THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE PEOPLE OF GOD - 8 On Reading
THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE PEOPLE OF GOD - 8 On Reading
by SPCK - N T Wright
On Reading With these examples in mind, we turn to the question: what happens when we read? The remarks in chapter 2 about the nature of knowledge must now be applied to this specific area. What kind of ‘knowledge’ do we gain as we read?…
THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE PEOPLE OF GOD - 7 Literature, Story and The Articulation of Worldviews
THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE PEOPLE OF GOD - 7 Literature, Story and The Articulation of Worldviews
by SPCK - N T Wright
Literature, Story and The Articulation of Worldviews The study of early Christianity, of Jesus and Paul, and especially of the theology of the whole movement and of individuals within it, is conducted by means of the study of literature…
THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE PEOPLE OF GOD - 10 Reading and Critical Realism
THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE PEOPLE OF GOD - 10 Reading and Critical Realism
by SPCK - N T Wright
Reading and Critical Realism What we need, I suggest, is a critical-realist account of the phenomenon of reading, in all its parts. To one side we can see the positivist or the naïve realist, who move so smoothly along the line from reader to text to author to referent that they …
THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE PEOPLE OF GOD - 14 HISTORY AND THE FIRST CENTURY
THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE PEOPLE OF GOD - 14 HISTORY AND THE FIRST CENTURY
by SPCK - N T Wright
HISTORY AND THE FIRST CENTURY Historical knowledge, I suggested in chapter 2, is indeed a kind of knowledge. We need to make this point clearly, not least after the last chapter. In a good deal of modern literary criticism, as we have seen, there is so much emphasis on the text a…
THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE PEOPLE OF GOD - 12 The Nature of Stories
THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE PEOPLE OF GOD - 12 The Nature of Stories
by SPCK - N T Wright
The Nature of Stories (i) The Analysis of Stories: Narrative Structure The way in which stories possess the power they do, by which they actually change how people think, feel and behave, and hence change the way the world actually is, can be seen more clearly by means of an anal…
THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE PEOPLE OF GOD - 13 Jesus, Paul and the Jewish Stories
THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE PEOPLE OF GOD - 13 Jesus, Paul and the Jewish Stories
by SPCK - N T Wright
Jesus, Paul and the Jewish Stories The parable of the Wicked Tenants, obviously, does not stand alone. Telling stories was (according to the synoptic gospels) one of Jesus’ most characteristic modes of teaching…
THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE PEOPLE OF GOD - 15 This Does Not Mean ‘No Facts’
THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE PEOPLE OF GOD - 15 This Does Not Mean ‘No Facts’
by SPCK - N T Wright
This Does Not Mean ‘No Facts’ (i) Critical Realism and the Threat of the Disappearing Object The sheer complexity of the historian’s task, and its manifest difference from ‘mere observation’, might lead, and has led some, to the conclusion that there are therefore no such things …
THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE PEOPLE OF GOD - 18 Historical Method: Hypothesis and Verification
THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE PEOPLE OF GOD - 18 Historical Method: Hypothesis and Verification
by SPCK - N T Wright
Historical Method: Hypothesis and Verification (i) Introduction There is an important sense in which historical method is just like all other methods of enquiry. It proceeds by means of ‘hypotheses’, which stand in need of ‘verification’. As we saw earlier, a better way of puttin…
THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE PEOPLE OF GOD - 21 History and Narrative
THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE PEOPLE OF GOD - 21 History and Narrative
by SPCK - N T Wright
History and Narrative The task of the historian is not simply to assemble little clumps of ‘facts’ and hope that somebody else will integrate them. The historian’s job is to show their interconnectedness, that is, how one thing follows from another, precisely by examining the ‘in…
THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE PEOPLE OF GOD - 16 The Causes of the Misconception
THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE PEOPLE OF GOD - 16 The Causes of the Misconception
by SPCK - N T Wright
The Causes of the Misconception Why then the problem? In particular, why have so many scholars been coy, to say the least, about ‘events’ in the gospels being actual events, rather than simply fictions in the minds of the evangelists?…
THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE PEOPLE OF GOD - 20 From Event to Meaning
THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE PEOPLE OF GOD - 20 From Event to Meaning
by SPCK - N T Wright
From Event to Meaning (i) Event and Intention History, then, is real knowledge, of a particular sort. It is arrived at, like all knowledge, by the spiral of epistemology, in which the story-telling human community launches enquiries, forms provisional judgments about which storie…
THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE PEOPLE OF GOD - 22 Historical Study of First-Century Religious Movements
THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE PEOPLE OF GOD - 22 Historical Study of First-Century Religious Movements
by SPCK - N T Wright
Historical Study of First-Century Religious Movements The main focus of this project is nothing more nor less than the history of certain first-century religious movements. That description is, I think, as little likely to mislead as any other catch-all heading…
THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE PEOPLE OF GOD - 25 On Christian Theology
THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE PEOPLE OF GOD - 25 On Christian Theology
by SPCK - N T Wright
On Christian Theology What then might a specifically Christian theology be? More, I take it, than simply an account of what Christians have believed in the past, or believe in the present, though those tasks will always be part of the whole…
THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE PEOPLE OF GOD - 23 THEOLOGY, AUTHORITY AND THE NEW TESTAMENT
THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE PEOPLE OF GOD - 23 THEOLOGY, AUTHORITY AND THE NEW TESTAMENT
by SPCK - N T Wright
THEOLOGY, AUTHORITY AND THE NEW TESTAMENT It should be clear by now that the task of reading the New Testament can never be a matter of ‘purely literary’ or ‘purely historical’ study, as though either of these could be removed from wider considerations of culture, worldviews, and…
THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE PEOPLE OF GOD - 27 Theology, Narrative and Authority
THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE PEOPLE OF GOD - 27 Theology, Narrative and Authority
by SPCK - N T Wright
Theology, Narrative and Authority I shall now argue that the conception of the task, the way of reading the New Testament, for which I have been arguing in the last three chapters, enables us to do what pre-modern Christian readers assumed they could do without difficulty, and wh…
THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE PEOPLE OF GOD - 26 Worldviews, Theology and Biblical Studies
THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE PEOPLE OF GOD - 26 Worldviews, Theology and Biblical Studies
by SPCK - N T Wright
Worldviews, Theology and Biblical Studies It will by now be clear that all study, all reading of texts, all attempts to reconstruct history, take place within particular worldviews. This could appear to force interpreters into a difficult choice, between (shall we say) a post- En…
THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE PEOPLE OF GOD - 29 The Sources