I. Introductory Remark:
The book, The Interpretation of The New Testament is a very thoroughly written work which "puts flesh" on many of the most commonly accepted theological works used today, by discussing the thought process(es) that drove the creation of many of these works. Neill also sheds light on the ongoing relationship between British and German Biblical/Theological scholarship during the first half of the century, and the importance of Classical and Koine Greek in Biblical scholarship. To his credit, Tom Wright, one of Neill's ardent students, does an excellent job of continuing Neill's informative and historical narrative tradition in this second edition.
II. Outline of Interpretation of The New Testament
| i. | Preface to the second edition by Tom Wright (Jun. '87 & Apr.'89) |
| ii. | Preface to the first edition by Stephen Neill (Apr. '63 and Jan '66) |
| Chapter 1 | (pp. 1-34): Challenge to Orthodoxy: The beginnings of Biblical Criticism |
| Chapter 2 | (pp. 35-64): The New Testament and History: The birth of Historical-Critical Methodology |
| Chapter 3 | (pp. 65-111): What the New Testament Says, and What It Means: The impact of the study of Greek on Biblical Scholarship |
| Chapter 4 | (pp. 112-146): Jesus and the Gospel: Scholars search for the authentic Jesus |
| Chapter 5 | (pp. 147-204): Greeks and Christians: The impact of Hellenistic culture on the Early Christian Church |
| Chapter 6 | (pp. 205-251): Re-Enter Theology: The impact of Schweitzer, Barth, Hoskyns, and Bultmann to late 19th and early 20th century Biblical scholarship |
| Chapter 7 | (pp. 252-312): The Gospel Behind The Gospels: The search for the authorship, authenticity, chronology and meaning of the Gospels |
| Chapter 8 | (pp. 313-359): Salvation is of The Jews: The impact of Jewish and OT History and Research on NT Study |
| Chapter 9 | (pp. 360-450): History and Theology: The relationship between the study of Biblical History and Theological study |
| Index (pp. 451-464) |
III. Contents of The Interpretation of The New Testament
Neill tells the story of the individuals who compiled, translated and/or composed such works as Kittel's The Theological Dictionary of The New Testament, Bauer-Allen-Gingrichs' Theological Lexicon of The New Testament, Hatch and Redpath's Concordance to The Septuagint, and The Nestle-Aland project, Novum Testamentum Graece, or the Greek New Testament. Neill also describes the personalities of many of the greatest contributors of British and German Biblical Scholarship such as the "Cambridge Three": J.B. Lightfoot, B.F. Wescott and F.J.A. Hort, who were pioneers in the area of Biblical languages as well as other areas.
While the scholarship of these men significantly advanced the field, Neill however has some problems with their interpretation of what they believed Jesus actually said. According to Neill nineteenth century scholars made Jesus look and sound like a nineteenth century scholar. The problem is that Jesus lived approximately nineteen centuries before these scholars. :
"...When we try to write [Jesus'] life, we are attempting to domesticate him within history as we ourselves understand it; to pull him out of his own time and into the modern world in order to make him intelligible to modern man. But Jesus will not obey our behest; he refuses to be domesticated, to be modernized...We cannot be content with a picture of Jesus as a rather civilized man of the nineteenth or twentieth century. We can never again separate 'the teachings of Jesus' from Jesus himself..." 1
There has been and still is, concern about the contents of the Gospels. Did these people speak the classical Greek of Homer and Philo? How much of the recorded sayings of Jesus are actual sayings of Jesus? Neill recounts the work of Martin Dibelius, who found that there were two types of literature during the time, that of a high, or classical style and kleinliteretur, or literature for popular consumption. This popular literary style and language became known as Koine Greek, which is the Greek of the New Testament. Dibeluis' work helped clear up misconceptions and translations of texts that were erroneous because they had been translated using Classical Greek. This was a big breakthrough in Biblical scholarship.
Neill also gives mention to the Jesus Seminar, a part of the Society of Bible Literature which studies different sayings of Jesus and attempts to discern whether given the context and situation, Jesus would have said what the Gospels record that he said. One example is the Lord's prayer. The seminar has dissected this well-known pericope and arrived at the conclusion that the prayer that many Christians take for granted and pray today was not what Jesus actually said. In fact, they arrived at the conclusion that most of the Lord's prayer recorded in Matthew's Gospel is more of a creation by Matthew rather than a saying of Jesus.
While the work of this seminar may be significant on more than one level, the issues dealt with by the seminar are theological powderkegs, which is why the seminar has become the focus of many fundamentalist groups who feel threatened by the group's findings. Regardless of where one may align on this and many other issues, one thing is for sure and Neill states it quite clearly: "We still know very little about the Gospels [and what Jesus said]".
Neill also discusses the scholarship involved in trying to determine the chronology of the New Testament, more specifically, which of the Gospels was written first? Scholars had determine that Matthew Mark and Luke had too much material in common to be written apart from each other and without the authors having contact with much of the same material, thus the term "synoptic" was used to describe the relationship between these three. The question that was raised by scholars however was "Who copied from whom and which was written first?" This issue has not been solved to the satisfaction of many in the scholarly community and is still being discussed at the present time.
Neill also addresses the necessity for the Bible Scholar to have a mastery of German language since German Scholars have done a significant amount of relevant Biblical research. Two of the standbys of present day Biblical Scholarship, for instance, The Theological Dictionary of The New Testament, and exhaustive 10 volume reference set is an translation of the German original, The Theological Wordbook of the New Testament, and The Theological Lexicon of The New Testament; and other Early Christian Writings is also a translation of its German counterpart of the same name.
These two works alone have helped to revolutionize Biblical Scholarship because of their methodological precision and attention to detail. There are very few scholars who do not depend on them as references. I would challenge any student of Biblical studies to peruse their instructor's library as well as the library of their institution of higher learning, and not be able to find these two works in their possession. It is assumed at the graduate and doctoral level that the student has been exposed to these two works and is quite familiar with them.
Another relevant issue discussed by Neill is that the scholar needs to be aware of the overwhelming possibility that other cultures, including Hellenism, had a tremendous impact on Christianity not only as it reacted to pagan traditions, but that Gnosticism had an impact on the Theology of the Early Church. It seems to Neill that such an understanding evokes fear in the heart of many scholars:
"...Within the study of the [Biblical history] there always seems to be a bias. However much some scholars declare their neutrality, there is always a sense that proving some element of Christianity to be derived from, say, Gnosticism or Qumran might have a hidden value judgment attached to it..." 2
IV. Evaluation of The Interpretation of The New Testament
I thought that Neill's work was very thorough, and his style of writing made the information easier to digest. Tom Wright also does an excellent job of continuing Neill's literary style in the second revision. However, Neill does raise a relevant issue in the beginning chapters of his book about the accuracy and authenticity of translated works:
"...It is practically impossible to copy a manuscript without making a mistake. This is true today even when a writer is copying a quotation from print; the likelihood of mistake is immensely increased if the text to be copied is itself a manuscript, and naturally increases still further, if the manuscript is old, worn, and imperfectly legible...".3
"...There are still graver causes of corruption, which are not uncommonly at work. The fort operates when a scribe cannot make out what is in front of him and in faithful fulfillment of his task writes down a meaningless jumble of letters. The second, and worse occurs when the scribe sees, or thinks, that what is in front of him is nonsense, and tries to correct it by the light of his unaided intelligence; there is only a slender chance that he will get things right. The last and worst case of all, is when the scribe disagrees with what he sees in the text and deliberately alters the text to suit his own understanding of orthodoxy...".4
Neill is of course referring to Biblical texts, but I want to expand that argument to also include the translated reference works that he, as well as all Biblical scholars have used to research these questionable texts. The NA 27 (1993) is a translated text of immense proportions that has been translated 27 times as the number indicates.5 I'd have to ask Dr. Neill how much faith he outs into the scholarship of that work, since having been translated so many times, the possibility for error has grown exponentially.
I would also then have to question the amount of credence that I as well as other scholars have placed into these translated reference works (i.e. TDNT, BAG, )6 as well as the translated works of Schliermacher, Kant, Kierkegaard, Hediegger and Hegel? All of these works have been translated from German into English. Also, before someone feels that I am simply being adversVerdana to Neill, let me state that I am a big fan of Kierkegaard and Kant. Also, the TDNT, the BAG and the NA 27 are in my personal library, so this argument threatens my comfort zones also.7
The question still remains, "How far do we take our suspicion of translated texts?" The issue Neill raises is a valid concern in the area of Biblical scholarship, but just as we cannot confine Biblical meanings to fit into our own comfort zones, we cannot confine conclusions about translated texts to only those texts that we want to critique. True enough, the scholar who desires to translate Biblical text(s) must deal with the fact that one scribe may have mistakenly included a previous scribe's margin notes or personal commentary into the text as part of the corpus, and that is a serious concern. I don't want to give the impression that I am belittling Dr. Neill's position. However, I think that in raising this argument, Neill ought to establish some logical parameters, or at least address on a broader scale, the concern which he has initiated: How far do we take our suspicion of translated text(s)?
V. Importance of The Interpretation of The New Testament
This is the meat and potatoes of this composition. As an African American Biblical student and aspiring scholar, how important is this book to me? How important is Neill's work to any African American Biblical scholar? I personally have cut my theological teeth on James H. Cone, Cornel West, Cain Hope Felder, and Gayraud Wilmore. I have read Gustavo Gutierrez's The Power of the Poor in History, who says that we should do theology from the "...underside of history..."8 and Howard Thurman's Jesus and the Disinherited, in which he calls for us to rethink the socially accepted expression of the Christian movement automatically being "...on the side of the strong against the weak...".9
The President of the last seminary I attended was an ardent disciple of James Cone, and Cone's ideology pervaded the campus. As a preacher in the Black Church preaching to a predominately African American congregation, I envision myself as a liberation theologian and have embraced that hermeneutic wholeheartedly. I have also admittedly been more concerned about the developments in ancient Alexandria that I have been about those in Antioch.
I mention all of this to arrive at the question: Why read a book about the history and development of European Biblical Scholarship? Why should we as African Americans care about what happened in Germany and England in the 1800's and the first half of this century? I'll answer that question as bluntly as I stated it. We need to be exposed to this scholarship because it is relevant to anyone who desires to understand Biblical text. Bultmann is referenced in Felder's10 work, and Bonhoeffer11, Bultmann12 and Hegel13 are mentioned in Gutierrez's work to name a few. The NA27, the TDNT and the BAG are the most current and accurate reference materials available, and even Dr. Cone, noted Liberation theologian and Union academician that he is admittedly builds some of his arguments on the back of Karl Barth's scholarship which he readily admits had a tremendous influence on his thinking.14
So even the revolutionary minds of Black theology have used and benefited from scholarship that Neill addresses in his work. If we are therefore going to use European scholarship, we should gain some understanding of the personalities and processes that drove the inception of the nomenclature, texts, and ideas that we used to express our way of thinking. True scholarship is the ability of the scholar to appreciate truth no matter who reveals it. Isn't the argument of many African American scholars, that the truths which they find be appreciated for truth's sake, regardless of what it does anyone's comfort zones15? We then, should do no less than we demand from anyone else. Neill's book sheds light on the how and why of a big part of European Biblical Scholarship, and it would greatly behoove every aspiring Bible scholar to read and appreciate it. After all, the papers that you write, the issues you discuss, and the terminology you develop will primarily be a result of the people and ideas located within the pages of this book.
Endnotes
1 Neill Stephen, Interpretation of The New Testament; 1861-1986, 2nd ed. ,(ed. by Tom Wright), New York: Oxford University Press, 1988, pp. 209, 215.
2 IBID., p. 369.
3 IBID., p. 66.
4 IBID., p. 67.
5 Common reference to the Nestle-Aland Novum Testamentum Graece (1993), the Greek New Testament.
6 Common abbreviations for Walter Bauer, William F. Arndt, and F. Wlibur Gingrinch's The Theological Lexicon of The New Testament (BAG), (University of Chicago: 1969) and Gerhard Kittel and Gerhard Friedrich's 10 volume work Theological Dictionary of the New Testament (TDNT) (Erdman's: 1985).
7 To further my reliance on German scholarship, I have incorporated Kierkegaard's The Concept of Anxiety and Kant's "Categorical Imperative" into my pastoral counseling model.
8 Gutierrez Gustavo, The Power of The Poor in History, Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 1983, p. 169.
9 Thurman Howard, Jesus and the Disinherited, Richmond, IN: Friends United Press, 1981, p. 12.
10 Felder Cain H., Race, Racism and Biblical Narratives, Stony the Road We Trod, (ed. by C.H. Felder), Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991, p. 139.
11 Gutierrez, The Power of The Poor in History, p. 222-223
12 IBID., p. 232.
13 IBID., P. 175.
14 Cone James H., A Black Theology of Liberation; Twentieth anniversary edition, Maryknoll, NY: 1994, p. 49.
15 Felder Cain H., et al., Stony The Road We Trod, Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991, pp. ix-xi.
Bibliography
Cone James H., A Black Theology of Liberation: Twentieth Anniversary Edition, (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis books), 1994.
Felder Cain H., et al., Stony The Road We Trod: African American Biblical Interpretation, (Minneapolis: Fortress Press),1991.
Gutierrez Gustavo, The Power of The Poor in History, (trans. by Robert R. Barr), (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books), 1988.
Neill Stephen, The Interpretation of The New Testament;1861-1986, 2nd ed., (ed. by Tom Wright), (Oxford: Oxford University Press) 1988.
Thurman Howard T., Jesus and the Disinherited, (Richmond, IN: Friends United Press),1981.
