John W. Drane, “The Religious Background,” I. Howard Marshall, ed.
, New Testament Interpretation:
Essays on Principles and Methods, 1977. Carlisle: The Paternoster Press, revised 1979. Pbk. ISBN:
0853644241. pp.117-125.
Chapter VI
The Religious Background
John W. Drane
[p.117]
It ought to be self-evident to every reader of the New Testament that one of the most important
tools in the understanding of its message is a proper appreciation of the religious background to
its thought. Jesus himself and his disciples, along with almost all the writers of the New
Testament, were Jews, and most of the early churches embraced people with very diverse
religious backgrounds. We cannot get very far through the New Testament without encountering
the representatives of various religions, whether it be the Pharisees and Sadducees of the gospel
traditions or the enigmatic representatives of pagan religious thought who are mentioned in the
Pauline letters and Acts. It is therefore essential for the student of the New Testament to be
thoroughly familiar with the background of religious thought against which it was written.
I. The Sources
This religious background to the New Testament writings comprises three main elements:
1. THE OLD TESTAMENT
The Old Testament is of crucial importance for a correct understanding of the message of the
New Testament. On almost every page of the New Testament we are reminded of the fact that
the coming of Jesus was the decisive conclusion to a long history of religious experience. He was
the promised Messiah of the Old Testament (Mk. 14:61f.), and his coming was the fulfilment of
the ancient prophecies (Lk. 4:21). Even relatively trivial incidents in his life and work could be
seen in this light (Mt. 2:16-23), and though it was not generally apparent at the time, even the
events of his death and resurrection were later seen as the fulfilment of Old Testament
predictions (Acts 2:22-36).1
Not only could Jesus’ own life, death and resurrection be seen in the context of the Old
Testament, but the new life of the Christian church could also be interpreted in terms of Old
Testament categories. St. Paul had no doubt that because of their relationship to Jesus the Christ,
even Gentile
[p.118]
Christians could be described as “sons of Abraham”, heirs of the promises made in the Old
Testament to God’s chosen people (Gal. 3:29). On almost every page of St. Paul’s
1
Cf. B. Lindars, New Testament Apologetic (London 1961), pp. 32-137.
John W. Drane, “The Religious Background,” I. Howard Marshall, ed., New Testament Interpretation:
Essays on Principles and Methods, 1977. Carlisle: The Paternoster Press, revised 1979. Pbk. ISBN:
0853644241. pp.117-125.
correspondence, Old Testament figures are taken up and reinterpreted, while even small details
of his language can often conceal an allusion to some Old Testament event. Even such a
cosmopolitan church as that at Corinth could be expected to have their Christian faith thoroughly
grounded in the Old Testament (cf. 1 Cor. 10:1ff.).
2. CONTEMPORARY JUDAISM
The Judaism of the first century A.D. was no doubt more complex than people often suppose,2
but three main strands appear to have had an important influence on the faith of the first
Christians:
(a) The Pharisees and their beliefs almost certainly exercised an important influence on the
development of New Testament theology. Though to the first evangelist they were the arch-
enemies of Jesus and his followers (Mt. 22-23), St. Paul could boast more than once of his
upbringing and education as a Pharisee (Phil. 3:5; cf. Gal. 1:13f.). Though his attitude to the Old
Testament Torah shows that he had cast aside many of the most cherished beliefs of the
Pharisees, it is certain that he continued to be deeply influenced by what he had learned from his
Pharisaic teachers. At his trial before Agrippa (Acts 26:4-8), as before the Sanhedrin at a
previous trial (Acts 23:6-10), the author of Acts depicts him appealing to the belief in the future
resurrection which he shared with the Pharisees―and we can see from his own treatment of this
very subject in 1 Cor. 15 how deeply indebted he was to the traditions of his fathers.3
(b) Qumran doctrines have also played their part in helping us to understand the religious
background of the New Testament. Though we must reject outright any theories that Christianity
was derived from the Qumran community, there are many points of contact. One of the most
spectacular reversals of scholarly opinion in recent years has come about largely because of the
discovery that the dualism of the Qumran scrolls bears a certain resemblance to that of the Fourth
Gospel. As a result of this, the Fourth Gospel can now be seen in a completely new light, both
historically and theologically,4 while some scholars are suggesting a much earlier date for it than
has hitherto been proposed.5
(c) Hellenistic Judaism must also be taken into account. This was the kind of Judaism that
developed among the Jews of the Diaspora, as they tried to accommodate their ancestral faith to
the requirements of a different situation. Its most eloquent exponent was Philo of Alexandria, a
contemporary of Jesus and. St. Paul, who set himself the task of interpreting the Old Testament
in terms of Greek philosophy. In order to do this, he had to allegorize almost the whole of the
2
W. Forster, Palestinian Judaism in New Testament Times (E.T. Edinburgh 1964).
3
W. D. Davies, Paul and Rabbinic Judaism (London 19703), pp. 303ff. At the same time, we cannot understand the
ideas that Paul was opposing without taking into account the Gnosticising background of the Corinthian
correspondence: cf. W. Schmithals, Gnosticism in Corinth (E.T. Nashville 1971), pp. 155-159.
4
Cf. J. H. Charlesworth (ed.), John and Qumran (London 1972).
5
After a survey of the present debate on the Fourth Gospel, A. M. Hunter is willing to date it as early as A.D. 80.
Cf. his According to John (London 1968). J. A. T. Robinson is willing to support an even earlier date; see his book,
Redating the New Testament (London 1976).
John W. Drane, “The Religious Background,” I. Howard Marshall, ed., New Testament Interpretation:
Essays on Principles and Methods, 1977. Carlisle: The Paternoster Press, revised 1979. Pbk. ISBN:
0853644241. pp.117-125.
Old Testament, thus removing it from the realm of the truly historical, but in the process he
claimed to have proved that Moses had anticipated all that was best in classical Greek
philosophy! The thought of Philo and those who followed him is often an important
consideration in
[p.119]
the interpretation of Pauline theology. In Gal. 4:21-31, for instance, Paul uses the allegory of
Sarah and Hagar to prove his theological points, and the question naturally arises whether Paul
was using the same method as the Alexandrian Jews, and if so whether he did it with the same
presuppositions in mind. The answer to this question will give us an important insight into St.
Paul’s attitude towards the Old Testament, and his understanding of Jesus in Old Testament
categories.
3. HELLENISTIC THOUGHT
The other main area of religious thought that provided a backcloth to the early church is the
religion of the Hellenistic world. By New Testament times, the cults of the old Greek gods had
lost their former power and the main religions of the Roman empire were the mystery cults and
various forms of what later became known as Gnosticism. Both these systems were concerned
with the provision of a personal salvation for the individual. Generalization in this area of study
is always a hazardous business, but we shall perhaps not go too far wrong if we distinguish the
Mysteries from Gnosticism by saying that the former claimed to provide a personal salvation by
magic, whereas the latter did it by more philosophical-theological means. This distinction is not a
very clear-cut one, but in this it merely reflects the confusion of the Hellenistic world, where
men were willing to grasp any straw that held out the slightest support for their future spiritual
security.
What we know of these Hellenistic religions has come from two main archaeological finds. From
about 1850 large quantities of papyri were discovered in Egypt, many of them containing
accounts of the magical religious observances of the Hellenistic world. These were gathered
together and published by Adolf Deissmann as Licht vom Osten in 1908.6 These magical papyri
shed a great deal of light on the popular superstitions of Hellenism. None of the papyri as such
can be dated earlier than the Christian era, and most of them are from the second to the sixth
centuries A.D. But there is plenty of other evidence for the widespread practice of magic in New
Testament times. This includes cursing tablets, magical amulets and magicians’ apparatus, some
of it dating from the pre-Christian era.7 The Gnostic religion is known to us through the accounts
of Christian forms of Gnosticism given by the early church Fathers, and also through a vast
quantity of MSS discovered at Nag Hammadi in Egypt about 1945.8 This collection, written in
6
E.T. Light from the Ancient East (London 1927).
7
For a comprehensive account of all this material, see J. M. Hull, Hellenistic Magic and the Synoptic Tradition
(London 1974), pp. 5-15, 20-44.
8
For an account of their discovery, cf. J. Doresse, The Secret Books of the Egyptian Gnostics, (E.T. London 1960).
John W. Drane, “The Religious Background,” I. Howard Marshall, ed., New Testament Interpretation:
Essays on Principles and Methods, 1977. Carlisle: The Paternoster Press, revised 1979. Pbk. ISBN:
0853644241. pp.117-125.
Coptic, includes sayings attributed to Jesus but not contained in the canonical gospels (e.g. The
Gospel of Thomas), along with more speculative and philosophical Gnostic treatises. These MSS
are still in the process of being edited and published by scholars, but so far none has come to
light from a pre-Christian period.
[p.120]
II. The Use of Background Materials
How can we use such varied materials? There are two main points at which such comparative
materials can be a help to the exegete:9
1. THE USE OF SIMILAR LANGUAGE
A quick reading of the comparative texts soon reveals that the same terminology often occurs in
several different contexts. Take the idea of “knowledge”, for instance, which runs like a metallic
thread through the fabric of all the materials enumerated above. An uncritical approach to the
subject might lead us to suppose that in all these religious texts it has one and the same meaning,
and so there will be no difficulty in deciding its meaning in the New Testament. But in fact, there
is great variety even among the non-Christian sources. “Knowledge” is a prominent theme in the
Old Testament, where knowledge of God is the prerogative of those who live in close covenant
fellowship with him;10 and in the Qumran scrolls “knowledge” is the possession of the religious
elite of the community.11 In the writings of Philo and the Gnostics, on the other hand, knowledge
(gnîsij) is something secret that can be obtained only by the soul to which esoteric religious
truths have been revealed.12
In view of these distinctions of emphasis, we can see that the meaning of gnîsij in the New
Testament is a matter for careful exegesis of the text. What we must do is to make a careful
analysis of the use of the word as it occurs in all the relevant religious contexts, and then to
compare the different uses. As often as not, we will discover that the New Testament concept,
though having some relationship to Jewish or Hellenistic religious thought, is in a distinctive
class of its own, and the Christian meaning of a given word will usually be determined by the
eschatological fact of Christ.13
9
See B. M. Metzger, “Methodology in the Study of the Mystery Religions”, in Historical and Literary Studies,
(Leiden 1968), pp. 1-24 (originally in Harvard Theological Review, 48, 1955, 1-20).
10
According to N. H. Snaith, The Distinctive Ideas of the Old Testament (London 1944), p. 9, knowledge of God
was the one feature of Old Testament religion that distinguished it from other ancient religions.
11
Cf. W. D. Davies, Christian Origins and Judaism (London 1962), pp. 119-144. F. F. Bruce, Second Thoughts on
the Dead Sea Scrolls (Exeter 1966), pp. 115f [http://www.biblicalstudies.org.uk/book_dss_bruce.html].
12
Cf. Philo, Somn. 11.226.
13
The kind of study required is exemplified in J. Dupont, Gnosis (Louvain/Paris 1949).
John W. Drane, “The Religious Background,” I. Howard Marshall, ed., New Testament Interpretation:
Essays on Principles and Methods, 1977. Carlisle: The Paternoster Press, revised 1979. Pbk. ISBN:
0853644241. pp.117-125.
The importance of exercising due caution in dealing with linguistic terms is now generally
recognised, though in the early days after the discovery of the Hellenistic magical texts some
extravagant statements were made on the flimsy basis of common terminology. In 1913,
Wilhelm Bousset wrote the first edition of his important book, Kyrios Christos,14 in which he
suggested that since the first Gentile Christians were accustomed to hailing their pagan gods as
kÚrioj, they instinctively worshipped the Christian Jesus by using the same word―though the
practice went far deeper than that, for the word itself carried with it a multitude of theological
associations, which were also transformed into beliefs about Jesus.15 Consequently, when the
New Testament writers refer to Jesus as Ð kÚrioj they are demonstrating their theological
isolation from the historical Jesus, and their close association with the pagan theology of the
Hellenistic world. Far from being the guardians of the truth revealed once and for all by Jesus the
Christ, the apostles were religious plagiarists of the worst sort, attempting to conceal the rags of a
discredited Jewish apocalyptist beneath the rich robes of Hellenistic deity.
[p.121]
No-one today would accept this kind of argument in its entirety, for it is now seen that in his
enthusiasm for newly discovered sources of information Bousset ignored the important semantic
problems involved in transferring a set of ideas from one culture to another. No doubt the early
Christians thought of Jesus as in some way a superior counterpart to their pagan “lords”, but the
evidence does not allow us to go much beyond that.16 James Barr has gone so far as to suggest
that it is a linguistic impossibility for isolated words to convey theological meaning from one
context to another, and though his judgment may well be too sweeping, it is a timely reminder
that if linguistic comparisons are to mean anything a very complex analysis is called for.17
2. THE USE OF RELIGIOUS MYTHOLOGY
The next question that arises is this: if several religious sources describe their deity in similar
ways, doing similar things in the same contexts, what are the possible relationships between
them? In the case of the New Testament, this has resolved itself into two main issues, concerned
with the miracle stories of the synoptic gospels and the Christology of the Pauline churches.
(a) Miracle Stories. It was recognised from the very start that the synoptic miracle stories had a
certain similarity to the magical performances of wizards and “divine men” in the Hellenistic
world. There is ample evidence for that in the New Testament itself (Mt. 7:22; 1 Jn. 4:1; cf. 2
14
E.T. Nashville 1970.
15
Op. cit., pp. 119-152.
16
For a full discussion of this particular example, see J. G. Machen, The Origin of Paul’s Religion (London 1921),
pp. 293-317; V. Taylor, The Names of Jesus (London 1953), pp. 38-51. In a recent discussion of the christology of
the early church, M. Hengel argues that there is little value in considering the Hellenistic parallels at all, and
suggests that its true background is to be found in Judaism and the Old Testament (The Son of God, E.T. London
1976).
17
J. Barr, The Semantics of Biblical Language (London 1961).
John W. Drane, “The Religious Background,” I. Howard Marshall, ed., New Testament Interpretation:
Essays on Principles and Methods, 1977. Carlisle: The Paternoster Press, revised 1979. Pbk. ISBN:
0853644241. pp.117-125.
Thes. 2:9; Rev. 13:13ff.), and at a later date Clement of Alexandria used the similarity as an
argument to advance the claims of the Christian faith: Gentiles, he said, had no reason to deny
the miracles accredited to Jesus, since their own religious traditions contained miracles of a
similar nature (Strom. vi.3). There were also miracle stories told of the Jewish rabbis,18 though
most scholars have failed to discern any meaningful relationship between these and the synoptic
traditions.19 It is more usual to treat the gospel miracles as stories that describe Jesus after the
pattern of the familiar figure of Hellenistic magic.20 Nor is there any good reason for us to
dispute the general validity of this assertion. In a world thoroughly permeated with the
superstitious and the magical, where magicians and miracle-workers were two a penny,21 it is no
surprise that the early Christians should soon have realised the apologetic value of the miracle
traditions. For people who had previously followed the local magus, it was important to know
that Jesus had exercised a more powerful form of supernatural power. In the traditions
themselves, Jesus was often portrayed doing the very same things as the Hellenistic magician
claimed to be able to do. The exorcism of demons, coupled with magical methods of healing,
like the use of spittle, were the stock-in-trade of the Hellenistic wonder-worker.22
Some recent studies have emphasised again the importance of this aspect of the synoptic
traditions. R. P. Martin argues that one of the purposes of Mark’s gospel was to tone down these
magical associations that were so
[p.122]
clear in the miracle stories. In the face of a Docetic Christology that had arisen in the Gentile
churches from a misunderstanding of Pauline teaching, Mark edited the miracle traditions to
exclude the possibility of misunderstanding. He wanted to avoid the impression that Jesus was
very closely allied with the commonplace magic of Hellenism, hoping that this would sweep the
ground from under the feet of would-be Docetists.23 J. M. Hull reaches somewhat different
18
For the value of rabbinic parables, cf. P. Fiebig, Jüdische Wundergeschichten des neutestamentlichen Zeitalters
unter besonderer Berücksichtigung ihres Verhältnisses zum Neuen Testament (Tübingen 1911). SB in loc. cite a
number of rabbinic parallels, while R. Bultmann often refers to them in his History of the Synoptic Tradition (E.T.
Oxford 1972), pp. 209-244.
19
According to Fiebig (op. cit.) the rabbinic parallels are the only ones worth taking seriously, for they at least share
the monotheism of the New Testament traditions, whereas the Hellenistic parallels are usually polytheistic. But
Dibelius has argued on form-critical grounds that the rabbinic miracle stories are quite different from their Christian
counterparts and from the Hellenistic stories. Rabbinic miracles fall into two formal types: “theodicy legends”,
designed to show God’s interest in the keeping of the Law, and “personal legends”, designed to enhance the
reputation of the wonder-worker. Since there is no formal analogy to these types in the New Testament, he argues
that there can have been no real relationship (From Tradition to Gospel, E. T. Greenwood 1971, pp. 133-151). On
this whole question of Hellenistic and Rabbinic parallels, cf. L. Sabourin, “Hellenistic and Rabbinic ‘Miracles’ ”,
Biblical Theology Bulletin 2 (1972), pp. 281-307.
20
Cf. H. D. Betz, “Jesus as Divine Man”, in Jesus and the Historian, ed. F. T. Trotter (Philadelphia 1968), pp. 114-
133.
21
According to Petronius, Sat. 17, in Rome “the gods walk abroad so commonly in our streets that it is easier to
meet a god than a man.”
22
Cf. Hull, op. cit., pp. 61-72. Dibelius, op. cit., pp.81-103.
23
R. P. Martin, Mark: Evangelist and Theologian (Exeter 1972), pp. 175f, 214ff.
John W. Drane, “The Religious Background,” I. Howard Marshall, ed., New Testament Interpretation:
Essays on Principles and Methods, 1977. Carlisle: The Paternoster Press, revised 1979. Pbk. ISBN:
0853644241. pp.117-125.
conclusions after his analysis of the synoptics. According to him, Mark portrays Jesus acting in
precisely the ways expected of the Hellenistic “divine man”, while in Luke the contrast between
the magic of Jesus and that of his opponents is brought out very clearly, and in Matthew Jesus is
portrayed not so much as a miracle worker as a teacher of faith.24
Can we go further, and suppose that the synoptic miracle stories are pagan myths applied to the
Christian Jesus? The earlier form critics often thought so, but they tended to make
pronouncements about such historical questions on quite inadequate grounds.25 The fact that the
gospel traditions have the same “form” as the Hellenistic stories proves nothing except that the
first Christians were fully aware of the apologetic requirements of the moment, and presented
their material accordingly.
In dealing with such a vast subject, we need to decide each case on its own merits,26 but there are
a number of guidelines that may be noted briefly here:
(i) The purpose of the magical performance in Hellenistic religion was usually to coerce the gods
to do as the “holy man” wanted.27 The magical papyri contain the incantations, prayers and
rituals to be used to this end. Each circumstance could be dealt with in a particular way, so that
with increasing pressure being brought to bear, the god was finally forced to submit to the will of
the magician. There is no parallel to this in any of the New Testament miracles. Jesus does not
operate in order to pressurize God into acting on his behalf―indeed, on one crucial occasion
there is a definite emphasis on Jesus’ submission to the will of God (Mk. 14:32ff.). Nor is there
any record of Jesus using the kind of spells, incantations or magical apparatus that are described
in the papyri.
(ii) It is unlikely that it would have been possible to credit Jesus with miraculous powers if he
had not in fact possessed such powers in one form or another. Both the rabbinic and the
Hellenistic miracle stories had been evolved over a long period of time, but with the gospel
traditions the situation was quite different, for the traditions were reduced to writing within the
lifetime of eyewitnesses of the events they purport to describe. This does not necessarily mean
that Jesus actually thought of himself as a magician after the Hellenistic model, though we can
have no doubt that the early Christians were being faithful to their Lord and Master when they so
portrayed him.28
24
Op. cit., pp. 142-145.
25
See p. 160.
26
For this kind of study, cf. H. van der Loos, The Miracles of Jesus (Leiden 19682, Supplement to Nov.T IX).
27
Hull, op. cit., pp. 42ff.
28
“We can perhaps venture to suggest... that Jesus did not think of himself as a magician... But to the early Christian
the myth of the magus was helpful in various ways; it drew attention to certain aspects of the salvation of Christ in a
manner which no other myth was able to do.” (Hull, op. cit., p. 145).
John W. Drane, “The Religious Background,” I. Howard Marshall, ed., New Testament Interpretation:
Essays on Principles and Methods, 1977. Carlisle: The Paternoster Press, revised 1979. Pbk. ISBN:
0853644241. pp.117-125.
(iii) The miracles play a theological part in the gospels that is unparalleled both in pagan and in
later Christian sources.29 They are eschatological events, portraying the coming of the Kingdom
and themselves being a part of the salvation brought by Jesus. In them God’s ac-
[p.123]
tion in Christ is revealed, his power is made manifest, and men are called to faith and repentance.
This is quite different from the purposes of either Hellenistic or rabbinic magic.30
(b) Christology. Some scholars have gone further, and have argued that the Christology of the
early church was largely dependent on an earlier Hellenistic doctrine. It has often been urged that
there was in the Hellenistic world, specifically in Gnostic circles, a widespread myth of a Primal
Man, who took upon himself the appearance (though not the reality) of material form,
descending to save the souls of men, in much the same fashion as the Christian Jesus is said to
have done.31 Thus, the pre-existence of Jesus as a divine figure, his true involvement in material
flesh, his death, resurrection and ascension are all nothing more than a projection of pagan
religiosity through the befuddled minds of the apostles onto the pages of the New Testament.
This suggestion founders on the fact that there is no evidence for such a myth in pre-Christian
times, though there is plenty of evidence for it from the second century onwards.32 This
highlights another basic consideration to be applied in the comparison of religious texts, for it is
all too easy to compare texts from quite different ages, and so to arrive at misleading
conclusions. The fact that comparative dating of materials has caused so much confusion in this
area of study draws our attention to another problem in utilising non-Christian sources to
interpret the New Testament, for in this field, as perhaps in no other, the attitude of every scholar
is bound to be determined by his own presuppositions, and particularly his answer to the
question: Is there such a thing as the supernatural?
The scholar who answers that question negatively must regard the whole concept of deity as the
New Testament presents it as nothing more than an elaboration of pagan religious mythology.
Since Jesus can have been no different from any other man, the true message of the New
Testament is not one we can readily understand today in its own terms. It was essentially an
existential message, related to the thought-patterns and ideas of ancient man, who in a vague way
believed in miracles, though in fact what he thought he believed in only existed as a
mythological hangover from his religious past. According to this view, the concept of miracle
was an invention of unsophisticated man, designed to answer questions which at that stage of his
development were incapable of any other explanation. Consequently, if we find ancient records
29
Jesus and his followers were often portrayed as Hellenistic magicians in the second century and many of the
apocryphal gospels describe miracles that are clearly borrowed from Hellenistic magical traditions. Compared with
these, the New Testament traditions are remarkable for their constraint and their recognition that the portrayal of
Jesus as a master-magician was not the final judgment on his significance. Cf. Hull, op. cit., pp. 1-4.
30
Cf. R. H. Fuller, Interpreting the Miracles (London, 1963), pp. 39-45. A. Richardson, The Miracle Stories of the
Gospels (London 1941), pp. 38-58.
31
Cf. inter alia R. Bultmann, The Gospel of John (E.T. Oxford 1971), p. 102 n. 1.
32
For a full discussion of this theory, see E. M. Yamauchi, Pre-Christian Gnosticism (London 1973), pp. 163-169.
John W. Drane, “The Religious Background,” I. Howard Marshall, ed., New Testament Interpretation:
Essays on Principles and Methods, 1977. Carlisle: The Paternoster Press, revised 1979. Pbk. ISBN:
0853644241. pp.117-125.
like the New Testament which appear to relate incidents in which the miraculous took place, it
must be explained as a reflection of an unsophisticated stage in the development of humanity.
Since Greek pagans were at the same stage of development as the New Testament Christians, the
miraculous elements of the New Testament and the pagan miracles are all of a piece, and are
nothing more or less than variant forms of the same irrelevant phenomenon.
To the scholar who does accept the possibility of the miraculous, the question is seen in a
different light. He will take his starting point from the assumption that there is no a priori reason
why miracles should not happen.
[p.124]
Nor indeed is there any a priori reason why Jesus should not have been divine, as he evidently
claimed to be. Beginning as they do from completely different premises, it is not surprising that
supernaturalists reach quite different conclusions from naturalists. For the supernaturalist, it is
possible that Jesus was divine and that miracles could take place. Whether in fact Jesus was
divine and did perform miracles is something that needs to be established by the norms of
historical and literary investigation. In this enquiry no investigator has the right to impose his
own preconceived ideas onto the New Testament texts (nor indeed onto the Hellenistic or
rabbinic texts), but we all need to be aware of our presuppositions, and to make due allowance
for them.
From this brief survey we can see that the benefits of a judicious use of other religious texts in
the exegesis of the New Testament are many. The main advantage is a simple one: we are
enabled to view the New Testament writings from the perspective of men and women of the first
century. This is something we take for granted today, but it is fundamental to our whole modern
understanding of the New Testament. If we did not know about the paganism of Hellenism we
would be unable to understand most of the New Testament. If we knew nothing about
contemporary Judaism, we could hardly begin to exegete the synoptic traditions and much of St.
Paul’s writings. Used wisely, these materials can add a basic dimension to our comprehension of
the New Testament. Used indiscriminately, they can lead us up many a blind alley. But no reader
of the New Testament can say they are irrelevant.
© 1977, 1979 Paternoster Press. Reproduced by kind permission of the Publisher.
Prepared for the Web in November 2008 by Robert I. Bradshaw.
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