Rome, not local rulers, held the power to execute.

Roman rule meant taxes, soldiers and coins with the emperor’s face. It also meant a census, a count of people for taxing. Luke 2 opens the birth story with a census. Historians debate the date and details of that census. What is clear is that the Gospels expect readers to know this world. A tax collector, a centurion and a governor all appear as ordinary parts of the scene.

In 1961 archaeologists at Caesarea found a stone with Pilate’s name and title on it. It is the first object outside written texts to name him. Finds like this do not prove or disprove what the Gospels say about him. They show that the setting is a real place and time that can be studied.

The Temple in Jerusalem was the center of Jewish worship in the time of the Gospels. Priests offered sacrifices there. Pilgrims came for festivals like Passover. Herod’s rebuilding made it one of the largest sacred sites in the Roman world. The Gospels return to it again and again. Jesus teaches in its courts and, in a famous scene, overturns the tables of the money changers.

Within Jewish life, groups differed about how to live faithfully. The Pharisees were teachers who applied the Torah to daily life. They believed in resurrection and in oral traditions passed down from teacher to student. Many scholars see them as the ancestors of later rabbinic Judaism. The Gospels show Jesus often arguing with Pharisees, but also eating with them and sharing many of their views.

The Sadducees were linked to the priests and the Temple. The Gospels say they did not believe in resurrection. The historian Josephus describes them as a small group with influence among the wealthy. A third group, the Essenes, lived apart, some in a community by the Dead Sea. The Gospels never name them. A fourth kind of people, whom Josephus and the Gospels call Zealots, wanted to resist Rome by force.

Reading the Gospels well means keeping these groups straight. It also means care. Christian readers have sometimes turned "Pharisee" into an insult. Jewish readers point out that the Pharisees were careful, serious teachers. A fair reading names each group by what it taught, not by a verdict.

In 1947 a shepherd near the Dead Sea threw a stone into a cave and heard pottery break. Inside were jars holding old scrolls. Over the next years, searchers found more caves near a site called Qumran. Together the finds are called the Dead Sea Scrolls. They hold about 900 manuscripts, most in pieces, written mainly in Hebrew and Aramaic.

The scrolls date from about 250 BCE to 70 CE. That is the world just before and during the time of the Gospels. About a quarter of them are copies of books of the Hebrew Bible. Every book except Esther is present. Before 1947, the oldest complete Hebrew Bible manuscripts were from around 1000 CE. The scrolls pushed the evidence back a thousand years.

Other scrolls belong to the community itself. They include rules for shared life, hymns, and commentaries on the prophets. Many scholars think the community was Essene, though not all agree. The scrolls never mention Jesus or the early Christians. Their value for Gospel study is the setting. They show how some Jews of that time read scripture, waited for God to act, and shared meals and property.

Studying the scrolls is a good example of careful reading. Scholars compare a scroll of Isaiah with later copies and note the differences. They date the ink and the handwriting. They ask what the text says before asking what it means. That is the same method this course uses for the Gospels.

The word gospel comes from an Old English word meaning "good news." It translates the Greek word euangelion. Mark 1:1 opens with it: the beginning of the gospel of Jesus Christ. At first the word meant the message itself. Later it became the name for the four books that tell the story of Jesus: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.

A gospel is a genre, a kind of writing. It looks most like an ancient biography, a life of a famous person. Greek and Roman writers produced many of these. But the Gospels have a purpose beyond information. John 20:31 says its stories were written so that readers may believe. The Gospels tell a life to persuade, and they say so.

That shapes how a careful reader works. A gospel is not a modern news report. It chooses scenes, orders them, and repeats themes. Each writer, whom tradition names an evangelist, has a point of view. Reading a gospel well means asking what each writer includes, leaves out and emphasizes. Christians read the Gospels as scripture. Scholars also read them as ancient texts with authors and audiences. A public-school class can do the second while respecting the first.

None of the Gospels names its author inside the text. The names Matthew, Mark, Luke and John come from early Christian tradition, attached by the second century. Scholars date the books by clues inside them and by when other writers first quote them. Most place all four between about 65 and 100 CE. That is one to three generations after the events they describe.

Most scholars think Mark came first, around 65 to 75 CE. Mark 13 seems to know the war with Rome that ended with the Temple’s destruction in 70 CE. Matthew and Luke are usually dated c. 80 to 90 CE. Both appear to use Mark as a source. John is usually placed c. 90 to 100 CE. Its style and stories differ from the other three.

Some scholars argue for earlier dates, and some for later. The dates are estimates, so this course writes "c." before them. What matters for a reader is the order and the gap. The Gospels were written in Greek, decades after Jesus, for communities across the Roman world. Before that, stories about Jesus were passed on by word of mouth, what scholars call oral tradition.

Christians hold different views about what this means. Some stress that the writers relied on eyewitnesses. Others stress the freedom each writer took. A class does not have to settle that. It can note the evidence, hold the dates loosely and read each book on its own terms.

Lay Matthew, Mark and Luke side by side and a pattern appears. They share many of the same stories, often in the same order and with the same words. Because they can be "seen together," they are called the Synoptic Gospels. Most scholars explain the likeness by saying Matthew and Luke both used Mark. Many also think they shared a second source of sayings, which scholars call Q. Not everyone agrees on Q.

John is different. It has no parables of the familiar kind and no birth story. It has long speeches and a few great signs, like turning water into wine. Jesus in John speaks openly of who he is, using phrases like "I am the bread of life." John also tells of several trips to Jerusalem, where the Synoptics tell of one. Most scholars think John was written last and knew the Synoptic tradition, but wrote independently.

Christians have read the four together for a long time. In the second century some tried to merge them into one story. The church kept four instead. Readers have compared them to four portraits of one person, each from a different angle. A careful reader in a public school does the same thing. Notice what each Gospel shares, and notice where each stands alone.

A parable is a short story drawn from daily life that carries a point about something bigger. Jesus in the Synoptics teaches in parables about seeds, sheep, coins, workers and feasts. Mark 4 says he taught the crowds this way. Jewish teachers of the same era also used short stories, called meshalim in Hebrew, so parables would have been a familiar form.

Take the sower in Mark 4. A farmer scatters seed. Some falls on the path, some on rock, some among thorns, some on good soil. Only the last grows. The story ends, and the listener is left to work out what the seed and the soils mean. Mark then adds an explanation given to the disciples in private. Many scholars think that layering shows how the early church used the story.

Parables often surprise. In Luke 10 a man is robbed and left on the road. A priest and a Levite pass by. The one who stops is a Samaritan, a member of a group that Jews of Judea and Galilee often distrusted. The story turns the listener’s expectation over. Jesus ends by asking which of the three was a neighbor. The lawyer who asked cannot even say the word Samaritan. He says, the one who showed mercy.

Readers have taken parables many ways. Some early Christians read every detail as a symbol. Many modern scholars read each parable for its one sharp point. Either way, the form invites the reader to do the work. That is why a class can discuss a parable without being told what to believe.

Matthew 5 to 7 is the longest block of teaching in the Gospels. Matthew sets it on a mountain, so readers call it the Sermon on the Mount. Luke 6 has a shorter, similar sermon set on a plain. Many scholars think Matthew gathered sayings from different times into one speech. Christians have long read it as a summary of Jesus’s teaching.

It opens with the Beatitudes, a set of blessings. Blessed are the poor in spirit, the mourners, the meek, those who hunger for what is right, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers. The pattern echoes the Psalms, which also begin with "blessed." Each line names a group that the world overlooks and says the kingdom belongs to them.

The middle of the sermon is a series of contrasts. "Ye have heard that it was said... but I say unto you." Jesus quotes a commandment and then presses it deeper. Do not kill becomes do not stay angry. Love your neighbor becomes love your enemies. Christians and scholars disagree about whether this replaces the Torah or intensifies it. Matthew 5:17 says Jesus came not to destroy the law but to fulfill it.

The sermon includes the Lord’s Prayer and ends with the golden rule: treat others as you would want to be treated. The Jewish teacher Hillel, a generation earlier, is remembered in the Talmud as teaching a similar rule in a negative form. Comparing the two is a good way to see Jesus inside the Jewish teaching of his time.

A large share of Mark is made of miracle stories. Jesus heals a man with a withered hand, feeds a crowd with five loaves and two fish, and calms a storm on the Sea of Galilee. The Gospels use several words for these events. Mark and Matthew tend to say "works of power." John calls them signs and gives seven of them, each pointing to who Jesus is.

The stories share a shape. There is a need, an act or a word, and a response from the crowd. Mark 2 tells of a paralyzed man lowered through a roof by his friends. Jesus first says the man’s sins are forgiven. Teachers of the law object. Then Jesus tells the man to rise and walk. The story is as much about the argument as about the healing.

Readers handle these stories in different ways. Many Christians believe the events happened as told. Some Christians read them as signs with a meaning beyond the event. Historians usually say they cannot judge whether a miracle occurred, but they can study what the stories meant to the people who told them. Jewish and Muslim readers have their own views; the Qur’an, for example, describes Jesus healing the sick by God’s permission.

A public-school class does not decide whether a miracle happened. It can ask what each story says, what the people in it do and say, and how the story fits the Gospel it belongs to. That is reading, not believing or disbelieving.

The word Passion comes from a Latin word for suffering. It names the part of each Gospel that tells Jesus’s last days in Jerusalem. All four Gospels give it more space than any other stretch of time. In Mark, the last week fills about a third of the book. Some scholars have called Mark a Passion story with a long introduction.

The outline is shared. Jesus enters Jerusalem before Passover. He shares a last meal with his disciples. He prays in a garden called Gethsemane. He is arrested at night, questioned by the high priest, and handed to Pilate. Pilate sentences him to crucifixion, a Roman punishment for rebels and slaves. He dies and is buried in a tomb.

The details differ. Mark and Matthew give one last saying from the cross, a line from Psalm 22. Luke gives three others. John gives three more. The Synoptics place the last supper as a Passover meal. John places the death on the day the Passover lambs were killed. Readers have worked hard to fit the accounts together. Many scholars prefer to read each on its own.

The Passion has a painful history. Some Christians over the centuries used it to blame Jewish people as a whole for Jesus’s death. That reading fed violence against Jews. In 1965 the Catholic Church formally rejected it, and many Protestant churches have as well. A careful reader notes that the Gospels describe a Roman execution, ordered by a Roman governor, in a city of many opinions.

Every Gospel ends at a tomb. Women come early on the first day of the week. The stone is rolled away. The body is gone. From there the accounts differ. Mark’s oldest manuscripts end at 16:8 with the women fleeing in fear, saying nothing. Matthew adds guards, an earthquake and a meeting in Galilee. Luke tells of two travelers on the road to Emmaus. John tells of Mary Magdalene in the garden and of Thomas, who doubts and then believes.

Christians believe that Jesus rose from the dead. This resurrection is the center of the Christian faith. Paul, writing before the Gospels, says in 1 Corinthians 15 that if Christ did not rise, faith is empty. Easter, the yearly Christian celebration of the resurrection, is the oldest Christian festival. Christians differ about how to picture it, but the belief unites them.

Readers outside the faith read the stories differently. Jewish tradition does not accept the resurrection. Muslims honor Jesus as a prophet, and most read the Qur’an as saying he was not killed on the cross. Historians note that the earliest followers plainly believed Jesus had appeared to them. Whether that belief was true is a question of faith, not history, and this course does not answer it.

What a class can do is read closely. Who comes to the tomb in each Gospel? Who speaks? Where do the followers meet Jesus, in Galilee or Jerusalem? Noting the differences is not an attack on the stories. Christian scholars have done it for centuries, and many see the differences as a sign that no one edited the accounts to match.

The Acts of the Apostles opens by looking back. Its first line speaks of a "former treatise," an earlier book, written to a man named Theophilus. The Gospel of Luke opens with the same name. Most scholars agree the two books share an author, whom tradition calls Luke. Together they make up about a quarter of the New Testament.

Acts has a shape. In its first chapter, the risen Jesus tells his followers they will be witnesses in Jerusalem, in Judea and Samaria, and to the ends of the earth. The book then follows that map. Chapters 1 to 7 stay in Jerusalem. Chapters 8 to 12 move into Samaria and along the coast. Chapters 13 to 28 follow Paul across the sea to Greece and at last to Rome.

The word apostle means one who is sent. Acts uses it for the twelve closest followers of Jesus and, in places, for Paul. The people in Acts are Jews who believe Jesus is the messiah, the anointed one promised in the prophets. Over the course of the book, non-Jews, called Gentiles, join them. How Jews and Gentiles could share one table becomes the book’s biggest question.

Historians read Acts with care. It was written decades after the events, and it tells the story with a purpose, as Luke’s Gospel does. It also names real cities, officials and roads, many of them confirmed by inscriptions. Most scholars use it as a valuable source while checking it against Paul’s own letters, which sometimes tell things differently.

Acts 2 opens at Pentecost, a Jewish harvest festival fifty days after Passover. Jews from many lands are in Jerusalem. The text says a sound like wind fills the house where the followers are gathered, and each begins to speak in a language others can understand. Peter stands and gives a speech. He quotes the prophet Joel and the Psalms. Acts says about three thousand people joined that day. Many Christians call this the birthday of the church.

Peter, a fisherman from Galilee, leads in these early chapters. He heals a man at the Temple gate. He is arrested and questioned by the council. Later, in Acts 10, he visits a Roman officer named Cornelius. Acts says a vision convinced Peter that Gentiles could join without first becoming Jews. That scene opens the door the rest of the book walks through.

Acts 6 and 7 tell of Stephen, chosen to help with the community’s daily needs. He is accused of speaking against the Temple and the law. His long speech retells Israel’s story from Abraham to Solomon. The council condemns him, and he is stoned. Acts calls him the first to die for the faith. A young man named Saul, the text notes, stood watching and approved.

These stories have been read in many ways. Christians see in them the pattern of witness and suffering. Jewish readers note that the disputes in Acts are arguments among Jews about the Temple, the law and the messiah. Historians see a small movement finding its shape. All three readings are possible from the same pages.

Acts 9 tells of Saul, a Pharisee from Tarsus, on the road to Damascus. He is carrying letters that let him arrest followers of Jesus. The text says a light from heaven knocks him to the ground and a voice asks why he is persecuting it. Saul is blind for three days. A follower named Ananias lays hands on him, and his sight returns. Acts tells the story three times, in chapters 9, 22 and 26, each time a little differently.

Paul tells his own version in his letter to the Galatians. He says God revealed his Son to him, and that he did not consult anyone. He does not mention the road, the light or Ananias. Scholars compare the accounts and note that Acts and Paul agree on the main point: a sudden turn from opponent to messenger. Christians call this event Paul’s conversion, though Paul himself never stopped being a Jew and said so.

The names can confuse readers. Saul was his Hebrew name. Paul was his Roman name. Acts 13 says he was called by both. He did not change his name at Damascus. As a citizen of Rome, a speaker of Greek and a student of the Torah, he could move between worlds. That is part of why the movement moved with him.

Jewish scholars have written about Paul too. Some see him as a Jew of his time working out how Gentiles fit into Israel’s story. Others see him as the point where the two traditions began to part. This course notes both readings and does not choose between them.

Acts describes several long journeys. Paul’s base is Antioch in Syria, a large city where Acts 11 says followers were first called Christians. From there he travels with companions like Barnabas, Silas and Timothy. Maps of the New Testament usually draw three missionary journeys and a final voyage to Rome. The numbering is a reader’s tool; Acts itself does not count them.

The Roman Empire made such travel possible. Paved roads ran between major cities. Ships crossed the Mediterranean in the sailing season. Greek was spoken from Syria to Italy. Roman peace, the Pax Romana, kept most roads safe. Paul, a Roman citizen, could appeal to that system, and Acts shows him doing so more than once.

The journeys were still hard. In 2 Corinthians 11, Paul lists shipwrecks, beatings, hunger and nights without sleep. Acts 27 tells of a storm and a wreck on the island of Malta. Travel by land was slow, perhaps twenty miles a day on foot. A journey from Jerusalem to Rome could take months.

The pattern in each city repeats. Paul goes first to the synagogue, where he can argue from the scriptures. Some Jews and some Gentiles who worshiped with them join him. Others object. He moves on, leaving a small community behind. His letters, written later, go back to those communities.

Philippi was a Roman colony in Macedonia, in northern Greece. Acts 16 says Paul’s first convert there was Lydia, a merchant in purple cloth who hosted the new community. Paul and Silas were jailed there and freed, the text says, by an earthquake. Paul’s later letter to the Philippians is his warmest, written from prison and full of thanks.

Corinth was a busy port city on the narrow strip of land joining northern and southern Greece. Acts 18 says Paul stayed eighteen months and worked as a tentmaker. His two long letters to the Corinthians answer questions and settle disputes in a community with many problems. An inscription naming Gallio, the official in Acts 18, helps date Paul’s stay to about 51 or 52 CE.

Ephesus was a wealthy city in western Asia Minor, today Turkey, with a great temple of Artemis. Acts 19 tells of a riot led by silversmiths who sold shrines of the goddess. Paul stayed more than two years. Rome was the capital, and Paul wrote to its church before he had seen it. Acts ends with him there, under guard but teaching.

Chicago has a link to this map. The city’s many congregations with Greek roots trace their faith to communities like these. And the names live on: Philippians, Corinthians, Ephesians and Romans are the titles of books that people in Chicago churches still hear read aloud each week.

Thousands of ordinary letters from the Roman world survive on papyrus. They open with the sender’s name, then the receiver’s, then a greeting. Then comes the business, then a farewell. Paul’s letters use the same shape and stretch it. His greetings are long and his thanksgivings can run a whole chapter. Scholars call this form the epistle.

Look at the opening of Romans. Paul names himself first, in a sentence that runs six verses. He names the receivers: all in Rome who are loved by God. Then comes his greeting. It replaces the usual Greek word for "hello" with two words that matter to him: grace and peace. Nearly every letter of his begins this way.

After the greeting comes a thanksgiving for the readers, then the body. The body is where Paul teaches, argues and answers questions. Near the end comes a section of practical advice. Then a farewell with greetings to named people. Romans 16 greets more than two dozen by name, including women like Phoebe, Priscilla and Junia.

Knowing the form helps a reader. A letter is one side of a conversation. Paul writes to a real community with a real problem. When he says "you," he means them, not every reader since. Understanding the occasion, the situation that caused the letter, is the first step in reading one.

Thirteen New Testament letters open with Paul’s name. In the Bible they run from Romans to Philemon. That order is not the order they were written. It is roughly by length, longest first, with letters to churches before letters to persons. So Romans, the longest, comes first, and Philemon, the shortest, comes last.

Scholars ask which letters Paul wrote himself. Most agree on seven: Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians and Philemon. These are called the undisputed letters. About the other six, scholars disagree. Some think followers wrote in Paul’s name after his death, a common practice in the ancient world. Others think Paul wrote them all. Christians hold both views.

In the order of writing, 1 Thessalonians is usually put first, around 50 CE. That makes it the oldest book in the New Testament, older than any Gospel. Galatians and the Corinthian letters follow in the 50s. Romans, often called his most complete statement, is dated about 57 CE. Philippians and Philemon were written from prison, though scholars debate which prison.

Each letter has a subject. Galatians argues that Gentiles need not keep the whole Torah. 1 Corinthians answers a list of questions and includes the famous chapter on love. Romans lays out Paul’s whole way of thinking about faith, law and God’s promises to Israel. Reading a letter as a whole, from greeting to farewell, keeps each idea in its place.

Philemon is one page long and shows how a letter can work. Paul writes to a friend about a slave, Onesimus, who has come to Paul and, the letter says, become a believer. Paul sends him back. He asks Philemon to receive him as a brother. He offers to pay any debt. He also says, in a gentle way, that Philemon owes Paul his very self.

The letter leaves the big question open. Does "brother" mean Onesimus should be freed? Paul does not say. Some readers say the whole letter points that way. Others note that neither Paul nor any New Testament writer calls for the end of slavery as a system. In the 1800s both sides in the American debate quoted him. Frederick Douglass and others rejected readings that used Paul to defend slavery. A careful reader states what the text says and what it leaves unsaid.

After Paul’s letters come seven others, named for their writers rather than their readers: James, 1 and 2 Peter, 1, 2 and 3 John, and Jude. They are called the catholic letters, from a Greek word meaning general or universal, because most are addressed to the church at large rather than one city. The word here has nothing to do with the Roman Catholic Church as a name.

James is practical and reads almost like Proverbs. It says faith without works is dead, a line Christians have debated beside Paul’s words about faith. 1 Peter writes to scattered communities facing hostility. 1 John returns again and again to love. A letter called Hebrews, placed after Philemon, names no author. It reads more like a sermon than a letter.

The last book of the New Testament opens with a man named John on Patmos, a small island off the coast of Asia Minor. He says he is there because of the word of God. He writes to seven churches in nearby cities, including Ephesus. Then he describes visions: a throne, a scroll with seven seals, a dragon, beasts, a woman clothed with the sun, and at last a new heaven and a new earth.

Revelation belongs to a genre called apocalypse, from a Greek word meaning unveiling. Daniel in the Hebrew Bible is the same kind of book. An apocalypse uses symbols, numbers and visions to speak to people in a hard time. Seven means completeness. A beast stands for an empire. Babylon, the city that destroyed the first Temple, stands in Revelation for Rome.

Most scholars date the book to about 95 CE, in the last years of the emperor Domitian. A second-century writer, Irenaeus, gives that date. Some argue for an earlier date under Nero. Either way, the churches faced pressure to honor the emperor as divine, and some had suffered. The book tells them to hold on, and it promises that Rome will fall and God will make all things new.

Christians have read Revelation in very different ways. Some read it as a map of the future. Others read it as a message for its own time that still speaks. Others read it as poetry of hope. Eastern Orthodox churches long left it out of their public readings. It is the only New Testament book that some early church lists were unsure about.

No one sat down in the first century and wrote the New Testament. Gospels and letters circulated one by one. Communities copied the ones they valued and read them aloud. Over time some writings were accepted almost everywhere: the four Gospels, Acts and Paul’s letters. Others were debated: Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Jude and Revelation. Still others, like the Shepherd of Hermas, were read for a while and then set aside.

The list of accepted books is called the canon, from a Greek word for a measuring rod. Several forces shaped it. Around 140 CE a teacher named Marcion proposed a short canon with one Gospel and ten letters of Paul, and rejected the Hebrew Bible. Most churches rejected his list, and in doing so began to state their own. A fragment from around 200 CE, called the Muratorian fragment, gives an early list close to today’s.

The first surviving list with exactly the 27 books of today’s New Testament comes from Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, in an Easter letter of 367 CE. Councils in North Africa in the 390s agreed. The order and the number have been stable since, though churches still differ on the Old Testament. The word "Bible" itself means "the books," plural.

Christians explain the canon in different ways. Some say the church recognized the books God had inspired. Others describe a human process guided by use, tradition and argument. Historians describe the process without ruling on the first claim. A class can trace how the list took shape and leave the question of why to each reader.