The author and his readers

Jude … brother of James. Since there is a letter of James in the New Testament, claiming to be the work of the James who was a brother of Jesus, it is natural to assume that this Judas or jude (so called in English Bibles, presumably to distinguish him from Judas the traitor) is the Judas who is also listed among Jesus' brothers in Mark 6.3 and Matthew 13.55. Judas was a common Jewish name at the time. To distinguish himself from others, this writer discreetly identifies himself as the brother of the leader of the church in Jerusalem. This would have been enough to endow his message with some authority in the church.

What was said above (p. 270) about the authorship of the letter of James applies equally here. This writer uses idiomatic Greek but draws freely on the stock of a Jewish education, even showing knowledge of the Hebrew of the Old Testament. This is hardly the kind of learned accomplishment to be expected of a member of an artisan family in Galilee – though of course it is not impossible that he acquired these accomplishments later in life. Moreover, the situation to be combated, which is to do with sophisticated distortions of Christian belief, and the arguments used to warn against it, are more characteristic of the later writings of the New Testament than of the first generation of Christians.

The word testament is a technical term with a long history. Strictly speaking, the English word, like the Latin word from which it is derived, means a legal arrangement, a ‘will’; and the same was true of the Greek word, diathēkē, of which ‘testament’ is a translation. But it is obvious that what has been known since the early centuries of the church as the New Testament is not a legal document and has little in common with a will. That it bears this name is the result of a particular turn in the fortunes of the Greek word.

When, in the third century bce, a group of Jewish scholars translated the Hebrew scriptures into Greek for the use of Greek-speaking Jews in Alexandria and elsewhere, they found themselves confronted by a number of words in the original which had no equivalent in the Greek language. One of these was the Hebrew word berith, of which the usual English translation is ‘covenant’. This word was an important one in the history and religion of the Jewish people: it expressed one of their fundamental convictions about the relationship between God and human beings. God, they believed, had shown in the distant past his readiness to protect and care for his own people. He had miraculously rescued them from slavery in Egypt and settled them in a land of their own.

Jesus and John

The beginning of the good news. When a messenger brought news of a victory in war or of some stroke of personal good fortune, the correct Greek word for the tidings was euangelion, ‘good news’. In the Roman empire, happy events of this kind were ascribed to the apparently superhuman power of the reigning emperor. It was the emperor's genius which assured victory, peace and prosperity. He was the saviour of humankind, and the news of a new emperor's birth or accession was always a significant euangelion. The essence of the Christian message was that a new saviour had now appeared on earth and had ascended his throne in heaven. It was no stretch of language to call this message a euangelion, and the word soon became a technical term in the Christian vocabulary. The equivalent in English has always been the Anglo-Saxon word gospel (as in the NRSV footnote), of which good news is a reasonable modern equivalent.

The content of this ‘good news’ concerned (or was proclaimed by) Jesus Christ, the Son of God. For some years before Mark wrote (as is evident from Paul's letters), the title ‘Son of God’ had become attached to Jesus. Nevertheless, in the written gospels it is used only sparingly, and its occurrence here in the very first verses of Mark's gospel is significant: evidently one of the main purposes of Mark's work was to demonstrate that Jesus was in fact the ‘Son of God’.

The first edition of this Companion was commissioned forty years ago by the Oxford and Cambridge University Presses as an aid to the general reader of the recently published New English Bible (New Testament, 1961). This was the first ecumenically authorized translation into modern English; but it remained in currency for barely thirty years. In 1989 it was replaced by the Revised English Bible, which effectively made its predecessor obsolete.

As a result, the Companion, though still in circulation, ceased to be an appropriate tool for the study of the New Testament. If reprinting were to be considered, it would clearly have to be adjusted to the text of a version in more general use. Since the New English Bible's natural successor, the Revised English Bible, failed to capture the market in the way that had been hoped, the publishers were obliged to recommend that any revision of the Companion should adopt the text of a more widely established version. For a number of reasons the New Revised Standard Version was the obvious candidate.

But it soon became clear that a revision would involve more than simply adapting the commentary to the phraseology of a new text. Substantial changes – some would say advances – have taken place in New Testament studies during the last thirty years. New methods of interpretation, and sustained research into the environment of Jesus and of the early church, have combined to correct former misunderstandings and to set old problems in a new light.

The greeting

The greeting is very similar to that of the first letter and follows the same standard form, leading into thanksgiving. But what follows has a particularly personal warmth and intimacy which is sustained throughout the letter. Timothy is addressed as my beloved child.

Thanksgiving and encouragement

What binds them particularly together is Timothy's sincere faith which he has inherited from his grandmother through his mother. It may seem surprising that in this instance the faith has already been transmitted over three generations, as if the grandmother had been converted to Christianity first, followed by the mother and then finally the son. But we notice that Paul says that he worshipped God as his ancestors did, and since Eunice (and presumably Lois) were Jewish (Acts 16.1), then Timothy's ‘faith’ may (like Paul's) mean the devotion to God which he showed as a Jew before his or their conversion to Christianity. All three generations may have been models of that traditional Jewish piety which Christianity inherited and only partly modified.

Timothy's faith and piety, then, had long been habitual to him. In addition he had received, by the laying on of Paul's hands, both a commission and a gift of God enabling him to perform it. But this too, for all its supernatural origin, was something which (as modern experience will endorse) could in due course be taken for granted and lose its potency unless one were periodically to rekindle it by an effort of will; and to assist this process of ‘rekindling’, the writer devotes a few words to the Spirit which is imparted with the ‘gift’.

We do not know how the first letter to the Christians in Corinth was received, or whether Paul paid the visit he promised them. Acts is silent on these questions, and our next letter from the correspondence is so taken up with more recent matters that the questions raised in 1 Corinthians are barely referred to. Indeed, after that letter was written, Paul's relations with the Corinthian church evidently went through a difficult period. Some member of the church had committed a serious offence, and the Corinthians had failed to punish it in the way demanded by Paul. This had led to a direct challenge to Paul's authority; and Paul, fearing that a personal visit from himself at such a juncture might merely cause pain and embarrassment, sent a stern letter by the hand of Titus; but he was not at all sure how this would be received, and he spent an anxious period of waiting, unable even to carry on with his missionary work in northern Greece, until Titus eventually rejoined him with the news that the Corinthians had yielded to his authority.

Paul's side of this story is told in the course of the first two chapters and in part of chapter 7 of 2 Corinthians. At the end of his account of it he frankly expresses his relief at the way things have turned out, and his tone is as cordial as anywhere in his letters.

To the modern reader, the word gospel denotes the kind of book that has come down to us under the names of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. But in the early church it was some time before the word took on this meaning. It is clear from the letters of Paul that ‘the gospel’ existed before any of the ‘gospels’ came to be written. Euangelion, ‘gospel’, was the name given by the first generation of Christians to the message they had to impart. Literally, it meant ‘good news’.

If we are to judge by the accounts in the Acts of the Apostles, when this message was first preached it consisted of a fairly brief summary of those facts about Jesus of Nazareth which had caused his followers to believe that he was the promised Messiah, or Christ. For the purpose of convincing their Jewish hearers, it was doubtless on these facts that the first preachers needed to concentrate, along with the consequences of those facts for faith and conduct. But Jesus, though he wrote nothing himself, had also been a teacher, a prophet, a healer and exorcist, a miracle-worker and a controversial expositor of law and scripture. Many of his acts and sayings must have been reverently preserved in the memories of his followers and were available to give flesh to the bare bones of the original proclamation. Moreover, new questions soon began to be asked.

A chosen people – their conduct and their suffering

Peter, an apostle of Jesus Christ. There is only one Peter among the apostles, or indeed in the entire New Testament, and the letter purports to come from his pen. This in itself does not settle the matter. The Second Letter of Peter makes the same claim; but the church has always, with good reason, hesitated to accept it as the work of the apostle. The first letter bears much better credentials. It breathes the authentic spirit of early Christianity and it expounds the central principles of the faith with a seriousness and authority comparable with those of Paul. Admittedly, it is not easy to see how it could have been written by the Galilean fisherman who was a disciple of Jesus. It is composed in polished Greek, such as could hardly have been commanded by a Jew who from childhood had not spoken Greek as his first language; its frequent quotations from and allusions to the Old Testament are from the Greek translation of the Septuagint, which Peter is unlikely to have known, at least until late in life; and the symbolic reference to the place of writing as ‘Babylon’ (5.13) makes it likely that the letter was written, not before 64 ce (the likely date of Peter's death), but after the conquest of Jerusalem in 70 – it was only then that Jewish writers began to liken Rome to the historic Babylon which had similarly sacked Jerusalem six centuries before.

The ancient city of Corinth, built on the isthmus dividing mainland Greece from the Peloponnese, enjoyed notable prosperity by reason of its commanding position with a port on each side. It had been destroyed by the Romans in 146 bce but refounded by Julius Caesar two centuries later, and had soon after become the capital of the Roman province of Achaia (the whole of central and southern Greece). Because of its commercial importance it had a cosmopolitan population which included a Jewish community – an inscription proves the existence of a synagogue; and the religious and cultural life of the city was typical of the Roman and Hellenistic world, with temples and institutions dedicated to the deities of classical mythology as well as a few of foreign provenance. The constant traffic of seafarers and others through the ports also gave it a persistent reputation for immorality.

The founding of the church at Corinth by Paul around 50 ce is described in Acts 18. Shortly afterwards Paul spent some time at Ephesus (Acts 19). These two chapters of Acts provide the background for what has come down to us as Paul's ‘First Letter to the Corinthians’. But this letter was evidently not the beginning of the correspondence. Paul had already had occasion to write to the Corinthians once before (5.9), and had received a letter from them (7.1). He had also received information from members of the Corinthian congregation who had visited him at Ephesus (1.11; 16.17).

The first thirteen letters in the New Testament are, or purport to be, from the correspondence of Paul. They tell us, as letters should, who was the writer and to whom they were written. In Acts, we possess a brief biography of Paul which (as we can see from Paul's own letters) tells us only some of the facts and is not always easy to reconcile with what Paul says himself. But from this biography, and from occasional pieces of information scattered in the letters themselves, we can make a rough outline of Paul's travels and gain some picture of the circumstances which caused him to stay a relatively short time in each of the churches which he founded and to keep in touch with them afterwards by correspondence. In the case of the letters to Corinth, we can be more specific: these letters were written while Paul was in Ephesus between 51 and 54 ce. For the rest, we do not know for certain where and when they were written, beyond the fact that none of them is likely to have been written earlier than 45 or later than 65 (the probable date of Paul's martyrdom in Rome). Nor do we know when and how they were collected and how far, if at all, they were rearranged by a subsequent editor. Some of them may even have been written by his followers after his lifetime. But these questions are relatively unimportant.

Outside this letter there is no mention in the New Testament of the city of Colossae, and from the letter itself it is clear that Paul had never been there. The church had been founded by an assistant of Paul's named Epaphras, who appears to have been a native of the city; and to the question when this happened the most likely answer can be found in the account in Acts of Paul's stay in Ephesus. His work there “continued for two years, so that all the residents of Asia, both Jews and Greeks, heard the word of the Lord” (19.10). Colossae, with Laodicea and Hierapolis, made up a group of three small cities some 100 miles inland from Ephesus, in the valley of the river Lycus. Christian communities had taken root in all three of them (4.13), and the obvious time for this to have taken place is during Paul's activity in Ephesus.

From the last sentence in the letter it appears that Paul was writing in prison, and it has generally been assumed that the imprisonment referred to is that which Paul underwent while awaiting trial in Rome. As with Philippians (which was also written from prison), there are reasons for doubting this: Rome was too far away from Asia for some of the contacts mentioned in these letters to have been maintained, and Paul himself mentions other ‘imprisonments’ (2 Corinthians 11.23) – there may well have been one at Ephesus (1 Corinthians 15.32).

The three letters which follow are addressed, not to churches, but to two of Paul's colleagues, Timothy and Titus; but this does not mean that they were originally part of a personal correspondence. On the contrary, Timothy and Titus are addressed, not as friends and partners in Paul's missionary activity, but as men who hold long-term responsibility for their respective churches in Ephesus and Crete, and to whom it is appropriate to send instructions about the correct ordering of church affairs. They are addressed, in fact, in their capacity as established pastors; and these three letters, which are notably similar in tone and presuppose similar conditions in the churches to which they were written, have been known since the eighteenth century as the pastoral epistles.

The letters purport to have been written by Paul and were accepted as genuine by the church from at least the end of the second century. But in recent times their authenticity has been questioned. The language and style can be seen on a first reading to be different from those of the other letters attributed to Paul; the structure and the concerns of the churches addressed seem to reflect a later stage of development than one would expect to find in the period of Paul's main correspondence; and the writer's presentation of the Christian faith has an unexpectedly steady, settled quality.

The prologue

The purpose of the gospel according to John is declared, not at the beginning, but at the end, “in order that you may come to believe that Jesus is the Messiah” (20.31).

To anyone (other than a Christian) who understood what was meant by the term ‘Messiah’, it might have come as a surprise that a book should have to be written for this purpose. The Messiah, by definition, was a figure of power and glory. When he came, it would surely be impossible not to be aware of the fact. His destiny was to restore a kingdom of unprecedented splendour and justice to God's elect people. Once his reign had begun, it would hardly be necessary to write a book to prove that he had come.

Nevertheless, Christians were not deterred from calling Jesus ‘Christ’ (Messiah) even though the fact that the Messiah had come was not recognized by more than a handful of the human race, indeed not even by the Jews, who prayed for his coming in their daily prayers. For this technical term of Jewish religion seemed the natural way to describe one who had actually been among them on earth, who was now at God's right hand in heaven, and who was the source of new life for his followers. They were able to find Old Testament texts which not only prophesied his glory but also implied a destiny of suffering and rejection; and the more they reflected on the life and teaching of Jesus the better they began to understand the mysterious necessity that “the Messiah should suffer these things” (Luke 24.26) and that his reign was to be, at least for the present, unrecognized by all but a few.

The preface

Most excellent Theophilus. The first four verses of the gospel are what we would now call a ‘preface’, dedicating the work to a patron. It is the preface to the writings of an author whose name tradition has preserved as Luke, and who may in fact (though we cannot be sure of it) be the same person as ‘Luke, the beloved physician’ (Colossians 4.14), the friend and companion of Paul. Then, as now, writing a preface showed the work to be a literary project. But this is not characteristic of New Testament writings, which were written for religious rather than literary purposes; it is only here and at the beginning of Acts (which is the second part of Luke's work) that any kind of preface occurs. Luke presents himself, therefore, as someone unusual among New Testament writers: a conscious literary stylist ready to make use of the conventions of the world of letters. His opening paragraph is a smooth and polished piece of Greek prose.

Greek historians took it for granted that their work should begin with a preface (often including a dedication) explaining the writer's purpose and methods. Luke, who certainly felt himself to be writing a chapter of world history, followed the same convention, including also the customary dedication to a personal friend or influential acquaintance. Luke's preface, though it is shorter and less fulsome than most, is entirely in the spirit of his age.

Romans, like most of the New Testament ‘letters’, is a real letter, in the sense that it was written to particular people for a particular reason – it is not (as some literary ‘letters’ were) a treatise or essay dressed up in letter form. It begins and ends with the customary greetings (though Paul always gives these a distinctive Christian content) and refers to matters that were clearly already under discussion. To understand it, we have to make some effort to reconstruct the situation, even though we do not possess the other side of the correspondence and have very limited knowledge (from Acts and from Paul's other letters) of the circumstances which caused Paul to write to a church which he had never yet been able to visit.

But this letter is also more than just a fragment of Paul's correspondence. Romans is the nearest thing we have in the New Testament to a theological treatise (apart perhaps from the letter to the Hebrews); and it is as such that it has been regarded throughout much of the history of the church, providing arguments for the protagonists in some of the most earnest debates which have taken place between churches and between believers.

As early as the second century ce this writing was referred to by ancient authors under the title ‘To Hebrews’. If, at that date, they knew any more about it – who was the author, why it was written – they have not told us. Indeed, even this title tells us nothing we could not have inferred for ourselves. Whoever was originally intended to read the letter must have been familiar not only with the Jewish scriptures and institutions but also with current Jewish methods of interpretation: without a ‘Hebrew’ background it would have been difficult to follow the argument. It would seem to follow that the first readers were Jewish Christians – either Jews or proselytes. But even this conclusion is not certain. They could conceivably have been Gentiles who had spent many years attending a Jewish synagogue without actually converting to Judaism (like the probable recipients of Paul's letter to the Galatians: see above, pp.). The traditional title, to the hebrews, is therefore not certainly correct. But so far as it goes it is a reasonable guess.

It is less obviously appropriate to call the work a letter. It is true that it ends, as letters should, with some personal greetings; but at the beginning, where one normally looks for some indication of who is writing and to whom, there is nothing of the kind.

Paul knew the church at Ephesus well. He spent more than two years there (Acts 19–20) – probably longer than he spent in any other single city during his missionary work. One might therefore have expected his letter to this church to be particularly intimate and personal. But in fact this letter to the ephesians is the least personal of all those attributed to Paul. There is little to suggest that the writer was personally acquainted with his correspondents – indeed the impression given by such verses as 1.15 and 3.2–4 is that he had never met them; and it is difficult to believe that the letter could really have been written by Paul to his friends at Ephesus. A further peculiarity of the letter is that, compared with Paul's other letters, it has little in the way of a precise purpose or occasion. There is plenty of solid teaching in it about the church, about the unity of all Christians, about the institutions of marriage and slavery and about the fight against supernatural powers; but, even if one may occasionally suspect a particular danger or heresy to have been in the writer's mind, there is no point at which the letter is addressed to a specific situation or problem. The tone is throughout general, never particular, and the letter, apart from the brief personal greetings at the beginning and the end, reads more like a homily or a circular letter than a document from a missionary's correspondence.

This book of the New Testament, like the gospel according to Luke, is dedicated to a certain Theophilus. The dedication declares that the gospel was only the first book of the total work; what now lies before us is the sequel. The author gave no title to this sequel, and its earliest readers may have been somewhat puzzled to know what to call it. Biographies of popular philosophers sometimes went on to include an account of the achievements of the philosopher's followers; and historians occasionally undertook the history of an institution. But there were also biographical accounts of the achievements of famous men which might be called “The Acts of so-and-so”; and perhaps it is for this reason that, since the second century, this work has been known as the acts of the apostles. Nevertheless, the title is not altogether appropriate. Only two apostles, Peter and Paul, are prominent in the story, and only in the second half of the book does one of them (Paul) become the centre of interest. In the first half the real protagonist is the group of early Christians which rapidly grew into the beginnings of a world-wide church.

Greek historians not only wrote a preface to their work as a whole; they often introduced successive books of it by a brief résumé of what had gone before. The beginning of Acts follows this convention and serves to tie the two parts of the work together.