Delbert Burkett and Cambridge University Press (CUP) have conceived a well-constructed, thoughtful, and highly informative collegiate textbook introducing the New Testament and the origins of Christianity. Burkett, no stranger to CUP imprints and the pages of New Testament Studies, as well as Novum Testamentum, is associate professor of religious studies at Louisiana State University. A respected author and ascending authority in the discipline of New Testament studies, Burkett draws on a wide spectrum of established biblical scholarship. He distills frequently complex research and detailed theoretical analysis of the text and origins of Christianity in order to present the information thoroughly to nontechnicians. In his research, Burkett initiates the contents of the apostolic writings and first-century socioreligious developments pertinent to the formation and legacy of the Christian church.
The organization of this textbook is laudable. In addition to the judicious inclusion of wide margins for collating notes, the book includes many well-appointed illustrations, charts, graphs, tables, maps, and appendices. An Introduction to the New Testament and the Origins of Christianity utilizes these to facilitate the digestion of its massive seven-part, forty-chapter presentation of everything from the historical and religious background of Jews, Greeks, and Romans, to studies in conflict within St. John's Apocalypse. Burkett's writing style also minimizes the impact of trying to access and assimilate 600 pages of a specialized discipline and its esoteric nomenclature. All told, this dignified and orderly textbook bears the marks and standards of excellence and user-friendliness one would expect from a world leader in academic publications.
But what shall we say of its ideological methodology? Just what is it that Burkett and CUP present so well? These questions have to be answered two ways. First, we answer in the positive. Burkett has done his homework in an objective manner, presenting his findings, as well as accurately summarizing the learning of other scholars and the extrabiblical literature in an authoritative and winsome style. Opinions and speculations are withheld in order to achieve-as much as possible-a factual, nonpartisan presentation of the subject and its documentary sources. This professional and scientific approach makes Burkett's research and writing so appealing, (one imagines for the newcomer), if not altogether compelling, even when it comes to the content of the gospel itself. What adds to the author's seemingly impartial presentation is that, on the whole, he lets the text speak for itself by simply delineating in a summary format the contents of a given gospel, epistle, or nonsacred ancient manuscript.
The ideological methodology that the contributors to An Introduction to the New Testament and the Origins of Christianity have ostensibly striven for is one that is philosophically neutral, that is, non-indoctrinating.
However, this enlightened and celebrated tabula rasa approach does not work. It never works. Interpretation of the sacred texts and therefore indoctrination concerning the sacred texts inevitably take place, thereby shaping and coloring the presentation to the reader. This is especially true when the proposed methodology is the byproduct of a theoretical-scientific approach to Scripture, appropriated from associated noncanonical sources (where such an approach does, in fact, achieve a greater degree of objectivity). Stated baldly, Burkett cannot get out of his own ideological way when attempting to get out of his own hermeneutical way when it comes to the books of the New Testament. He is programmatic about reading horizons. The result of feigning stark neutrality with a theory-laden scientific analysis of the New Testament (especially its authorial and documentary sources) is a presumptive investigation that itself yields a hyper-interpretation of the sacred texts. Thus Burkett, whether he intends to or not, endlessly prefaces the contents of some New Testament book, epistle, or pericope with either an undermining documentary theory (usually espousing redaction) or a sociological theory that renders the subject of study the mere result of an anthropological phenomenon. Either way, it comes off sounding, well, so scientific, so factual. The newcomer to the New Testament and the origins of Christianity, and the believer weak in faith, could and likely would dismiss the verity of the sacred text given such influential proposals, especially if the reader did not have recourse to the interpretative faith community to substantiate the contents of Holy Scripture.
Moreover, there is the problem of melding an investigation into the literature of the New Testament Scriptures and corroborative, noncanonical literature into one. The application of one's methodological approach to noncanonical literature, with all of its parameters, criteria, and assumptions, simply cannot do justice to the essential distinctiveness of Holy Writ as a unique literary genre with its own in-built hermeneutical principles.
Faith communities, particularly ministers and instructors at Christian institutions, will want to be guarded about the use, let alone recommendation, of this otherwise exemplary textbook and resource due to its subtle interpretative paradigm and undermining proposals.
