The A to Z of the New Testament: Things Experts Know that Everyone Else Should Too (James McGrath) - Review
THE A TO Z OF THE NEW TESTAMENT: Things Experts Know that Everyone Else Should Too. By James F. McGrath. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2023. 304 pages.
One of the challenges facing Mainline
Protestant churches, besides decline, is the problem of biblical illiteracy. Experience
has shown me that adult Sunday School and serious Bible study have experienced
an even greater decline than worship attendance. Whereas earlier generations of
preachers might take for granted that their people knew the basic biblical
story that is no longer true. It is one of the reasons why the kind of
inductive preaching that Fred Craddock introduced decades ago is problematic.
It is rooted in the expectation that people know the stories. So, how do we
change this reality? What kinds of resources might speak to this challenging
situation? There have been some interesting attempts to address the problem.
Marcus Borg, for example, wrote several books that invited people to explore
the story, but too often the resources have been less than helpful. Many of
these problems are rooted not in the use of the historical-critical method by
scholars but in how the results are shared. That is, congregants are often left
with a deconstructed Bible that has nothing much to offer us as followers of
Jesus. Besides many of these resources are rather dry.
One of the contemporary biblical
scholars who has proven himself to be anything but dry is James McGrath, the
Clarence L. Goodwin Chair in New Testament Language and Literature at Butler
University (Indianapolis). James made a name for himself as a blogger, but he
is a serious scholar who knows how to communicate scholarly material in a way
that reaches a larger audience than just scholars (he can do that as well). One
of those resources is his book What Jesus Learned from Women (Cascade
Books, 2021). Now McGrath has written a rather ingenious resource he’s titled The A to Z of the New Testament.
In this particular book, McGrath
uses the alphabet to organize his exploration of the New Testament. His goal
here is to share in an accessible manner what New Testament scholars using historical-critical
tools know and what McGrath believes should be known by everyone. That is, he
brings to a larger audience the kinds of materials that he would share in an
introductory Bible course at his university. In other words, he shares the
results of the historical-critical study of the New Testament in a way that
brings the New Testament to life. He does so with humor. Those who have read
McGrath's Patheos blog
posts as well as his books will know that he brings humor and creativity to
his work.
This is how McGrath describes the methodology
he uses in The A to Z of the New Testament: "Each chapter picks one
topic that can be understood easily and then brings in the necessary
information to explore it." Having taught British high schoolers the New
Testament after finishing his Ph.D. at Durham University, he writes that he is
"convinced that if British teenagers can be expected to understand these
things, then the vast majority of people in churches also can— and should be
given the opportunity to do so" (p. 2). With that, I am in complete
agreement.
In case you’re wondering, McGrath hasn’t
organized his book as if it is a dictionary or an encyclopedia. There are
plenty of such resources that might be worth adding to a personal library, but
this is not such a resource. So don’t let the A and the Z lead you to that
conclusion. What McGrath does here is introduce themes present in the New
Testament. These are often problems that have emerged when it comes to
understanding the New Testament. Then, in the course of the discussion of these
themes and problems, McGrath introduces terms and tools that will help resolve
the problem. In other words, the focus here is on the practical. His hope (and
mine) is that this book will not only inform but invite the reader to dig
deeper into the New Testament.
Now, I can't go through each letter
of the alphabet, so let me choose one of the letters (chapters) to illustrate
what McGrath is up to. For our purposes, I’ve chosen the letter G, which stands
for "Greasy Jesus?" Now there is an attention-grabbing chapter title!
The focus here is on Jesus' title/vocation as the Christ/Messiah. Why greasy? McGrath
explains that the Greek word Christos means anointed (with oil), while
the Hebrew term for the same is Mashiach. Thus, Christ and Messiah are
essentially transliterations of the Greek and Hebrew. But this chapter isn't
just about these two words as McGrath goes into some detail as to the nature of
transliterations in the New Testament, words that simply convert words from one
form of text to another. Besides the word Christos/Christ, he discusses words
like angels, Abba, and Maranatha, as well as place names such as Gethsemane and
Golgotha, along with several other transliterated words including Boanerges
(Sons of Thunder). Besides the discussion of the theme/problem and its possible
solution, McGrath offers the reader a brief bibliography "For Further
Reading." He does so at the end of each chapter just in case you want to
go further with the discussion.
Besides the letter G, I’ll say a
word about the final chapter of The A to Z of the New Testament. In this
chapter, McGrath lifts up several personal names that begin with the letter Z,
which he points out is not the final letter in the Greek alphabet. That would
be omega (you know, the Alpha to Omega—Α to Ω). In this final chapter, McGrath reiterates
what he revealed in the opening chapter. That is, he can’t cover everything in
a book of this size that one will find in the New Testament. He reminds us that
this is an introduction that covers "the ABCs but in the process meanders
casually through 'the weeds,' as some might put it, and eventually takes you
from A through Z, covering a lot of genuinely challenging topics on the
journey, hopefully without making anyone feel overwhelmed in the process"
(p. 283). Wandering through the weeds can be fun, and while this is serious
material that we find in the New Testament, having fun while studying it makes
it more likely that we’ll stay with the process.
Having taught bible courses at a
college level as well as bible studies in the churches I’ve served I know that
not everyone is interested in a deeper understanding of the Bible. While it’s
been a while since I taught bible courses, and that was in a bible college
setting, I can't vouch for the level of interest of the kinds of college
students in studying the bible that McGrath encounters, and even in my
experience at a bible college many of my students were quite happy with a
surface knowledge, but from my experience with folks in the church, if given
the opportunity to dive deeply into the Bible they get excited. They have lots
of questions even if they don’t know much about the Bible. What they need is
the opportunity. From experience, the best person to teach adults the Bible is
the pastor, the person who hopefully has taken seminary courses in the Bible. There
are a variety of ways of doing this. While McGrath's book might not be the
typical approach, I do believe people will enjoy reading it and exploring the
topics lifted up here. These topics run the gamut from Christology to the
authorship of particular books, including the ones that might not be written by
the person to whom the book is attributed.
I want to conclude this review of The A to Z of the New Testament by noting something McGrath writes in his acknowledgments,
which is placed at the end of the book. He writes:
Even with all the information that was undoubtedly new to readers, most things in this book can be explored in greater depths and with far more detail. I promise that there is more to be learned and that these texts have not finished unlocking their mysteries. I hope you will view the end of the book as the beginning of the journey. After the Z comes a new and richer A (p. 289).
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