NBST 501 — New Testament Introduction
NBST 501 is a graduate course in New Testament introduction, the discipline that asks the scholarly questions standing behind every book of the New Testament. It is not a course in reading the books, which the New Testament reading courses do, nor in teaching their doctrine, but in the apparatus that the academic study of Scripture brings to each: who wrote a book, when and to whom, for what purpose, and how securely its text has come down to us. These are the questions a student must be able to handle before the scholarly literature can be read with judgment. Every book or corpus is taken up on the same five isagogic questions, and each is answered by the method the discipline itself uses, weighing what a book says of itself, its internal evidence, against what the world outside it attests, the external evidence, and holding the answer open exactly as far as the evidence leaves it open. The Synoptic Problem, the disputed authorship of several letters, the formation of the canon, and the transmission of the text are the great contested cases, and the student learns to set the considerations on each side in order and to see precisely where the evidence runs out. The course is taught by a believing Christian and makes no secret of that, yet on every contested question it states the critical case and the traditional case each at full strength, names the evidence each side weighs, and renders no verdict of its own. Disputed authorship and the ancient convention of pseudonymity are handled without any assumption of bad faith and without any assumption of traditional authorship. The closing exercise hands the student an early Christian writing left outside the New Testament and asks him to put the same five questions, and the criteria by which the canon was settled, to that book in its turn.
Learning outcomes
- Put the five isagogic questions, authorship, date, setting, purpose, and text, to any New Testament book.
- Weigh internal evidence against external evidence to answer an introductory question, and hold the verdict open as far as the evidence leaves it open.
- Explain the Synoptic Problem and the main proposed solutions: Markan priority, Q, the Two-Source theory, and the Farrer hypothesis.
- State the critical and the traditional cases for the disputed letters, the disputed Paulines, Hebrews, and 2 Peter, each at full strength, and account for the convention of pseudonymity.
- Account for the formation of the New Testament canon, its criteria, the disputed books, and why the Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox lists differ.
- Describe the textual transmission of the New Testament, the major manuscripts, the text types, and the critical-text and Majority-text positions, and read a famous variant.
- Account for the unity and the diversity of the New Testament witness.
- Apply the five isagogic questions, and the canon criteria, to an early-Christian writing outside the canon.
What New Testament Introduction Asks
Every book of the New Testament carries questions it never pauses to answer for its reader. This opening module sets out what introduction, or isagogics, asks, and how it differs from reading a book for devotion and from interpreting it line by line. It introduces the five isagogic questions the whole course turns on, authorship, date, setting, purpose, and text, and the method that answers them, weighing what a book says of itself against what the world outside it attests. The grid is worked once on a single undisputed letter so that its use is plain before the contested books arrive.
The Gospels and Acts
The four Gospels and Acts come first, and with them the question of how books so alike and so unlike stand related. Putting the five questions to each, the module sets out what can be said of their authorship, date, setting, and purpose. At its center is the Synoptic Problem, the literary relationship among Matthew, Mark, and Luke, with Markan priority, the hypothetical source Q, the Two-Source theory, and the Farrer hypothesis each laid out and weighed. A triple-tradition passage is set side by side so the relationship can be seen on the page.
The Pauline Corpus
Thirteen letters carry Paul’s name, and not all of them are credited to him with equal confidence. Reading the corpus on the five questions, the module separates the undisputed letters from the disputed, Ephesians, Colossians, 2 Thessalonians, and the Pastorals, where the authorship debate is sharpest. The critical case from style, vocabulary, theology, and church order is set out at full strength, and so is the traditional case from the letters’ own claims, their early attestation, and the range of a single writer. The convention of pseudonymity in the ancient world is explained without any assumption of bad faith.
Hebrews, the General Epistles, and Revelation
Some of the remaining books name no author, and others are doubted by the very tradition that received them. Hebrews, anonymous from the first, is the authorship question in its purest form, and the module weighs what can and cannot be said about who wrote it. The disputed authorship of 2 Peter and the question of who wrote Revelation are taken up on the same five questions, and the General Epistles are surveyed alongside. Each case is read for the evidence it actually leaves, and the answer is held open where the evidence holds it open.
The Canon
The New Testament did not arrive as a finished list but was recognized over generations of use and dispute. This module accounts for how the canon took shape, the criteria the early church applied, apostolicity, catholicity, orthodoxy, and established use, and the books that were long contested, the antilegomena. It traces the process by which the twenty-seven were received and explains why the Protestant, Catholic, and Orthodox lists came to differ. The settling of the canon is read as a history of reception rather than a single act of decree.
The Text
No autograph of any New Testament book survives, and what we read rests on thousands of copies that do not perfectly agree. The module surveys the major witnesses, the early papyri and the great uncials Sinaiticus and Vaticanus, the families into which the manuscripts fall, and the way a modern critical edition is assembled from them. The long-running difference between the critical-text and the Majority-text positions is set out on its own terms. Several famous variants, among them the longer ending of Mark and the passage of the woman caught in adultery, are examined directly.
New Testament Theology
Twenty-seven books by many hands raise a final question, whether they speak with one voice or many. This closing module describes the unity and the diversity of the New Testament witness, the single gospel proclaimed across four Gospels and many letters, and the real differences of emphasis among its writers, without ruling on the contested question of how far the two extend. The capstone then turns the five questions, and the canon criteria of the previous module, onto an early Christian writing left outside the New Testament, the Shepherd of Hermas. The student reads it fairly on its own evidence and accounts for why it sits just beyond the canon.