Justin Hartley
Chapter Review
Prof. McGinn
4/25/06
I chose to do my summary on chapter 1 due to its basic understanding and broad explanation of the New Testament. Although being towards the end of the semester I see this as a good time to recap the more important topics of the New Testament.
The reasons people read the New Testament range from learning about social roots of the Bible to searching for the answers to their own personal religious queries. This Religion controls one-third of the world’s population in faith, making it important that the information is both accurate and inspirational in a proper manner.
Jesus of Nazareth shows to be the central character of this great
journey. He shows a power and authority like no one else before or after
him. He seems to have an answer for
everything. Surprisingly towards the end
of his life he was killed as a criminal by the Romans. Three centuries later
the Religion he preached became the official religion of the
It must be understood that as we believe in what the Bible says it is realized that other religions feel similar to their works and scriptures that have been handed down by a superior guardian.
Surprisingly we do not look at the Bible the same we do the Greek and Roman gods. They are not given the objective view they should. This known it should be understood that the New Testament is a hybrid of the Jewish and the Greek.
The
story first began in
The NT is a collaboration of twenty-seven Christian documents. Those who accepted Jesus as the Messiah, or the Anointed One, looked to these scriptures for guidance. This NT serves as a covenant between God and man. A covenant is an agreement or bond between two parties. This covenant was placed between Jesus and his disciples at the Last Supper.
Most of the twenty-seven books in the NT were written and compiled during the first century AD. They include the letters of Paul, the four Gospels and the Book of Acts. These Gospels are written to proclaim the “ good news”. After these Gospels comes a series of twenty-one epistles. Many of these letters were written by Paul, and after his death, written in his “spirit”.
An important book is Revelation. It describes the Apocalypse. This is the ongoing war between God and Satan. It ends in Heaven prevailing and all of the earth changing to become a place of peace and happiness. The stories of the New Testament are as different as the authors that wrote them. Spanning such a great period of time when literature was difficult to keep in tact, the bits and pieces that have compiled the modern day Bible are quite astonishing. When being written there were many books that were kept out of the Bible for reasons that still to this day have not been answered. The reason they were in unknown and having been left out leaves the possibility of them being destroyed. For example, Paul wrote many more letters than are mentioned in the NT. The absence of them in the text is not fully explained. Because of the time this book was written the diversity of the authors and interpreters is expressed in the changes in the text itself today. During its first centuries in belief, Christianity is diversified among many groups, taking away its notion of a single “true faith” Because the NT holds the believes of many people, it is difficult to see it in a way other than what we believe. It is a way of showing the incredible phenomena described and seen so many years ago that we can only wish to have witnessed.