The New Testament Story

Ben Witherington III is Amos Professor of New Testament for Doctoral Studies at Asbury Theological Seminary, Wilmore, Kentucky, and is on the doctoral faculty at St. Andrews University, Scotland. Witherington has twice won the Christianity Today best Biblical Studies book-of-the-year award, and his many books include We Have Seen His Glory: A Vision of Kingdom Worship and socio-rhetorical commentaries on Mark, Acts, Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philemon, Colossians, Ephesians, and 1 and 2 Thessalonians. He writes a blog at patheos.com and can also be found on the web at benwitherington.com.

Author of the immensely popular The Jesus Quest, Witherington (New Testament, Asbury Theological Seminary) here offers a New Testament introduction in miniature. Witherington reflects mainline contemporary scholarship, stating that the New Testament is a "literary residue of a largely oral movement which grew on the basis of preaching and teaching, praying and praising, and other forms of oral communication." His argument, however, is not in lockstep with other biblical scholars, such as Elaine Pagels and Bart Ehrman, primarily because he tends to accept most of the Pauline corpus as directly written or dictated by Paul and to insert the New Testament into a much stronger matrix of Roman (and not simply Semitic) culture. Further, he swims against the academic tide, claiming that the Gospels are biographies. Within this context, his final chapter, "Stories of Jesus Inside the Gospels," is masterly. Overall, this book provides an artful introduction to the New Testament for students of religion, both new and seasoned. While it cannot replace Raymond Brown's Introduction to the New Testament, it deserves appreciation. For academic libraries as well as public libraries with a good religion circulation.-David I. Fulton, Coll. of St. Elizabeth, Morristown, NJ Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Witherington (The Brother of Jesus), a professor at Asbury Theological Seminary, teams up with Asbury student Hyatt to introduce the New Testament to laypeople without sucking the life out of it, covering origin, plot and main characters. The first section is a thorough, lively discourse on the cultural background of the writing and compiling of the Testament. The second section delivers insights on entire books and individual passages, from the grand themes of Paul to the similarities among various episodes in the life of Peter. Readers used to taking scripture a few verses at a time may find that such observations inspire new appreciation for the New Testament as a whole. But lay readers might trip on the stumbling block of the book's scholarly bent; discussions of academic issues such as the literary relationship among Matthew, Mark and Luke, or John's indebtedness to Wisdom literature risk losing all but the most dedicated. Conservative evangelical readers should also know that the book casts doubt on Peter's authorship of 1 Peter and Paul's writing of 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy and Titus. Nevertheless, the depth and big-picture perspective of Witherington's work will succeed in bringing serious Bible students a fresh appreciation for the New Testament story. (May) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly
"The depth and big-picture perspective of Witherington's work will succeed in bringing serious Bible students a fresh appreciation for the New Testament story."

Darrell L. Bock
"The New Testament is a collection of a wide variety of stories. Ben Witherington is a sure guide through this library of stories and how they were collected. His book is a fresh take on introducing the New Testament. It comes highly recommended for its treatment of the wealth of testimony to the story."

Craig S. Keener
"Synthesizing much of his earlier work in a very readable way, Ben Witherington traces the development of New Testament stories into our New Testament books and canon. Along the way he rightly challenges time-worn schemes of an evolution from lower to higher Christology and also retells stories of New Testament individuals without losing the distinctives of the various New Testament sources where we find them."

James C. Howell
"What a valuable book for the beginner eager to probe the New Testament more deeply! Ben Witherington has packaged his enormous learning in clear, understandable, accessible ways. With its excellent illustrations and charts, The New Testament Story will be an open window into the world of stories found in the Bible."