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THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE PEOPLE OF GOD - 1 Introduction
THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE PEOPLE OF GOD - 1 Introduction
by SPCK - N T Wright
Chapter One Introduction The land of Israel is a small country. You can walk its length, north to south, in a few days, and from its central mountains you can see its lateral boundaries, the sea to the west and the river to the east…
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 - 11 On Literature
THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE PEOPLE OF GOD - 11 On Literature
by SPCK - N T Wright
On Literature If, then, we may agree that such a thing as literature exists, and that we can read it and talk sense about it without having our words collapse back upon themselves, it is important that we ask, albeit briefly, what literature itself is, and what we ought to do wit…
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 - 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 - 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 - 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 - 17 Wanted: New Categories
THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE PEOPLE OF GOD - 17 Wanted: New Categories
by SPCK - N T Wright
Chapter Four HISTORY AND THE FIRST CENTURY THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE PEOPLE OF GOD (iii) Wanted: New Categories What we find, in short, is that the epistemological tools of our age seem inadequate for the data before us. One of the present ironies, typical of movements within the…
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 - 19 Problems in Verification
THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE PEOPLE OF GOD - 19 Problems in Verification
by SPCK - N T Wright
Chapter Four HISTORY AND THE FIRST CENTURY THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE PEOPLE OF GOD Historical Method: Hypothesis and Verification (iii) Problems in Verification There is currently much proper and necessary discussion, for instance among philosophers of science, as to (a) the rela…
THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE PEOPLE OF GOD - 2 The Task
THE NEW TESTAMENT AND THE PEOPLE OF GOD - 2 The Task
by SPCK - N T Wright
2. The Task (i) What to Do with the Wicked Tenants What, then, is the nature of our task? It may help if we begin with another illustration, again concerning a squabble over territory: A man planted a vineyard, put a fence round it, dug a pit for the wine press, and built a tower…
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 - 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 - 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 - 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 - 25 On Christian Theology