As a scholar of the New Testament, I am often asked which books on the New Testament are the best ones. The question sometimes baffles me because to answer such a question I must first narrow the selection to a specific area of interest, understand the audience who will be reading the book, and know the purpose for which the book is being read. Reading for enjoyment, for example, is not the same as reading to understand a subject. Moreover, when a person asks about the best books, does the adjective best imply the most important, the most influential, the most enjoyable, or the best of some other category?

Another important facet of this discussion is a general feeling of skepticism that pervades Latter-day Saint impressions of modern biblical scholarship and scholars generally. The modern academy operates under the assumption that belief and faith often predetermine academic outcomes.[1] The scholarly ideal is one who recognizes and acknowledges bias (although this can never fully be achieved) in his or her conclusions and can present findings without appeal to emotion, predetermined positions, or working toward a favorable outcome. This approach has attracted backlash from believers who seek to defend their beliefs against what they feel are encroachments from secular idealism.

Interestingly, the two approaches—sometimes popularly referred to as faith-based versus academic—which seem to be at odds with one another, are fairly compatible. With both approaches, the scholar or the believer, approaches the text with an acknowledged validity of the text under discussion. For one, the quest may lead to a search for absolute truth and for the other, the quest may lead to understanding is origins, compositional history, theological impact, or a host of other questions that assume a certain level of validity of the text. Scholars who seek for answers must remain open to all hypotheses regardless of the scholars’ religious attitudes. With their biases put aside, scholars must painstakingly explore all possible answers, whether popular or not. If they allow their religious beliefs to influence their findings, their findings become subjective, tainted, and unusable by the larger scholarly and believing communities. This is not an argument for the postmodern scholarly ideal of absolute unbiased historicism; rather, it describes the direction and intent of the academic mindset. The academy invites those who believe and those who do not: the university, as the word implies, is inherently the joining of unity and diversity under one roof.

Some critics may feel that this approach encourages secularism, and it does look at the text differently than what would be achieved if the goal were apologetic. The results of any singular-minded or single-vantagepoint approach would be a self-perpetuating system that dominates discussions of religion and that could not tolerate diversity of opinion, such as advocated for in our own unique understanding of history and faith. If our own tradition guided the scholarly enterprise, then perhaps we would feel more at ease, but this would admittedly be a selfish endeavor. If the discussion is to be applicable to the widest possible audience, it must remain detached, unbiased, and guided by an acceptance that the religious texts under consideration are valid for a religious community or communities and are also robust enough to stand up to academic inquiry.

As a scholar trained in academic thinking and as one who exists within a community that professes faith in text as scripture with a living prophetic voice, the challenges of navigating both worlds are obvious. When working within a believing community there are two differing approaches: those who accept a body of religious texts as scripture and who view academic discussions through the lens of inherited and prophetic faith, and those who while accepting a body of scriptural texts and prophetic speech allow their academic training to inform their beliefs while remaining open to scholarly conversations about the text. There tends to be a significant amount of friction between the two camps, as one side defines itself as more firmly rooted in prophetic tradition while the other side sees itself as accepting the prophetic tradition but also accepting a certain level of responsibility to accept historical findings.

A pitfall of the faith-first approach may be that it engages in the practice of distilling scholarly materials into Latter-day Saint discussions or using academia as a smorgasbord of facts, choosing only those things in the buffet that appear satisfying. For scholars who attempt to see themselves simultaneously as good scholars and good believers, they wrestle with the right degree of balance and not criticizing others or allowing one of their two polarities to speak louder in the presentation of their findings.

There are other challenges for the two types of scholars, regardless of their approach. Scholarship functions on the rigid application of methodology and discipline specific academic approaches, neither of which were developed for the sole purpose of obtaining answers about truth or even for assessing the truth claims of a text. Therefore, the scholar who relies on the distillation of current scholarship builds upon a shifting foundation that will require each subsequent generation to reconsider the position of the academy and then redefine current positions through new distillations of scholarship. Each new generation of scholars acknowledges a body of both responsible and careful scholarship and scholars from whose work the new generation can freely draw.

The academic approach to understanding a religious text will never achieve something that might be termed the final answer or even an absolute statement of fact. The scholarly enterprise is not designed to debate questions such as “Was Jesus the Savior of the world?” Instead, it accepts the position that some thought that he was, and then it moves to consider what was meant by that belief and how were people treated who did not hold that belief. It might also ask what the origin of such a belief was and whether that origin was with Jesus or an earlier source.

Interestingly, the Restoration has been characterized by an emphasis on eternal truths while leaving many historical matters alone. For example, President Russell M. Nelson recently stated that the Book of Mormon “is not a textbook of history, although some history is found within its pages.”[2] That is not to say that the book is ahistorical, but that the book is something other than a history. A scholar working on the text would then seek to categorize it by genre: If not history, then what? When no prophetic or church counsel has been offered on a subject, Latter-day Saint scholars are left to navigate the field for themselves. If the tools of scholarship had never been fully cultivated, this endeavor would have led to less-than-desirable results.

In this spirit, I present what I feel are some of the most influential works on the New Testament today—publications that continue to have the greatest impact in our scholarly lives. These works have shaped the way we ask questions of the New Testament. Only by working with the same sources will we be able to enter the arena of their discussions as well as acquire valuable and enduring information from those discussions.

The Quest of the “Historical Jesus”

In the twentieth century, following the English translation of Albert Schweitzer’s The Quest of the Historical Jesus, a group of scholars began thinking about Jesus and his life in important new ways.[3] They recognized that public understanding of Jesus had been filtered through the larger institution of the church and that to appreciate who Jesus was, they would have to peel away the layers of tradition to discover the “historical Jesus.” The church was initially loosely defined as any institution that altered or shaped the way the story of Jesus was presented, whether it be a first-century or a nineteenth-century institution. When these successive layers of tradition were peeled back, a more perfect picture of Jesus would thus emerge, defined by a more precise understanding of what he said, did, and experienced. The first so-called quest of the historical Jesus concluded that he was an apocalyptic prophet who promised the dawning of a new millennial age.

The first quest was followed by a second quest, which of course has been followed by other tangential quests.[4] Recognizing certain deficiencies in the first quest, such as a limited interpretation of the way historical context informed New Testament narratives, inspired the efforts of the second-generation scholars. They felt that Jesus could not be understood or defined simply as the sum of his experiences and sayings (that is, by his historical setting alone); rather, he should be understood dynamically as a composite of his experiences and sayings and by how his peers—the church and early institutional leaders—defined him. Interestingly, the new quest has been bogged down for some time as scholars have attempted to clarify the progression of leadership from Jesus’s death to the apostles and to the late first-century bishops and elders. The new quest also attempts to develop a clearer understanding of the relationship of first-century sources to the life of Jesus.

A number of vitally important works have emerged from this quest. No single work has yet emerged as the defining monograph, but the majority of books about Jesus trace their ancestry to this quest in some way; in other words, modern studies of Jesus’s life are part of the dialogue of this quest. For the Latter-day Saint tradition, James E. Talmage’s Jesus the Christ is an early response to the first quest. Remaining uninformed about how the quest has shaped the modern discussion can, in fact, lead us to interpret findings and then draw certain conclusions without seeing the larger implications. In essence, it is somewhat like purchasing a new house because we like the front door.

My own experience has led me to esteem the following books as the best books on the quest. Albert Schweitzer’s The Quest of the Historical Jesus is still essential reading in the field as well as James M. Robinson’s A New Quest of the Historical Jesus. Still timely, but not as comprehensive as Schweitzer or Robinson, is Bart D. Ehrman’s Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of a New Millennium.[5] Ehrman’s work signals a call to return to the findings of Schweitzer and, in essence, is an attempt to reign in the more tangential quests. His work, however, demonstrates that scholars still consider Jesus an apocalyptic prophet who prophesied of a new age and asserts that titles such as Savior and Redeemer were later descriptions applied to Jesus by his second- and third-generation followers.

• Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus (Mineola, NY: Dover, 2005)
• James Robinson, A New Quest of the Historical Jesus (London: SCM Press, 2012)
• Bart Ehrman, Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of a New Millennium (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001)
• Gerd Theissen and Annette Merz, The Historical Jesus: A Comprehensive Guide (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1998)
• John Meier, A Marginal Jew: Rethinking the Historical Jesus, 5 vols. (New York: Doubleday, 1991–2009)
• Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2017)

Kyrios Christos, or Lord Jesus

Perhaps more properly considered a subset of the quest for the “historical Jesus” is one of the most important and long-lasting works ever written in the field: Wilhelm Bousset’s Kyrios Christos: A History of the Belief in Christ from the Beginnings of Christianity to Irenaeus[6] traced the development of changing perceptions about Jesus, which the first quest had posited would exist, through the first Christian century. This enormously successful monograph has defined the way many scholars present the life of Jesus and brought incredible scholarly acumen and breadth to New Testament studies.

In 1992, a group of scholars met at Princeton under the direction of the influential James H. Charlesworth to work out some of the categories emanating from Bousset’s work. Although not instigated directly as a response to Bousset, the seminar participants felt that the recent publications of a wealth of primary materials—the Dead Sea Scrolls, the Nag Hammadi Codices, the Cologne Mani Codex, and other works—warranted a reinvestigation. The resulting publication of their discussions, The Messiah: Developments in Earliest Judaism and Christianity,[7] continues to be a must-read for students of the New Testament and early Christianity.

Even more recently, Larry Hurtado’s Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity[8] has challenged the towering presence of Bousset in the field, presenting one of the most careful and thoughtful scholarly monographs to date. Hurtado’s work, which rightly challenges the fundamentals and categories of the quest for the “historical Jesus,” attempts to reconfigure the way we think about the transition between the living Jesus and the way early Christians interpreted his life. These studies could prove vitally important for the dynamics of late first-century Christianity and the developing ecclesiastical structure that arose out of this period.

• Dale Allison, Constructing Jesus: Memory, Imagination, and History (Ada, Michigan: Baker, 2010)
• Chris Keith and Anthony Le Donne, eds., Jesus, Criteria, and the Demise of Authenticity (London: T&T Clark, 2012)
• James D. G. Dunn, Christianity in the Making, volume 1: Jesus Remembered (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003)
• Larry Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Chrsitianity (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2005)
• Wilhelm Bousset, Kyrios Christos: A History of the Belief in Christ from the Beginnings of Christianity to Irenaeus (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2013)

New Testament Textual Criticism

The growing discipline of New Testament textual criticism, once a subset of New Testament studies but now a burgeoning field in itself, has developed under careful scholarly scrutiny and is now on the verge of making some major breakthroughs, the equivalent of which has not been seen for nearly a hundred years.[9] The pioneers of the field, Karl Lachmann, Constantin von Tischendorf, Brooke Foss Westcott, Fenton John Anthony Hort, Eberhard Nestle, Irwin Nestle, Hermann Freiherr von Soden, and others, developed methodological approaches and categories that are still in place today.

More recently, however, a trend has developed that has caused scholars to rethink some of the older approaches in the field and reconfigure the way we discuss the text of the New Testament and how we reconstruct its text. Primary among the new approaches are two books that advocate more eclectic or reasoned approaches to recovering the original text of the New Testament as well as maintaining certain methodologies advanced by earlier New Testament textual critics. Kurt and Barbara Aland’s The Text of the New Testament is foremost in this regard, with a particular emphasis on rewriting the categories of New Testament textual families.[10] The fourth edition of Metzger’s influential Text of the New Testament, revised and expanded by Bart D. Ehrman, is also exemplary.[11]

• Kurt and Barbara Aland’s The Text of the New Testament (Leiden: Brill, 1987)
• Bart D. Ehrman, Michael W. Holmes, and Bruce M. Metzger, eds, The Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research. Essays on the Status Quaestionis, 2nd ed. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2012)
• David C. Parker, An Introduction to the New Testament Manuscripts and Their Texts (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008)
• Metzger, Bruce M. and Bart D. Ehrman, The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration, 4th ed. (New York and Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005)
• Patrick J. Hartin, H. J. Petzer, and Bruce Manning, Text and Interpretation: New Approaches in the Criticism of the New Testament (Leiden: Brill, 1991)

Paul: The Author of Christianity?

Perhaps no other figure in the New Testament besides Jesus has garnered such attention and created such diversity of opinion as Paul the apostle. In my opinion, the area of Pauline studies is the most difficult to navigate today, so the following ideas can only sweepingly describe the present state of the field and what books might be best.

In pre–World War II Germany, with the rise of the Religionsgeschichtliche Schule (History of Religions School), which sought to describe Christianity as a social phenomenon of the Greco-Roman world, Paul came to be seen as a product of Jewish apocalyptic anxiety and Christian liberalism. In other words, Jewish expectations of the coming of the Messiah and the associated frustration that the coming of the Messiah appeared to be delayed caused many Jews to feel disappointment and lack of confidence in God. Those same Jews, like Paul, purportedly began to look for other expressions of God’s grace. According to the theory, Christianity opened new possibilities for these frustrated Jews.

With Paul at the helm of this reenvisioning of Judaism, which came to be called Christianity, the early Christian church developed according to Paul’s personal outlook and perspective.[12] Early interactions among church leaders, therefore, began to be interpreted as competing forms of Christianity, seeking to imply their own forms of orthodoxy on the others. Of course, this less-than-flattering view of early Christianity places great emphasis on Paul’s role in shaping the church. In these studies, the typical findings are that Paul is the most important figure in Christianity besides Jesus or that Paul, rather than Jesus, is responsible for making Christianity what it is today.

Thousands of books have been written on the life of Paul. But before anyone reads one of them, he or she would be wise to connect the particular study into the family tree of Pauline scholarship. Certain important questions should be asked. Is the book in question a reaction to the Religionsgeschichteschule, or does it advance their ideas? Further questions should follow—does Paul appear as a Jew trying to change Christianity, or is he a Christian trying to make sense of his Jewish heritage?

Some excellent works on Paul’s life are Alan F. Segal’s Paul the Convert: The Apostolate and Apostasy of Saul the Pharisee, and Jerome Murphy-O’Connor’s Paul: A Critical Life.[13] These two works are both carefully researched and provide the reader with cautiously constructed views of how Paul fits into the overall picture of developing Christianity. Segal sees Paul as a radical convert to Christianity whose divergent beliefs encouraged his conversion from Judaism to Christianity, whereas Murphy-O’Connor sees Paul as a humble convert of dynamic personality and boundless energy.

Another invaluable study of Paul can be found in Wayne A. Meeks’s The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul.[14] This work provides the reader with the necessary Greco-Roman background for understanding Paul’s life. Its major shortfall is that it omits Paul’s early period prior to his conversion. For that period, Paul’s Early Period by Rainer Riesner is essential reading.[15]

• Alan F. Segal, Paul the Convert: The Apostolate and Apostasy of Saul the Pharisee (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1992)
• Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, Paul: A Critical Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996)
• Wayne A. Meeks, The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003)
• Rainer Riesner, Paul’s Early Period: Chronology, Mission Strategy, Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1997)
• Michael Bird, ed., Four Views on the Apostle Paul (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2012)
• N. T. Wright, The Paul Debate: Critical Questions for Understanding the Apostle (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2015)

Dictionaries

New Testament dictionaries are abundant today and approach the New Testament from a variety of different vantage points. Unfortunately, no single dictionary satisfies every need of the New Testament scholar. Although it unfortunately comes in a six-volume set, the Anchor Bible Dictionary, edited by David Noel Freedman, is perhaps the most comprehensive dictionary of the Bible today.[16] Some of its entries are now outdated, and some important subjects receive only minor treatment when readers might expect otherwise. It is, however, an excellent starting point for biblical study. The Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible is also a handy reference companion.[17] Its brevity notwithstanding, the entries are mostly up to date and reflect the recent scholarship in the field today.

For the more serious student of the New Testament, Gerhard Kittel and Gerhard Friederich’s Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, translated by Geoffrey W. Bromily, is a standard in the field.[18] Unfortunately, it is probably used to the exclusion of the equally important three-volume work by Celsas Spicq, Theological Lexicon of the New Testament, edited by James D. Ernest.[19] These two works combined are an essential part of any New Testament library, particularly when readers are studying the meaning of New Testament terms in Greek and the implications of certain words in their larger Greco-Roman context.[20]

• David Noel Freedman, ed., Anchor Bible Dictionary, 6 vols. (New York: Doubleday, 1992)
• Celsas Spicq, Theological Lexicon of the New Testament, 3 vols, ed. James D. Ernest. (Cambridge: Tyndale House, 1995)
• David Noel Freedman, ed., Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2000)
• Gerhard Kittel, Gerhard Friederich, and Geoffrey W. Bromily, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromily, 10 vols. (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1976)

New Testament History: Greco-Roman or Jewish

In the academy today, two schools of thought prevail regarding the sociological background and historical development of Christianity in the first few centuries. Certainly, this is a simplification to some degree, but the vast majority of studies in this area can be classified in one of two ways—either Christianity was a social phenomenon growing out of the larger Greco-Roman world or it was a small Jewish reformist movement that eventually broke from its Jewish moorings.

The essential question facing students of the New Testament is whether studying Classics or studying Judaism will be more helpful to understanding the New Testament world; in other words, is Greek or Hebrew more beneficial for New Testament study? The question is not easily resolved, and Latter-day Saint scholars have typically adopted both approaches. The obvious answer seems to be that both approaches have their merits; unfortunately, very few schools today approach the question from both viewpoints. It is essentially an either-or proposal.

For the student of the New Testament, the following works are still important and largely influential. Emil Schürer’s The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ (175 B.C.–A.D. 135), revised and edited by Geza Vermes and Fergus Millar, explores the theory that Christianity grew largely from Jewish origins.[21] Although only available in German, Hermann Strack and Paul Billerbeck’s six-volume Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud und Midrasch is the best source to reference primary sources on the intersections between Judaism and Christianity.[22] Joachim Jeremias’s Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus: An Investigation into Economic and Social Condition during the New Testament Period is also helpful and still contains insights that are pertinent today, even though the work is now dated.[23]

On the Greco-Roman world, the revised edition of The New Testament Background, edited by Charles Kingsley Barrett, is careful and cautious in providing source materials for understanding the world of the New Testament.[24] F. F. Bruce’s New Testament History, although dated, is still a favorite among Latter-day Saint scholars.[25] Bruce’s work is not generally highly regarded among scholars today because its presentation is no longer on the cutting edge, but it is still a competent introduction to the subject. I personally like Luke Timothy Johnson’s The Writings of the New Testament, although at times his religious views lead him to dismiss scholarly discussions unnecessarily.[26]

• Emil Schürer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ (175 B.C.–A.D. 135), rev. and ed. Geza Vermes and Fergus Millar, 4 vols. (London: T&T Clark, 2000)
• Hermann Strack and Paul Billerbeck, Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud und Midrasch, 6 vols. (München: C. H. Beck’sche, 1974)
• Joachim Jeremias, Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus: An Investigation into Economic and Social Condition during the New Testament Period (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1969)
• F. F. Bruce, New Testament History (New York: Doubleday, 1980)
• Luke Timothy Johnson, The Writings of the New Testament, 3rd ed. (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 2010)
• Charles Kingsley Barrett, The New Testament Background (London: S.P.C.K., 1956)

Commentaries

The value of New Testament commentaries is that they provide a reference point for interpretation of selected passages. Today, various commentaries are aimed at teachers, preachers, academics, and lay students. Therefore, no single commentary can satisfy every need or answer every question. One important reason for readers to purchase New Testament commentaries is obvious because they typically provide the most up-to-date bibliographic information for a given book of scripture; moreover, they also often represent a summary of the various scholarly approaches to a specific book, which can help the reader understand simple facts such as why scholars often quote references to the Gospel of Mark first even when the same story is also found in Matthew and Luke.

One commentary series stands out as exemplary for beginning students of the New Testament: Black’s New Testament Commentaries.[27] For the really serious student of the New Testament, the conservative Anchor Bible Commentary series, the liberal Hermeneia series, and the New International Greek Testament Commentaries are helpful and informative resources.[28]

• Black’s New Testament Commentaries (Bloomsbury)
• Anchor Bible Commentary series (Yale University Press)
• Hermeneia series (Philadelphia)
• New International Greek Testament Commentaries (Bloomsbury/T&T Clark)
• Baker Exegetical Commentaries (Baker)
• Word Biblical Commentaries (Baker)

Development of the Canon

Although the history of the New Testament canon is a specialized subset of New Testament studies, it is an essential part of understanding how to use and interpret the text of the New Testament. Often, I am asked what the “original Greek” says in this or that passage. This question, however, cannot be answered today because we do not have the original and because we do not know for certain the relationship of the earliest surviving written texts (all of them in Greek) and their earlier Aramaic sources (the language of Jesus and the language of the first oral accounts).

Another important reason for our studying the history of the New Testament canon is to avoid the reliance upon emotive arguments intended to demonstrate the superiority of one translation over another. Certainly, some translations are better than others, but no single translation in English today is superior to the words of Jesus as he spoke them. Every translation, including the Greek, Latin, Syriac, English, Spanish, or any other language, can only approximate what Jesus said and what he meant. These translations will always remain secondary sources that report to the best of their ability what Jesus said. As far as we can tell today, we have only very few words in the New Testament that actually represent the words as Jesus spoke them, while everything else is preserved in translation. Those words are “Amen,” “talitha cumi,” “abba,” “mammon,” “Cephas,” “eloi eloi lama sabachthani,” and “raca.” Because the translations of his words are the only way we can access his words, it is important to understand the history of those translations. Bruce M. Metzger’s The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance is still the standard in the field and is very accessible for the beginning student.[29]

• Bruce M. Metzger’s The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997)
• F. F. Bruce, The Canon of Scripture (Downers Grove, IL: IVP, 1988)
• David Trobisch, The First Edition of the New Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000)
• Harry Gamble, The New Testament Canon: Its Making and Meaning (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985)
• Lee Martin McDonald, J. A. Sanders, The Canon Debate (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2002)

Conclusion

No single list of books on the New Testament can feasibly represent all the best books available today. Differences of opinion will always arise about which ones are best, and Latter-day Saint scholars may have significant differences of opinion. On the other hand, a fairly wide consensus exists on which books should be considered best in the sense that they have been the most influential and should be required reading for anyone who wishes to pursue further study of the New Testament and early Christianity.

This article is an attempt to give a beginning point for someone who wishes to pursue a more detailed study of the New Testament, but who has not had formal academic training in New Testament studies. The list would be significantly different if I were creating one for an introductory class at Brigham Young University or if I were teaching a graduate level seminar. I hope that these suggestions will give the reader a clear beginning point in the conversation, although I openly acknowledge that the field of New Testament studies has moved in different directions in many cases, and so in a sense this list of best books is not up to date, but it is represents an entrypoint into a lively discussion about the meaning of the New Testament, its people, and places.

Expanded from an article in the Religious Educator 8, no. 2 (2007): 87–99. This article discusses biblical scholarship from an academic perspective and surveys only these types of resources rather than specifically Latter-day Saint biblical scholarship. For Latter-day Saint views on the New Testament, consider Lincoln H. Blumell, New Testament History, Culture, and Society: A Background to the Texts of the New Testament (Provo, UT: Religious Studies Center, Brigham Young University; Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2019).

Notes

[1] Michael V. Fox, “Bible Scholarship and Faith-Based Study: My View,” SBL Forum, http://www.sbl-site.org/Article.aspx?ArticleId=490.

[2] Russell M. Nelson, “2016 Seminar for New Mission Presidents,” Church News, June 30, 2016.

[3] Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus, trans. John Bowden (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2001; originally published in 1906).

[4] James M. Robinson, A New Quest of the Historical Jesus and Other Essays (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1983; first published SCM Press, London, 1959).

[5] Bart D. Ehrman, Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).

[6] Wilhelm Bousset, Kyrios Christos: A History of the Belief in Christ from the Beginnings of Christianity to Irenaeus, trans. John E. Steely (Nashville: Abingdon, 1970).

[7] James H. Charlesworth, ed., The Messiah: Developments in Earliest Judaism and Christianity: The First Princeton Symposium on Judaism and Christian Origins (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992).

[8] Larry W. Hurtado, Lord Jesus Christ: Devotion to Jesus in Earliest Christianity (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2003).

[9] The series Textus Criticus Maior promises to be the most comprehensive collection of textual variants of the New Testament ever assembled.

[10] First published as Der Text des Neuen Testaments (Stuttgart: Deutsche Biblegesellschaft, 1981); English translation by Erroll F. Rhodes (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1987).

[11] Bruce M. Metzger and Bart D. Ehrman, The Text of the New Testament: Its Transmission, Corruption, and Restoration, 4th ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).

[12] My own study of Paul’s life seeks to place him within the context of the larger ecclesiastical or church structure and to show how his personality developed according to the Spirit of God rather than how his personality shaped Christianity: see Thomas A. Wayment, From Persecutor to Apostle: A Biography of Paul (Salt Lake City: Deseret Book, 2006).

[13] Alan F. Segal, Paul the Convert: The Apostolate and Apostasy of Saul the Pharisee (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1990); Jerome Murphy-O’Connor, Paul: A Critical Life (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996).

[14] Wayne Meeks, The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul, 2nd ed. (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003).

[15] Rainer Riesner, Paul’s Early Period: Chronology, Mission Strategy, Theology (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1998).

[16] David Noel Freedman, ed., Anchor Bible Dictionary, 6 vols. (New York: Doubleday, 1992).

[17] David Noel Freedman, Allen C. Myers, Astrid B. Beck, eds., Eerdmans Dictionary of the Bible (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000).

[18] Gerhard Kittel and Gerhard Frieric, Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, trans. Geoffrey W. Bromily (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 1985).

[19] Celsas Spiqc, Theological Lexicon of the New Testament, ed. James D. Ernest, 3 vols. (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1994).

[20] It is important to note that this does not imply that the Greco-Roman worldview approach is preferable but rather that the language of translation (Greek) is significantly informed by Greco-Roman usage of those same terms.

[21] Emil Schürer, The History of the Jewish People in the Age of Jesus Christ (175 B.C.–A.D. 135) 3 vols., rev. and ed. by Geza Vermes and Fergus Millar, (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1973).

[22] Hermann Strack and Paul Billerbeck, Kommentar zum Neuen Testament aus Talmud und Midrasch, 6 vols. (München: C. H. Beck, 1922–56).

[23] Joachim Jeremias, Jerusalem in the Time of Jesus: An Investigation into Economic and Social Condition during the New Testament Period (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975).

[24] Charles Kingsley Barrett, ed., The New Testament Background, rev. ed. (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1987).

[25] F. F. Bruce, New Testament History (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1980).

[26] Luke Timothy Johnson, The Writings of the New Testament, rev. ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1999).

[27] Black’s New Testament Commentaries (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson).

[28] Anchor Bible Commentary (New York: Doubleday); Hermeneia (Philadelphia: Fortress); New International Greek Testament Commentaries (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans).

[29] Bruce M. Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance (Oxford: Clarendon, 1987).