New Testament Basics: A Guide for Reading and Interpreting the Text
Digital Logos Edition
Overview
New Testament Basics introduces college, university, seminary, and divinity school students to the study of the New Testament. Authors Stefan Alkier and David Moffitt adopt five major aims: (i) to explore how the Bible came to exist, dealing with the formation and significance of the Christian canon; (ii) to discuss the ways the Bible continues to exert influence on contemporary culture, demonstrating the ongoing value and importance of biblical literacy; (iii) to introduce readers to some of the most fundamental methods used in the study of the New Testament, including a substantial discussion of semiotics and its usefulness for New Testament interpretation; (iv) to provide a survey of central historical, social, and economic information as important contextual knowledge for interpreting the New Testament; and (v) to offer some brief discussion of the contents of several New Testament texts and consider ways they might inform theological reflection. In the end, Alkier and Moffitt’s New Testament Basics fosters within students important competencies needed to read and interpret the New Testament for themselves.
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- Explores how the Bible came to exist, dealing with the formation and significance of the Christian canon
- Introduces college, university, seminary, and divinity school students to the study of the New Testament
- Fosters within students important competencies needed to read and interpret the New Testament for themselves
- The Bible: Useful Information about a Bestseller
- The Bible Today
- Methods of Biblical Interpretation
- Rulers, Empires, Religions: Historical Contexts of the New Testament Writings
- Thinking about a Theology of the New Testament
Stefan Alkier and David Moffitt have reinvented the genre ‘introduction to the New Testament.’ This is not simply a survey of the historical context and production of the NT writings. Instead, it is ‘A Guide for Reading and Interpreting the Text,’ recognizing both that the Bible is a richly polyphonic text and that we inescapably approach it from within a web of our own cultural assumptions and questions. Using a lively range of examples and illustrations, Alkier and Moffitt show how attention to semiotics can help us read the text in deeper and more nuanced ways. Especially significant are the authors’ emphases on Israel’s Scripture as the background for interpreting the NT writings, the ‘Jesus-as-the-Christ story and history’ as the unifying ‘red thread’ for the NT, and, in the concluding chapter, the possibility of moving toward a theology of the NT. Throughout, this book models interpretive charity toward others who read the text from different perspectives. This is a book to be pondered and savored not only by beginning students but also by all those who teach them.
—Richard B. Hays, Duke University
In this truly helpful volume, Stefan Alkier and David Moffitt guide students with little or no formal training as they take their beginning and intermediate steps in New Testament study. Here is up-to-date scholarship on methods, backgrounds, theological work, and more in the service of newcomers to the fascinating challenges of engaging historically, intertextually, and theologically with these writings. New Testament Basics will serve well as a companion to more traditional introductions to New Testament literature—or it may signal a new approach to the basic textbook we use for entry-level courses.
——Joel B. Green, Fuller Theological Seminary
New Testament Basics accomplishes a great deal. Following a student’s natural process of discovery, the authors proceed from the Bible’s influence on contemporary culture to a thorough, cohesive introduction of the critical issues, content, and theology of the New Testament. A focus on semiotic methodology equips readers with a robust—and charitable—hermeneutic as they engage conversations of biblical interpretation.
—Kathy Maxwell, Palm Beach Atlantic University