Written to accompany and complement N T Wright's translation - The New Testament for Everyone, this extremely hefty hardback book clocks in at just short of nine hundred pages. Conceived as being - An introduction to the history, literature and theology of the first Christians - it has huge ambition written into its lengthy compendious nature.
After recent months reading through Wright's New Testament translation, and the mixed reactions I had to it, I thought this might help put a bit more flesh on the historical bone. This it did to a degree. But as is evidenced by the length of its byline, it aims to provide you with so much more than that. A lot of this, to a more general reader such as myself, I could do without. Even if the writers believe it to be essential. If you are already a Christian, I imagine this book would be a huge and very welcome resource for study.
It fitfully gripped my interest. The historical background on ocassions is quite illuminating. It was fascinating to find out that The Prodigal Son parable was meant to resonate with the numerous families in Israel separated by the Jewish Diaspora. The result of hundreds of years of occupation and displacement, meant that Jews were spread widely across the Mediteranean and Africa. Sons would leave, some never to return.
Whenever the text delves into the development of theology, a veil of frustration descended. I make no secret in finding Christian theology baffling, if not contrived. Full of circular, firmly stated views, that assert one thing cannot exist without another. That this cycle has a rational logic to it. I tend to question whether that really is so? In the end, in order to spare myself further exasperation I started to flip past these densely theological pages. Particularly so during the pages on the development of Pauline theology. Boy, is that guy taxing and hard to take.
The book makes abundant use of maps, lots of colour photos of saints and places mentioned, and many side boxes to explain ideas that are adjunct to a context or explain in more detail specific issues. It is extremely well thought through and put together. I have been presented with a broader impression of the context of the pressures of the period around Israel, Jesus and his apostles. How these circumstances interacted and helped formed Christian teachings and their spread. So theology aside, it has been of benefit to my perspective.
CARROT REVIEW 4/8
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