The New Testament
Assignment and self-guided reading tour
(not for publication-- compiled by students based on my lectures).
Turn to Luke: 1:1
Like the Torah, what we call the New Testament was a compromise hammered out hundreds of years later, from the versions that various factions wrote as they struggled for power in the movement that would become the early Church.
First period: AFTER JESUS's CRUCIFIXION the Jewish Christian movement and before the Church "the Jesus Movement" the period of many gospels
Notice Luke 1 says there are many competing gospels "Many writers have undertaken to draw up an account of the events," the Gospel according to St. Luke begins. "I... have decided to draw up a connected narrative for you...."
Read Luke's first two chapters.
What person is Luke's author addressing?
Theophilus or "God lover" not Jewish
a gentile name
a gentile lover of god
Now Go to Acts 1:1
Acts of the Apostles, our indispensable record of the early church, when the New Testament accounts were first being written down from the popular stories and memories of Jesus. Read start of Acts.
Notice: it's on the same roll as Luke, so we speak of Luke/Acts. Later it was divided so that the four heroic bios of jesus could go together, when John was added, very late (because of Irenaeus's influence).
Next, the "We" passages.
What stylistic feature of certain unusual passages tells us that the author of Acts was Paul's close friend and a member of his party?
Acts 16 "we" the first one
27:1 "we"
27:14-21
The enormous significance is that the author of Luke/Acts is an eye witness who shares Paul's trials. We call him Luke (or "the Lucan author"). He is a member of Paul's party in the great controversy which breaks out in the early Church.
Acts, then, is the heroic biography of St. Paul. Was Paul one of the original disciples?
What was Paul's first relation to Christianity?
What was Paul's original name?
To answer that:
Saul persecutes on Acts 7 54:60
then converts at Acts 9 on the Road to Damascus
lightning changes
great confidence
Paul was a legal citizen (had his green card, so to speak) of a powerful city/country which gave him a different outlook on life than Peter. What citizenship did Paul hold? Roman.
Notice the relationship between Peter and Mark: Acts 12:11 then the adventures of St Paul after 13:8
ANTIOCH and Acts 13-- the turning point for Western history
Till the dramatic events at Antioch (Acts 13-14) Christianity was just another Jewish sect, and a very small one.
Here, Christianity is born out of Judaism, they split, and the modern world is ultimately created
Paul speaks as a Jew to Jews. Notice the curious Gentiles (including, no doubt, Roman soldiers) standing in the back of they synagogue.
When Paul told his fellow Jews there that Jesus had been the deliverer they were all waiting for, how did the Jews re-act?
Acts 13:13-42
*13:23 Jesus is the Jewish messiah
What was Paul's history-making on-the-spot reaction?
13:44-52 PAUL TURNS TO THE GENTILES
This causes a huge split in the church
Peter soon called Paul back to Jerusalem to explain his daring actions. What obstacle was being raised against Paul's converts?
13, 14, 15 Discussion of Peter's lack of success and circumcision is the stumbling block 15:1, :10, :19, :28
What is the significance? You remember the old testament, the P text is a counter text correcting the J text, and so on. Battles.
The original gospel is John Mark's, possibly dictated to him by Peter himself. It has an oral quality.
Remember, Peter runs to Mark's house from prison.
The Jewish Christians are Paul's opponents.
Paul needs a counter bible: counter to the gospel (Mark) used by Peter's faction.
Acts 15 p 167 verse 1-2
15:36-40 p 169
The Gospel according to St. Luke was written for those new converts. In it, the author tried to take blame for Jesus' death off what group and put it on which group?
Goals of the new gospel revisionist
Xy is not Judaism now, and that's okay
antisemitism, almost accidentally, begins, because to pitch to the Gentiles they have to get the Romans off the hook so they dump the guilt on the Jews
gives the sect a future-- the religion of the Roman underclass-- and so the army, eventually, and finally the Empire in 313 when Constantine is in trouble. (See the timeline below.)
Paul's personal and unusual anti sexualtiy anti female colors Xy (Could it be that Peter's sect had prominent women? Mary, and Martha, and Mary Magdalene? So that had to be undercut?)
WHAT ARE THE RESULTS:
Read from trial to crucifixtion, noting changes Luke has made in Mark.
Christ at the palace-- does he go anywhere after the palace before being crucified and what happens there?
Does Christ say anything on the way to the cross?
On the cross does he say anything?
Do the thieves say anything?
Anybody else do anything or say anything during the crucifixion.
What are Christ's last words?
Compare the four canonical gospels on the facts.
DID CHRIST RISE FROM THE DEAD: evidence
Who went?
Did they see anything?
Anything unusual happen?
*Did they tell anybody?
Now read the first two chapters of the Gospel according to Mark. Mark, the first gospel to be written (probably dictated to him by Peter) wishes to persuade his readers that Jesus was God, but never mentions the later stories about Jesus being born to a Virgin, a star in the East, wise men, etc.
Read the first two chapters of Matthew and Luke, which provide opposing accounts of Jesus' infancy.
Now let's pick up the main stories about Jesus' life. Mark, you'll notice, is very interested in Jesus' powers as a magician and caster-out of demons. The prose is simple, brief, vigorous, and oral, as if dictated.
Luke Chapter 1 and 2
Mark
3:7-12
4:35-end
6:14-29 John the Baptist's fate
Other revisions
Who was Yeshua? Germans decided Paul the greater figure
Mark-- no birth story. Why???
And family tries to commit him
starts to believe disciples, that he's son of god
lets himself be given a triumphal procession
quickly dispatched
on the cross seemed to think he'd be saved and was confused and despairing
Paul rescued a dying movement
6:45-52
8:34-38
9:1 In Mark's time many still believed Jesus would return before they died.
Matthew
3, 4, 5
12: 38-42 Jesus often recalls Jonah
13:14-15 his fondness for Isaiah too
John
8:53 and last chapter
Read finally James, ch. 2 entire.
2:14 faith and worlk
218 **
John 7.53- 8.11 Cast the first stone
That kind of Jonah forgiveness and mercy Jesus extended to the point where it threatens the law; or so the priests felt.
St. Paul's greatest sermons come in the Letters to the Corinthians.
1 Corinthians
1:25-31
7:1-11, 25-41
12: 1-15
***13:13
II Corinthians
11, 12 Paul on his life