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| Intro#1- Describe the purpose of each of the three basic methods of New Testament scholarship: history, social science, and literary. |
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Definition
| We are separated from the text by history, culture, and language. |
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| Intro #3- What basic problems hinder our attempt to hear New Testament writings as their original audience might have heard them? |
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| We are separated from the text by history, language, and culture. |
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| 1 #1- Why are all the New Testament documents written in Greek rather than in Hebrew? |
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Definition
| From the time of Alexander the Great (died 323 CE), and especially because of Antiochus IV (Epiphanes), Hellenism (Greek culture and language) was the “great tradition” (Herzog), thus, the common written and spoken language throughout the Roman Empire. Also, in most cases, the intended audience was outside of Israel. (At the time of Paul, diaspora Jews were 2 to 1 in comparison to those in Palestine). |
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| #3- What are the three major factors that determined a person’s status? |
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| Class: The wealthy elites vs. the masses. Senators, knights, citizens, residents, freedpersons, and slaves. |
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| #7- How did the Greco-Roman picture of the divine world reflect their picture of the human world? |
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| Honor and hierarchy. At the top was the supreme God, perhaps identified with Zeus (or Jupiter) or even more abstractly. Next came the great Gods, then the lesser deities (daimon), then great human-heros. |
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| 1 #8- Why did people in the ancient world feel a need to be “saved”? |
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| Fate: Many in the ancient world believed in fate. Fate was believe to be a tangled web that determines or limits life. These ancients believed that fate could be overcome through piety (obedience, devotion, chastity, etc.) |
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| 1 #9- What two forms of monotheism existed in the Greco-Roman world? |
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| Inclusion: In many cultures in the Greco-Roman world, inclusive monotheism is a more philosophical monotheism, which assumes that all gods are reflections or aspects of the same god. Correct worship is sincere worship. |
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| 1 #10- How does the Devil fit in a monotheistic system? |
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| In a dualistic world, the devil is a powerful adversary of God. For Jews who encountered dualism, they could not adopt it wholesale, for they could not imagine any force equal to their God. After experiences of suffering, particularly from oppressive foreign empires toward the faithful, the Devil became a way of explaining this suffering. This led to the apocalyptic dualistic opposition of the current age and the age to come, where Satan is the ruler of this age. |
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| 2 #4- How do the five early paradigms each interpret a vital aspect of Jesus for his earliest followers? Why was no one paradigm completely satisfactory? |
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Definition
| The early followers of Jesus needed to make sense of several things, such as (a) Jesus’ connection to the past, (b) Jesus’ life and teachings, (c) Jesus’ suffering and death, (d) Jesus’ resurrection and place in their current experience, and (e) the place of the Gentiles in Jesus’ ministry and the community of followers. |
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| 3#3- How does Paul connect the ideas about the coming end of the age with concerns about how one should live in the present? |
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Definition
| Because the end was imminent, one should stay the way they are (married or single, slave or free), live moral lives, and endure hardships. |
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| 3#5- Be able to define apocalypticism and show how an apocalyptic worldview explains the nature of suffering. |
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| Apocalypticism is a worldview that believes in a dualistic opposition between the current age and an age to come. Thus, the current suffering is due to the fact that this is an evil age, and that the suffering of the faithful will be justified in the age to come. |
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| 4#9- Be able to discuss the issue raised by the success of Paul preaching among Gentiles, especially the religious and ethical issues. |
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| 4#10- How does the ancient family structure provide the metaphors for describing Paul’s view of the Christian community? |
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| 4#5- Compare and contrast the two major interpretations of Romans. |
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| 5#7- Compare and contrast Pauline and Stoic ethics. |
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| 5#8- What is the relation between the Jesus story (as Paul understood it) and Paul’s own story? |
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| 8#2- How did ancient interpreters deal with the diversity of gospels? |
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| 8#6- How does a literary reading of the Gospels differ from a historicist reading? |
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| 9#3- Discuss various scholarly opinions about the characterization of the disciples in Mark and explain their narrative in the story. |
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| 9: #6- How might the historical situation of Mark relate to the strong emphasis on suffering in the story? |
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| 10#1- What implications for the meaning of the story as a whole can one glean by comparing the opening of Matthew’s Gospel with the opening of Mark’s? |
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| 10#3- Describe and illustrate the ways Matthew characterizes Jesus. |
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| 10#9- Why is the dichotomy Jew/Gentile false for the ancient world generally and for Matthew’s Gospel particularly? |
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| 10#10- What is the most likely historical and social setting for Matthew’s Gospel? |
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| 12# 2 In what ways is John most like the Synoptic Gospels? Where does it differ most radically? |
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| 12#3 Discuss the descent-ascent theme as an organizing principle of John’s story. |
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| 13#1- How do the three basic approaches to interpreting Revelation explain the significance of the character symbolized as 666? |
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| #9- Where in the broad spectrum of types of early Christianity would you fit the Johannine community? How different is it from Pauline Christianity? |
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| #3- Trace and explain a few of Luke’s prominent themes, such as prayer, spirit, Temple, the lowly. |
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| #6- How and why does Luke characterize Jesus as innocent? |
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| (Stendahl) Why does Stendahl love the Bible? |
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| (Riches) Be able to summarize Luther’s influence on changing view of the Bible in Europe. Be able to summarize the Enlightenment’s influence on changing view of the Bible in Europe. Be able to summarize the history of the Bible in Latin America and Africa. How might the history of the Bible in Asia resemble these? What particular aspects of Asian cultures might raise different conflicts and opportunities for interpretation? |
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| (Herzog) What are the three stages of the Freire’s pedagogy of the oppressed? Why did peasants respond to Jesus? |
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| (Dube) Summarize Dube’s approach to reading the hemorrhaging woman’s story. How do the results compare to those of a historical-critical approach? |
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| (Wire) According to Wire, how might the social experience and, therefore, theologies of some Corinthian women have been different from Paul’s? |
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| (Stendahl) How does Stendahl understand Paul's mission to the Gentiles? |
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| (Navigating Romans) How do the Hondurans in the Amor Fe y Vida community read God's righteousness in Romans? |
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| (Moore) According to Moore, how does Mark reinscribe empire? And what parts of Mark hold hope of subverting that reinscription? |
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| (Sobrino) According to Sobrino, how is the cross salvific? |
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| (Kim) According to Kim, why does Jesus commend the widow’s gift? |
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| 1. According to Martin, there are three reasons that Christians adopted the household codes. What are these three reasons? |
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| Of the books now included in the NT canon, which were the most controversial and why? |
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| What is the logic of the ordering of the writings in the NT? |
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