New Testament Times: Social, Historical, and Religious Contexts






































































1 See Yoram Hazony, The Philosophy of Hebrew Scripture [Cambridge, England:  Cambridge University Press, 2012], Chapter 2, Part 1, “The New Testament as Witness”, pp. 47 - 54  (BS1186.3.H39 2012).  Cf. "The Hebrew Bible . . . ought not to be confused with the Christian Bible, which is founded upon it, but which amounts to a very severe revision of the Bible of the Jews. . . .  Christians call the Hebrew Bible the Old Testament, or Covenant, in order to supersede it with their New Testament, a work that remains altogether unacceptable to Jews, who do not regard their Covenant as Old and therefore superseded.  I myself suggest that Jewish critics and readers might speak of their Scriptures as the Original Testament, and the Christians work as the Belated Testament, for that, after all, is what it is, a revisionary work that attempts to replace a book, Torah, with a man, Jesus of Nazareth, proclaimed as the Messiah of the House of David by Christian believers."  Harold Bloom, The Book of J; [New York:  Grove Weidenfeld, 1990, p.3]; cf. his " 'Before Moses Was, I Am':  The Original and the Belated Testaments," in Notebooks in Cultural Analysis:  An Annual Review I, Norman F. Cantor, Ed. [Durham, North Carolina:  Duke University Press, 1984, p.3], and also Jack Miles, "The Order of the Canon and the Course of God's Life" in his God:  A Biography; [New York:  Vintage Books, 1995, pp. 15 - 16]. 




































































2 Some combination of the Catholic, Orthodox (including Anglican, Bulgarian, Ethiopian, Greek, and Russian), apocryphal, deutero-cannonical, and extra-cannonical literatures (and the so-called “pseudepigraphic” literatures [including Arabic, Armenian, Romanian, Slovanic, and Syriac Peshitta literatures, and the “lost books of the Bible” and “forgotten books of Eden”]) - the basic selection criteria is summarized by Hedley Frederick David Sparks in the “Preface” to his The Apocryphal Old Testament, (Oxford, England:  Oxford University Press, 1984), p. xv, where he writes, “Our single criterion for inclusion has been whether or not any particular item is attributed to (or is primarily concerned with the history or activities of) an Old [and I'll add “New”] Testament character (or characters).  And we have tried to include all the more important and interesting items that satisfy this criterion, irrespective of date, and irrespective, too, of whether or not a convincing claim can be put forward on behalf of any one of them for a respectable Jewish [and I'll add "Christian"] pedigree.” (In addition, with the growth of understanding of the diversity of the early Judeo-Christian period since the works edited by Robert Henry Charles [The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament in English, with introductions and critical and explanatory notes to the several books, Volume 1:  Apocrypha {Oxford, England:  Clarendon Press, 1913}, Volume 2: Pseudepigrapha [Oxford, England:  Clarendon Press, 1913] and Montague Rhodes James [The Apocryphal New Testament, being the Apocryphal Gospels, Acts, Epistles, and Apocalypses, with other narratives and fragments {Oxford, England:  Clarendon Press, 1924}], and even after some of the earlier works [1972 - 1991] of James H. Charlesworth, and the later works of Wilhelm Schneemelcher [New Testament Apocrypha, Revised Edition, Volume 1:  Gospels and Related Writings {Louisville, KY.:  Westminster Press, 1990}, Volume 2:  Writings Relating to the Apostles; Apocalyptic and Related Subjects {Louisville, KY.: John Knox Press, 1992}], the textual tradition of the vast majority of these documents is either “Christian”, or “Jewish”, or “Jewish-Christian.”  Cf. Samuel Sandmel's instructive article from the 1960s [the Presidential Address to the Society of Biblical Literature and Exegesis, December 27, 1961]:  "Parallelomania," Journal of Biblical Literature 81 [1962]:  1 - 13).

This literature (drawn from a variety of internet sources [if you come upon a broken link {links last checked via the W3C Link Validator on May 31, 2012}, then let me know by completing this Feedback form]), then, may include:

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3 The books associated with the scribe Ezra are titled differently in different versions of the Bible. The following table summarizes the various names:

# Masoretic Hebrew Most English versions [ 1 ] Latin Vulgate ,
English Douay - Rheims
Greek versions Slavonic versions Alternative Names
1 Ezra Ezra 1 Esdras Esdras B´ 1 Esdras Ezra-Nehemiah
2 Nehemiah 2 Esdras
(Nehemias)
Nehemiah
3 absent 1 Esdras 3 Esdras Esdras A´ 2 Esdras Greek Ezra
4 2 Esdras 4 Esdras absent 3 Esdras (Ch 3 - 14) 4 Esdras
Jewish Apocalypse of Ezra
Apocalyptic Esdras
Latin Esdras
5 absent (Ch 1 - 2) 5 Esdras
6 (Ch 15 - 16) 6 Esdras

The Thirty-nine Articles of the Anglican Church follow the naming convention of the Vulgate.  Likewise, the Vulgate enumeration is often used by modern scholars, who nevertheless use the name Ezra to avoid confusion with the Greek and Slavonic enumerations:  1 Ezra (Ezra), 2 Ezra (Nehemiah), 3 Ezra (Esdras A´ / 1 Esdras), 4 Ezra (chapters 3-14 of 4 Esdras), 5 Ezra (chapters 1-2 of 4 Esdras) and 6 Ezra (chapters 15-16 of 4 Esdras).