First Glance

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It is a pleasure to welcome our newest columnist, the Reverend N.T. Wright, who is dean of Lichfield Cathedral in Straffordshire, England, although that in itself would not be a qualification for a columnist in BR. Tom Wright is also a major New Testament scholar, and that is what attracts us to him. He is an articulate, elegant writer with uncommon insights into the New Testament text, as our readers will soon learn, if they don’t already know. His initial column appears in this issue (see “Good News for a Pagan World”).

Lost, hidden, secret—these misleading words are frequently applied to the gospels, epistles and acts of apostles that make up the Christian Apocrypha. Excluded from the New Testament, the texts—which recount events in the lives of Jesus and the apostles that are never mentioned in the Bible—are read infrequently today. Nonetheless, many Christians are acquainted with these apocryphal stories—not through the printed page, but through art. Countless stained glass windows, manuscript illuminations and painted altarpieces record details mentioned only in the Apocrypha, writes David R. Cartlidge in “The Christian Apocrypha—Preserved in Art.”

The Ralph W. Beeson Professor of Religion at Maryville College, in Tennessee, Cartlidge has served as his department’s chair for more than 20 years. He is the author, along with D.L. Dungan, of Documents for the Study of the Gospels (Fortress/Augsburg, 1994). An amateur photographer and musician, he plays flute and piccolo.

Biblical scholars agree that the accounts of the patriarchs, the Exodus and the settlement in Canaan were written down centuries after these events supposedly took place. The consensus has generally been, however, that the accounts of the Israelite monarchies in the books of Samuel, Kings and Chronicles contain a core of historical truth. But some revisionist scholars now argue that these accounts, too, are myths, mere literary constructions devised to glorify Israel’s past. In “The Biblical Minimalists: Expunging Ancient Israel’s Past,” BR editor Hershel Shanks charges that the revisionists are too rash in rejecting the Bible’s historicity; in fact, he notes, the Bible is by far our best source of information about the period of the monarchies.

Students who take New Testament 101 may find something shocking: In the halls of academe, the Bible is just another book—a good, tough read. The Gospels, moreover, do not simply present straightforward accounts of Jesus’ sayings and acts; rather, they tell tales, employing such fictional devices as irony and even “inventing” scenes (for example, Jesus’ thoughts when he is alone) that no one could have witnessed. So were the Evangelists novelists of yore? In “Gospels in the Classroom,” Paul Q. Beeching observes that the authors of the Gospels were not historians or newspaper reporters; their purpose was to use every means at their disposal—whether eyewitness account or metaphor—to present the story of Jesus.

Beeching’s experiences teaching at Central Connecticut State University have shaped his book Awkward Reverence: Reading the New Testament Today (Continuum, 1997).

Son of god” was a title used to describe Egypt’s pharaohs, Israel’s kings and Jesus. Coincidence? Or did the Egyptian notion of the pharaoh as the son of god influence the Israelite view of kingship and the Christian understanding of Jesus? asks James K. Hoffmeier in “Son of God: From Pharaoh to Israel’s Kings to Jesus.”

Department Chair of Biblical, Theological, Religious and Archaeological Studies at Wheaton College, in Illinois, Hoffmeier has participated in the East Frontier Canal Survey Project in northern Sinai and is the author of Israel in Egypt (Oxford Univ. Press, forthcoming).

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A Note on Style

B.C.E. (Before the Common Era) and C.E. (Common Era), used by some of our authors and often used in scholarly literature, are the alternative designations corresponding to B.C. and A.D.

It is a pleasure to welcome our newest columnist, the Reverend N.T. Wright, who is dean of Lichfield Cathedral in Straffordshire, England, although that in itself would not be a qualification for a columnist in BR. Tom Wright is also a major New Testament scholar, and that is what attracts us to him. He is an articulate, elegant writer with uncommon insights into the New Testament text, as our readers will soon learn, if they don’t already know. His initial column appears in this issue (see “Good News for a Pagan World”). Lost, hidden, secret—these misleading words are frequently […]