Meeting the New Testament
Perkins, Pheme
Shirley Muldowney -- only that I think a woman like Muldowney, as portrayed by Bonnie Bedelia in Heart Like a Wheel, is pretty terrific. Muldowney is a real person who started drag racing her...
...Lisa Desposito, president, Religious Coalition for Abortion Rights...
...New Testament studies have moved m~'~tE-V~W~n~is the author of severat-bovks on the New Testament, including Ministering in the Pauline Churches and Love Commands in the New Testament (Paulist...
...out of the denominational seminary and college into the intellectual pluralism of the modern university...
...The historical, archaeological, and sociological analyses often make such fascinating reading in themselves, that study of the actual text takes a back seat...
...As directed by Alan Johnson, this adaptation is very faithful to Ernst Lubitsch's 1942 classic...
...COLIN L. WESTERBECK, JR...
...Where the latter was quiet and a little fey, the former is loud and manic...
...His treatment of semiotics helps illuminate the interaction between New Testament studies and linguistics...
...The archaeological and historical base upon which New Testament scholars draw is expanding...
...Koester can avoid the issues of the difference between o.,~l and written tradition raised by Walter Ong, Werner Kelber, and others, by asserting that this level of literary cultivation means that the traditions of Jesus's sayings would have been preserved in written collections from a very early period...
...Kee's, on the other hand, provide a more sweeping vision...
...The wonder of the movie -- as, sometimes, of life -- is that something so much more compelling and worthwhile happens instead...
...Beginning with the next issue, Commonweal's movie reviews will be written by guest columnists...
...This approach provides a much more direct link to the concerns o f the student than the mere rehearsal of historical information in the other introductions...
...WHERE IS THE MISSING JESUS...
...2, 7:30 p.m., Riverside Church, 9th ft...
...this leaves the reader wondering what happened to all of the A Dialogue on the Ethics of Abortion, with Beverly Wildung Harrison, author of Our Right to Choose: Toward a New Ethic of Abortion...
...The vast syncretism of the hellenistic world, which he details in his first volume, leads to a portrayal of Christianity as one among the many hellenistic cults...
...These volumes make it clear that New Testament introduction is alive and thriving...
...He cuts down on the historical recital of rulers, battles, and conquests to make room for these issues...
...The material in this movie could have made the worst soap opera you ever saw...
...Jesus and his followers are seen in the radical discipleship of the sayings tradition...
...Christianity, Koester holds, did not simply arise out of Judaism nor did it arise directly out of the ministry of Jesus...
...Koester then gives a history of the early Christian literature associated with three regions, Palestine and Syria...
...Nor is there any area in which the development of a variety of methods of study has been more rapid in recent decades...
...We are not entirely unprepared when it suddenly turns tragic in the middle, for there has been an edge of sadness to the story, a genuine ambivalence, all along...
...Collins also provides a brief description of psychoanalytic analysis of texts and the neo-Marxist reading of the New Testament in his chapter on historical-critical reading of the New Testament...
...An account of John the Baptist, Jesus, and, in much more detail, the life of Paul serves to initiate the history (Perrin-Duling also begins its exposition of the New Testament with a history of early Christianity and with the Pauline material rather than with the Gospels...
...Not surprisingly, the author teaches in a Roman Catholic seminary at Louvain...
...However, Koester's photographs are usually single object, museum pieces, or close-up details of a site...
...Collins's work is unusual in that it contains a chapter devoted to the impact of various forms of structuralism on New Testament studies...
...That someone trained in TV sitcoms, like director James Brooks, can sustain a complex, delicate story is novel...
...Egypt...
...It is about the history and literary remains of the early Christian movement, which held various beliefs about Jesus...
...Kee, on the other hand, uses the category of "life world" to recast the traditional setting of form criticism and takes the work of Ong and Guttgemanns seriously...
...she was the first person ever to win top fuel three times...
...L ACK OF SOME integrating vision shows in the transition into Koester's second volume...
...These are very helpful to students reading through the New Testament, though they tempt some to further neglect of the text...
...Nor does it provide a history of the emergence and development of New Testament Christianity...
...Thus, he treats the Jesus traditions under the regional history of Palestinian Christianity...
...And if we learn from "de-constructionist" critics to attend to the gaps in our narrative, then we must ask where is the missing Jesus...
...Koester's fh'st volume might well provide a reference encyclopedia for the historical and cultural material of the period...
...Of course, this emphasis serves a"hidden agenda...
...includes much material on socio-economic conditions, and emphasizes the widespread literary culture of the hellenistic world...
...This is why it can at the same time be very funny and very weepy, and unembarrassingly poignant on both counts...
...Even its Jewish roots are hellenized, and, indeed, the proportion of study given to Jewish materials is considerably less in Koester's work than in that of other scholars...
...Anne Bancroft's performance in Carole Lombard's role seems more compatible with the original f'tlm...
...He includes a thought-provoking chapter on exegesis and the church, (which includes theology, catechesis, preaching, and spirituality), a study of the concept of inspiration, and a discussion of the reception of biblical studies by the Roman Catholic magisterium...
...Each methodological chapter begins with a brief history of the development of that method...
...The American publishers have realized that the two volumes are quite unrelated and issued them for sale independently of each other...
...Koester does not have an integrating vision of the formation of human communities and traditions...
...His book is not an introduction to the writings in the New Testament...
...Combined with Kee's work on sociology and anthropology, the reader gains an appreciation for the real diversity of methods used to approach the New Testament...
...Kee treats New Testament introduction around the unifying theme of the emergence of new serf-identity in community...
...T HE DISAPPEARANCE of genuine philosophical and theological questioning from the modern university may also be allied with the disappearance of Jesus from New Testament introductions...
...The reader is encouraged to view the New Testament material as a series of responses to these fundamental questions...
...There, the reader is treated to an extensive history of early Christian literature...
...Discussion of Jesus is relegated to the final chapter...
...His discussion of "myth" as a structuralist category is light-years away from the existential and phenomenological categories used in the treatment of myth and history in the New Testament by Perrin-Duling...
...Meeting the New Testament PHEME PERKINS I T'S SAFE to say that no subfield of contemporary theology holds more importance than the study of the New Testament...
...Both Kee and Koester have splendid black and white photographs of sites and objects from the period, which considerably enrich the presentation of the material...
...Tower Lounge, Riverside Dr...
...Muldowney is a real person who started drag racing her boyfriend's hot rods, and ended up three-time national top-fuel champion...
...2 donation...
...A NOTHER CONCERN of those who teach introduction to New Testament is engaging students in the reading and analysis of the text itself...
...Barbara Andolsen, assistant professor of religion and ethics, Rutgers...
...That Deborah Winger can act is news, at least to me...
...For a "hands on" approach to the methods of analyzing the New Testament material, one should turn to Collins...
...Collins uses the insights of structuralism in a final analysis of the Stilling of the Storm to show that as a story of the Mysterious Host, it draws together a number of levels in the Gospel's presentation of Jesus...
...Koester is equally short on the question...
...New Testament scholars find their analysis of the early Christian material enriched by the methods and questions raised in other academic fields: history and archaeology, sociology and anthropology, literary criticism and linguistics, and to a lesser extent economics and psychology...
...But the reader of the two volumes will surely demand more...
...Consequently, the canonical books are simply part of the mass of early Christian remains from the various regions...
...Taken together, they provide excellent visual material...
...Paul Achtemeier has provided a fine deCommonweal: 50 scription of this process in an appendix t o the Kee volume...
...As incompatible as their styles seem, though, the re-make of To Be or Not to Be with Brooks in Benny's role does work...
...regional analysis and history...
...He describes Judaism, the imperial ambitions of Alexander and the Caesars, and the various religious movements of the time as part of a quest for identity and community in a world where the old patterns no longer work...
...Kee includes an extensive treatment of the Essene community as an answer to the problem of alternative community for some in Judaism...
...Indeed, Kee's presentation of the Greco-Roman religious cults, while less detailed than Koester's, is far superior in its empathy for members of the cult...
...Raymond F. Collins's brief history of the established methods of New Testament analysis shows that critical study of the New Testament in the past two centuries has been indebted to the disciplines fostered by the modem university...
...One also finds the treatment of the synoptic Gospels punctuated with comparisons of the Gospel presentation and Jesus as he seems to have been...
...However, this list of allied disciplines also shows the weak flank of the modern study, and, perhaps of modernism generally: both philosophy and other theological disciplines are not part of the context of modern introduction...
...Kee defends beginning with Jesus and the Gospels by pointing out that though the Gospels are later than the Pauline material, they reflect earlier traditions...
...These detailed analyses enable the student to see what each method contributes to our understanding of the passage...
...Where Benny was a quipster who pointed out the foolishness of others, Brooks is a zany who makes a fool of himself...
...at 120th, New York City...
...This history is prefaced by a treatment of textual, source, form, and tradition criticism, which includes the synoptic Gospels, Pauline letters, and early Christian writings from the apostolic fathers and apologists...
...The lost faith about which the modern university is forbidden to speak haunts us in his absence...
...Asia Minor, Greece, and Rome...
...Instead, it is an introduction to the actual methods of studying the writings of the New Testament...
...Bedelia manages to convey, even in appearance, the changes Muldowney went through over the twenty years the film covers...
...Perrin-Duling addresses this problem by providing much of its treatment in exegetical surveys of the New Testament writings...
...Some of his economic categories appear to be neoMarxist in origin, but they are not sufficiently explicated to have any impact on the presentation...
...Kee has shown how that "more" might be achieved...
...And that a movie which might have fallen into so many clich[s doesn't do so is absolutely amazing...
...He uses categories from sociology of knowledge and anthropology to describe the "life world" in which the New Testament writings are shaped...
...Contemporary New Testament work is merely following the course charted at its inception...
...Equally problematic is the lack of an integrating vision beyond geographical categories...
...Each chapter concludes with application of its methods to the stories of the Message of John the Baptist and the Stilling of the Storm...
...Duling's appendix on the topic is distinguished from the others by beginning with the topic of Hebrew canon and the Christian canon of the Old Testament...
...That's like being a golfer who wins the PGA three times...
...The original German edition had both paris in a single vol27 january 1984:51 ume...
...That two major stars -- Shirley MacLaine and Jack Nicholson -- would want to appear older than they are is certainly unusual...
...He attempts to sort out the different conditions in different segments of the empire...
...As Collins rightly insists, we must learn from these methods to appreciate the experience of faith that has been transmitted in these writings...
...It then moves to use of the method of drawing illustrations from modern writings and newspapers to provide students with a "feel for" the process, and then treating examples within the New Testament...
...There is also room for critical reflection...
...Despite a strong new beginning where Brooks and Bancroft sing" Sweet Georgia Brown" in Polish, the film seems to be groping until the original plot - about an acting troupe in Warsaw that outsmarts the Nazis -- takes over...
...And what problems do such introductions pose for students and teachers alike...
...Scholars will doubtless be troubled by Koester's sweeping generalizations and texts which turn up in categories that do not always reflect the best in scholarly opinion...
...Kee's unified perspective also provides a sharp focus to the historical background...
...This account, which has simply added newly published Gnostic materials to a schema that Koester published in the 1960s, rejects the idea that the study of the canonical materials should have any priority in New Testament introduction...
...Perrin-Duling is the most explicit example...
...Then the gags fly so fast and furious that we hardly have time to catch our breath between laughs...
...Just what are students likely to find in the best of contemporary introductions to New Testament study...
...Is the replacement of philosophical and theological questions by those of the humanities and social sciences entirely appropriate to the material itself...
...Students would have to have studied some other introduction to the New Testament and have had at least a semester course of early church history before they could decipher this material...
...In fact, everything about this story of a woman, her daughter, and an astronaut is improbable, which is why it seems human and true...
...It's a sign of the strength of the original material that it can succeed with somebody so different in the lead role...
...Peter Steinfels, executive editor, Commonweal...
...Its methods are diverse...
...Muldowney was the fwst woman ever permitted to compete in drag racing...
...Thus, Kee's reader does have some opportunity to ask how "what came of it" is related to the origins in the ministry of Jesus...
...Terms of Endearment is a movie full of surprises...
...Jesus is the presupposition of there being a New Testament, but New Testament study is not about Jesus...
...This is the best case for use of structural and semiotic analysis that I have yet seen...
...This conviction then surfaces in his use of Gnostic materials from the second and third centuries to illuminate traditions said to underlie the New Testament...
...The other introductions are content to treat the question of the significance of the New Testament to the church under the history of the emergence of the New Testament canon...
...Given the increasing evidence of continued interaction between Christianity and Judaism throughout the period of the New Testament that is emerging in all recent studies of the Gospels and even in the study of the Gnostic materials that Koester uses so frequently in his reconstruction, one cannot say that his work is representative of the latest scholarship...
...Can you imagine comic personalities more opposite than Mel Brooks and Jack Benny...
...It challenges the reader to enter the world of the first century and to attempt to "feel" its life and problems...
...For more information: (212) 663-2751...
...Bedelia goes from the sweet working-class toughness of a girl who can't get enough of cars, to the conflicted maturity of a woman who has to leave the conniving man (Beau Bridges) who sponsored her career...
...Depending on point of view, such developments can furnish an excess of riches or simply bewilder...
...Collins's work is the only one which addresses the problem of the theological relevance of New Testament study...
Vol. 111 • January 1984 • No. 2
