The New Testament in Its World

By numerous measures this is a notable publication. One measure is the stature of the authors—they are household names in the field, and their listed publications in the 33-page bibliography number about 60 (Wright, 31; Bird; 29). Another measure is the sheer size of the book, matched by its bibliography containing (I estimate) nearly 1,000 items. Another is the scale of coverage: as the subtitle indicates, this is an attempt to cover in some breadth and detail not just NT history, or the literature we call the NT seen in its wider literary milieu both Jewish and Greco-Roman, or the theology that characterized the earliest believers, but all three.And then there are what I will call layout enhancements—page elements that break up the monotony of prose paragraphs for the sake of eye appeal while also conveying impressions or information in various forms. These enhancements are staggering in number, scale, creativity, and variety. Subtracting front matter (35 pages), bibliography, and indexes (63 pages), the book contains 854 pages of text. On those 854 pages, there are 236 illustrations, 11 figures (such as charts explaining Matthean or Markan priority), 29 maps, 19 tables (such as diagrams depicting John's “I am” sayings or parallels between 2 Peter and Jude), 11 “text grids” (diagrams containing NT or extrabiblical citations), 3 timelines, and 65 boxes, panels, or sidebars that contain a wide range of information, mostly factual but some imaginary, such as some 13 “emails from the edge,” in which an imaginary professor fields questions from a student.This means that there is a layout enhancement for almost every two-page spread in the 854-page core of the book. At the very least this contributes to readability for those visually oriented. When you add the numerous headings and subheadings, it is rare to find a double-page spread that contains only prose text. In the first 300 pages, I counted only 8 of these spreads that did not contain either an enhancement (and sometimes multiple enhancements), or headings, or both.These masterful design elements make the book unparalleled as a visually compelling turnkey presentation of the entire NT seen in some of its major historical, literary, and theological dimensions.On the cover and the cover page, Wright’s name is in slightly larger type than Bird’s. Perhaps there is an esthetic reason for this, but another explanation also makes sense: this book is essentially a lavishly embellished and pedagogically supercharged presentation of N. T. Wright’s voluminous corpus (“the present volume is clearly based on Wright’s work,” 26). Bird spent nine years with Wright’s four volumes (so far) in his Christian Origins and the Question of God project plus Wright’s other works. In close collaboration, and with many independent contributions from Bird’s side, the two arrived at this nine-part study, divided into 37 chapters. The titles of the nine parts are: (1) “Reading the New Testament” (four chapters surveying and justifying the book), (2) “The World of Jesus and the Early Church, (3) “Jesus and the Victory of God, (4) “The Resurrection of the Son of God, (5) “Paul and the Faithfulness of God, (6) “The Gospels and the Story of God, (7) “The Early Christians and the Mission of God, (8) “The Making of the New Testament (dealing with textual criticism and canon), and (9) “Living the Story of the New Testament. As some of the titles indicate, sizable portions of some of the nine parts are adaptations from Wright’s earlier writings.I picked up this book with the misconception (derived, perhaps, from the words “New Testament” and “Introduction” in the title and subtitle) that it was an NT introduction in the vein of Robert H. Gundry, A Survey of the New Testament, or D. A. Carson and Douglas Moo, An Introduction to the New Testament, or even L. T. Johnson, The Writings of the New Testament: An Interpretation. But these are works of a different genre (though the opening chapters of Johnson bear comparison to elements of Wright-Bird). Wright and Bird in their preface tell us that their book is, first, a “reader” or “sampler” designed to introduce a wider readership to the vast and expanding Wright corpus (p. 25). This helps explain, perhaps, why it takes 300 pages to get to”-type presentation of a book (Galatians) appears. The first presentation of a Gospel (Mark) begins on p. 554. That means we are 65 percent of the way through the book before we actually consider a Gospel per se.The book is, second, an NT introduction, but with the pedagogical aim of introducing the NT “within the context of the study of early Christianity” (p. 25). The writers “want to cultivate a commitment to a specific account of Christian history, literature, theology, and mission” (p. 25), namely, the account Wright has worked out over the last several decades. Classic NT introductions can be seen as prolegomena tending to support a certain synthetic understanding of the NT corpus. This volume inculcates in readers Wright’s synthetic understanding as prolegomenal to understanding the NT.Third, the book does intend to serve the function of an “NT introduction,” but by avoiding what the authors call “the standard problems with” the books in this genre (p. 25). They do not specify what these problems are. They attempt a more expansive approach that is “precise and pictorial” to get at salient features of each of the 27 canonical NT documents.There is much to learn from this volume at many levels. Few among the BBR readership are strangers to Wright’s works and emphases. Those seeking a lavish, readable, and often witty integration of the NT writings with major N. T. Wright themes and convictions will find an effective teaching tool in this wonderfully clear and informative book

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