9/28/10

New Testament Literature

Sheets' Lecture Notes

Modern translations don't come from what was originally considered an

authoritative source (the textus receptus) but from the eclectic text, a compilation of
the best sources.

When looking for the best manuscript, we look for the oldest, shortest, and neatest
looking copy. Copyists liked to add things and errors got introduced to the text over
the years. These aren't hard and fast rules, but they are general guidelines that help
get the most accurate one.

We also normally lean toward the hardest passage theologically to understand,

because it was more likely that the copyists made something theologically simpler
than to make it more difficult to understand.

The original texts in the day of the early church didn't have verse numbers, they just
had chapters added eventually. They referenced the chapter by the first phrase of it.
Verse numbers have given Christians permission to take a verse completely out of
context and teach something that's not what the Scriptures mean when taken in
context.

The words for gospel and evangelist are not words specific to the early church. The
kingdom of God is the good news that Jesus and the epistles refer to.

Why four gospels? The early scholars about the NT were alarmed by the seemingly
irreconcilable differences between the text. They created a "harmony" account, in
which they combined all four and deleted repetitions.

The four gospels, even with their inconsistencies, portray a picture of an actual
historical figure. The differences and details and repetitions make the accounts
more accurate.