Here’s the readings:
New Testament Backgrounds and EarlyChristian History

Ancient Israel has a four-stage history: 1) legendarytime before existence in the land; 2) life in the land; 3) the Exile (587-539);and the 4) 2nd Temple period when Israel was controlled by one poweror another. Much of her literature is about the pre-exilic period, but, in itspresent form, it is all post-exilic. The Hebrew Bible or Torah is divided intothree parts: Torah; Prophets (Former and Latter); and Writings.

Israel’s “History” and Literature

Pre-History

Setting ofTorah’s Story

Before1200 BCE

In theLand
Confederacy
Kingdoms
Fall of Northern Kingdom
Fall of Southern Kingdom

Setting ofthe Former Prophets
Setting ofthe Latter Prophets
Setting ofthe Latter Prophets

ca.1200-587 BCE
ca.1200-1000 BCE
ca.1000-922 BCE
ca. 922
ca. 587

Exile(Babylonian)

Setting ofthe Latter Prophets

587-539BCE

Post-Exileor 2nd Temple
Persian
Greek
Brief Independence

Roman

Productionof Torah as book
Setting ofthe Latter Prophets
Collectionof Prophetic books
Daniel

539BCE-CE70or 135
539-333 BCE
333-63 BCE
167-63 BCE
63 BCE-CE 135

Israel came into existence among the Empires. Cities and writing existed in Mesopotamia and Egypt inthe 3rd millennium. The Great Pyramid at Giza was completed in thatmillennium. Israel had brief periods of independence only when Mesopotamian (orAsia Minor) or Egyptian societies were in a lull.
Egypt dominated the Palestinian area from 1600-1100 BCE
The Mereneptah Stele mentions “Israel” in Palestine ca.1200 BCE
The Sea Peoples arrived in Palestine ca. 1200 BCE
Israel’s monarchy (Golden Age) in this brieflull?
Assyria dominates the Near East from the 10thto the 7th century.
Israel falls to Assyria in 722 BCE.
(Neo)Babylonia dominates the Near East from the 7ththrough the 6th century.
Jerusalem falls to Babylon in 587 BCE. TheExile begins.
Persia dominates the Near East from the 6ththrough the 4th century.
Exile ends. 2nd Temple Period.
Hellenistic Kingdoms dominate the Near East from the 4thto the 1st century BCE.
Ptolemies (Egypt) and Seleucids (Syria) fightover Palestine.
The Maccabean Revolt (Hanukkah) restored”proper” Temple worship.
The Hasmonean Kingdom was as Greek as it was Jewish.
Rome dominated the Near East after 63 BCE (Pompey).
Herod the Great ended Hasmonean Rule in 37BCE and ruled until 4BCE.
Herod Antipas ruled Galilee from 4 BCE until39CE
Roman Procurators ruled Jerusalem from 6CE
Pontius Pilate was Procurator from 26-36CE
Jesus died ca. 30CE
Paul and others expand into Mediterranean inthe 50s
Jewish Revolt against Rome in 66-73. Templedestroyed in 70
2nd Revolt against Rome in 132-35.Center of Jewish life outside Palestine.
Early Christianity in all corners of Mediterranean by endof 2nd century
End of Pax Romana in 180 brought imperial persecutions ofChristians
Imperial Christianity, arm of Roman Empire, in 4thcentury: canon, churches, creeds. Neo-Platonic worldview.

Literature
While the Exodus is Israel’s most important story, thecenter of Torah is God’s revelation at Sinai (particularly the Ten Words or TenCommandments). Israel believed that God created her in the wilderness byspeaking these words. That divine speech created the biosphere of Israel in themidst of chaos, death, etc. While some of Israel’s literature extols the king,the land, the temple, and so forth, Israel’s life among the empires, her exile,and the end of her life in the land (under the Romans) means that it is Torahthat always creates Israel’s distinctive existence wherever she is in theworld. Torah is Israel’s cosmogony or founding story or myth. It calls Israelto a life of holiness or separation. Thus, it emphasizes rituals of separation:circumcision, Sabbath, and dietary regulations.
Theinterpretation of Torah is incredibly important throughout the 2ndTemple period. Is Torah, the Hebrew version, used in Jerusalem, its Greektranslation in Alexandrian (the LXX), or the Samaritan Pentateuch used by theSamaritans. The Torah and other texts used by the community that left the DeadSea Scrolls behind is yet another “Torah.” In Jerusalem (and Galilee to alesser extent), the Torah question was whether Torah was for the priestsofficiating at the temple (the Sadducee position) or for all the people (thePharisee position). Later, important rabbis offered differing interpretationsof Torah (this eventually led to the Mishna and the various Talmuds).
All ofIsrael’s literature, to one extent or another, reflects exile. It came intobeing after that traumatic event and responds to it. (Many NT documents, likeMatthew and Paul’s letters, are also responding to exile, as we shall see.) TheChronicler’s History, for example, reads all of history as if it leads up to the2nd Temple as God’s “original plan” (1-2 Chronicles, Ezra,Nehemiah). The Temple is the place where the priests interact with God onbehalf of the people.
TheChronicler, the Former Prophets (the story of Israel’s life in the land beforeexile) and the Latter Prophets (collections of oracles) described the exile(and other catastrophes) as the result of Israel’s sin–particularly (but notalways) in the worship of other gods or the violation of what Protestants referto as the 1st commandment–Thou Shalt Have no other gods before me. Somescholars trace this viewpoint (which one might reduce to obey and prosper,disobey and perish) to Deuteronomy and imagine a Deuteronomic School playing animportant role in Israel’s self-interpretation (in the Former Prophets and someof the Latter Prophets).
Whilethe first commandment is a call to henotheism, not monotheism, the “sin”interpretation (a theodicy) of exile led Israel to monotheism. One God,Israel’s God, controls all peoples and empires. Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Romeall do God’s bidding. Speaking after the loss of (self-government in the) land,the king, and the temple. The Prophets imagine God will act anew and restoreIsrael’s covenant, kingdom (self-government), king (messianic ideas), and/ortemple. Most historians claim that Jesus’ fundamental message was about thekingdom of God. The Prophets articulate the idea (picked up by Paulparticularly) of Israel’s salvation through judgment.
Apocalyptic,represented by some sections of the Prophets and by the last 6 chapters ofDaniel in particular changed the sin-theodicy and expanded the notion ofsalvation through judgment to a story about Israel’s oppression at the hands ofevil empires and Satan and God’s coming judgment of the nations (and Satan),not of Israel, whose judgment was past. In apocalypse, God would soon act tosave his oppressed (righteous) people. The sin-theodicy thus becomes afuture-recompense theodicy. Apocalyptic motifs are very important in the NewTestament, most obviously in Revelation (whose Greek title is the Apocalypse),perhaps in Jesus’ notion of the kingdom, and possibly in Mark’s understandingof the passion of Jesus.
TheWisdom traditions (Proverbs, Job, Ecclesiastes, and so forth) (and the Psalmsto a certain extent) also offer assistance for life in exile or under theempires. This advice is more personal and less definitive. In essence, it saysthe fear of the Lord (and wisdom) is the best “plan” for life but there are noguarantees. Job in particular speaks to the suffering of the righteous, butoffers no rational theodicy. It simply calls one to maintain the faith at allcosts.
Thesevarious traditions offer a multiplicity of notions of who Israel is, what thereason for failure is, and what ethic should be:
1) Exile or life under empires as result of sin,oppression, or just a mystery?
2) Israel as Jews, Samaritans, Galileans, God-fearers,proselytes, or some combination of all of these?
3) To whom does Torah apply: priests; people; Gentiles?
4) How should one relate to the empires (or outsiders?)
a) Appease them and maintain religious traditions (templestate; elite; Sadducees
b) Seek independence militarily (Maccabees; Zealots)
c) Live among but be separate, practicing rituals ofseparation (Pharisees)
d) Withdraw and wait for God to establish the kingdom(Dead Sea Scroll community; apocalyptic)

Greek Influence
AfterAlexander the Great, the cities of the Ancient Near East adopted Greek culture:language, civic arrangement (the polis with its agoras, theaters, gymnasiums,and so forth). Local literatures adopted Greek language and genres. The largeempires of Alexander, his successors, and Rome destroyed most local civicreligions. The rural areas remained more conservative. The Maccabean revoltstarted in villages, not Jerusalem.
Thedestruction of old religions left people with experiences of frustration,alienation, and an increasing sense of individualism. Belief in fate and magicincreased. The Greek and Roman world adopted some older religions in atransformed fashion. The elite were particularly interested in mysteryreligions, which offered some kind of union with a deity that provided lifebeyond death. They paid to belong to these cults in addition to supporting thecivic religion that hallowed the empire in place. For some, variousphilosophies also provided insight for life. Platonism (this world is a badcopy of a mental, ideal world of the forms from which one’s soul has come andwill return; see the allegory of the cave) and Stoicism (the divine reasonpermeates and directs the world; therefore, one should do one’s duty withoutconcern for the consequences [apathy]) were particularly appealing. Stoicismdominated the Roman world during the Pax Romana period. Neo-Platonism dominatedthe later empire, the period in which Christianity became the imperialreligion, the creeds were created, and people like Augustine articulatedChristian visions of the world in his Cityof God and Confessions.

Roman Influence
Rome’s military and administrative genius dominated theclassical era. While brutal in war and in taxation of the conquered to fundimperial excess, Rome provided roads, security, aqueducts, and so forth. Theyextended religious tolerance to conquered peoples but were intolerant of newreligions.
Like all other agrarian empires, their society was apyramid of class, power, and privilege (mirroring the divine world) with lessthan 1% of the people at the top of the pyramid. Outside Rome, 90% of thepeople lived subsistence lives of constant want and necessity. People advanced insuch societies by becoming clients of powerful patrons. The Emperor was themost powerful patron and had the most clients. (People probably saw theirpersonal gods as such patrons as well.) Further, much, if not all, depended onone’s honor–one’s public estimation; how one appears in the eyes ofother–rather than capital, personal integrity, and so forth. Public life was aconstant contest (an agon); one’s honor increased or decreased (one was shamed)in almost every public encounter. By the way “agon” appears in English inprotagonist and antagonist and is incredibly influential in our notions ofliterature (and film). Greek and Roman epics (Iliad, Aeneid) and plays (TheOresteia, Medea) reflect honor contests.

The Historical Jesus: 5 Important Interpretations
(1) The ecclesial Jesus is the Christ of thecanon, the creeds, and church worship. He is a living, religious, or mythicfigure, not a historical or human person.[1] Inparticular, Jesus is the incarnate Son of God providing eternal life to his believers.Obviously, this Neo-Platonic portrait is most dependent on the Gospel of Johnamong the canonical gospels.
(2)By contrast, early modern scholars, mostly Enlightenment (and Deist)philosophers, imagined Jesus Christ to be a fully human sage or philosopher.Their Jesus did no miracles (which they saw as a violation of the natural orderof cause and effect) and taught a rather simple ethic in accordance withnatural law that any rational person could arrive at by their own unaidedreason. That ethic was essentially a form of civic duty (although often statedin the form of the Golden Rule) that imagined God as Creator and EschatologicalJudge. Ironically, these Enlightenment and Deist scholars also relied primarilyon the Gospel of John for their depictions of Jesus, largely because John hasfewer miracles to explain (away) than the other gospels.
(3)In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, coinciding with the development ofmodern historiography, scholars began to try to peel away the later veneer ofthe church’s myth-ritual system, creeds, and canon in order to discover ahistorical, human Jesus. Rejecting John as a late, theologically developedgospel, these scholars focused on the Synoptic Gospels–Matthew, Mark, and Luke.[2]Isolating these gospels and, therefore, discovering their similarities anddifferences, scholars created the Synoptic Problem–that is, the problem ofexplaining the similarities and differences between the Synoptics. By the lastthird of the nineteenth century, the dominant solution to this problem was theTwo-Source Hypothesis, which claimed that Matthew and Luke both used Mark–theearliest canonical gospel–and another now lost source, which these scholarscalled Q.[3]Scholars trying to reconstruct the historical Jesus gradually began to relymost heavily upon Mark (the British approach) or Q (the German and, ultimately,the American approach). Most were ultimately more certain about Jesus’teaching, than his actions, and almost all agreed that Jesus’ teaching wasprimarily about the kingdom of God.[4]These nineteenth-century scholars understood the kingdom primarily in terms ofnineteenth-century liberalism.[5] InAdolf von Harnack’s famous summary, Jesus taught the kingdom (or fatherhood) ofGod, the brotherhood of man, and the commandment to love one another.
(4)As the optimistic nineteenth century gave way to the more troubledtwentieth-century, historians began to think of Jesus in apocalyptic, ratherthan in liberal and progressive, terms. In this scenario, which still dominatesscholarship today, Jesus proclaimed an apocalyptic kingdom of God–a kingdom,that is, which will arrive Tuesday of next week at the very latest. Somescholars believe that Jesus went to Jerusalem and ultimately died in a failedattempt to usher in the kingdom.
Today, almost all historians agree that Jesus’ teachingcentered on the kingdom of God and that he taught about this kingdom–withoutevery really defining it–in colorful stories and images (the parables).[6]
(5)While most think that Jesus understood the kingdom in apocalyptic terms, asignificant neo-liberal minority argues that Jesus understood the kingdom asthe practice of the present rule of God–that is, as an attempt to live in theworld as if it belongs to God rather than to Rome or some other Empire.[7]These scholars understand Jesus as a popular (and rather lax) Pharisee, aCynic, or a reformer trying to restore Jewish village-life despite itsoppression by Temple and Empire. In this view, dependent largely oninterpretations of Jesus’ teaching in Q (and in the Gospel of Thomas), Jesus isa counter-cultural figure, a “hippie” in a world of “yuppies”; one denyingsocial convention (read Roman Empire and Temple state) in favor of nature (readkingdom of God). Obviously, this viewpoint–as it concentrates on Jesus’distinctiveness from other Jews–easily becomes anti-Semitic.
Inreaction to that potential problem (and in an attempt to disavow involvementwith the Holocaust, etc.), all historians assert that Jesus must be understoodas a Jew and in terms of 2nd Temple Judaism, not in terms of laterChristianity. What kind of Jew he was is still hotly debated (see the nextunit). Historians also debate what Jesus’ significance was to his earliestfollowers. Generally, they agree that in the context of Rome’s occupation ofJudea (Temple state)–with increasing taxation from Roman and Jewish elites–anumber of famines, and aborted or failed revolutions, Jesus took a message ofthe kingdom of God in parables to lower classes of Galilee and Judea. His messageand his ministry of magic and meal–shared with those considered outcasts–led tohis Roman crucifixion.

Paul and Others
Paul and other missionaries spread a message aboutChrist’s death and resurrection (not Jesus and the kingdom) to Gentiles throughoutthe Mediterranean World. Paul eventually claimed that the Gentiles did not haveto observe Torah in order to belong to the people of God. Not all Jewishmissionaries agreed with him.

The New Testament
Except for Paul’s letters, the NT documents (includingthe gospels) come after 70 CE (the date of Rome’s destruction of the temple andJerusalem). The NT is in Greek and post-70 Christianity is increasinglyGentile.

The following provides notes detailing the history ofearly Christianity in more detail and provides a preview of our historical workin the course to come.

[1] Thecreeds do state that Jesus Christ is fully human, but this is hardly a frequentemphasis in the history of the church. It is revealing that the “early” churchdecided that Jesus Christ was fully divine in the councils of the 4thcentury before they decided that he was fully human in the councils of thefifth century. The fourth century debate between Arius, who claimed that JesusChrist was similar in nature to God and subordinate to him as a created being,and Athanasius, who claimed that Jesus Christ was of the same nature as God andco-eternal with him, was finally resolved in favor of Athanasius by his claimsthat only God could accomplish human salvation and only God should be worshiped(Jesus Christ was, of course, worshiped in early churches). (One wonders, aswell, if Constantineplayed a role here. After all, the emperor needs a divine Lord, not a humanone.) The debate about Jesus Christ’s humanity arose as a result of thisdecision. Once again, it is revealing that the “church” never achieved as muchunanimity on this point. “Heretics,” like the Monophysites and the Nestorians,continue to claim that Jesus Christ is not fully human.

[2] Scholarsrefer to these as the Synoptic Gospels because of their similar structure. Theyseem to present Jesus with (syn) one eye (optic) or perspective.

[3] Q isshort for Quelle, the German word for “Source.” Scholars hold Mark to be theearliest gospel because Matthew and Luke normally share Mark’s approach or deviatefrom Mark individually (there are, however, famous Matthean and Lukanagreements against Mark). Their changes in Mark also seem to “improve” Markstylistically or theologically. Q accounts for material that Matthew and Lukehave in common but which does not appear in Mark.

[4] Thisconclusion means that the historical Jesus did not teach about himself (asChrist or Son of God) and did not interpret his death (as atoning or salvific).It also means that Jesus did not say (all) the words in red (in the Bible of myyouth) and almost nothing that is in the Gospel of John.

[5] Thephilosophy, by the way, which is the basis for modern individualism (or modernmythology).

[6] For aclassic review, see Norman Perrin, Jesusand the Language of the Kingdom: Symbol and Metaphor in New Testament Interpretation (Philadelphia, Penn.: FortressPress, 1976).

[7] See theappendix to this chapter for one example of this viewpoint.