Description
What Is the New Testament?
Many people would find it difficult to answer the question, "What is the New Testament?" Sometimes students say, "What they read in church," or "the story of Jesus." You will see twenty-seven different writings listed in the table of contents. What holds the whole collection together? They are not twenty-seven chapters in a single book. The most general answer you could give would be to speak of a common belief shared by all the writers: Jesus of Nazareth represents a decisive turning point in God's relationship to humanity. Or, to put it in the words of Acts 4:12, "There is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven, given to human beings by which we must be saved."
This common belief in Jesus Christ is expressed in many different ways in the New Testament. We will constantly be asking ourselves how each way of expressing the message speaks to the situation of Christians in an author's audience. The New Testament provides us with a window into the emergence of Christianity.
ISBN:8171091628
