Toto

Just keep that in mind.

Rusting Car Bumper

Hmm... That's not exactly what I'm after unless he spends undue time discussing the history and construction. I'm not interested in the spiritual messages that much.

I also wanted to add that I'm not interested in these books for countering Christians or apologetics. I am interested because of my desire to be, well, educated.

DC

justsumner

OK, seriously though, J.D. Crossan is good, as is Raymond Brown, and of coyrse, Burton Throckmorton and my old NT teacher Douglas R. A. Hare.

Rick Sumner

The SecWeb actually calls him "perhaps the most secular scholar working in the field.

Regards,
Rick Sumner

Peter Kirby

I don't know whether Toto has read Raymond Brown's Introduction or simply the Amazon.com reviewer statement quoted. I have read Brown's book front to back along with the introductions of Mack, Schnelle, Koester, Perrin, and Kümmel. Brown's giant book is a balance between the genre of "Introduction" (Einleitung as it is called in German) and "Survey." The Introduction genre asks the questions every beginner wants to know the answers to: when was this written? where was this written? to whom was this written? by whom was this written? The Survey genre asks, primarily, what is the point or points that the author is making? And the survey does this in a shorter-than-original format (like an abstract or paraphrase), while a large commentary does this in a larger-than-original format (possibly as much as several paragraphs on a phrase in the original text), yet the large commentary (if it is any good) will also have discussion of the themes as in a survey.

Books that are more Survey than Introduction are, for example, Achtemeier's intro (referenced in my reading list) and L. T. Johnson's. And there are books with titles like Survey of the New Testament. But your needs seemed to include a good presentation of Introduction-type material. For this Brown is more than adequate, even though he has a bit of Survey, because Brown's book is just so big. Brown's presentation of the content of the NT books and their themes is in no way devotional or homiletic. Of course it would be a serious fault if the theology of the NT author were omitted in a discussion of that author's thought, but that is not the only aspect of the Survey material. If you don't want to get Brown's book, though, the Introduction material provided by Kümmel and by Schnelle, two German scholars translated into English, is excellent. The only thing that I don't like about my Schnelle book is that it is paperback and thus creased at the binding from use.

While I am a fan of Burton Mack, that is primarily from my reading of A Myth of Innocence and not his popular books. Mack's Who Wrote will give you answers to your Introduction questions, but it will not discuss much the evidence behind them or even the spectra and proportion of opinion (as far as presenting the proportion of opinion, Brown is best). If you want an Introduction that includes historical context and plenty of the author's own analysis, I suggest getting the two volumes by Helmut Koester, especially because of the historical and cultural context that is provided.

And like I said, The Oxford Bible Commentary and The New Jerome Biblical Commentary are both great one-volume works that can be used for reference or as a companion to reading the Bible.

Your third book will depend on your interests. I gave a few suggestions above concerning NT issues. But perhaps you would like to get something on archaeology (more related to the Hebrew Bible) such as It Ain't Necessarily So recommended by Celsus and which I just got today. Or maybe you are interested in the Gospels such that Sanders's Studying the Synoptic Gospels would be good. Or maybe you want to learn about Paul. Or maybe about the history of the early centuries of the church. These are all in the reading lists by Celsus and by me.

best,
Peter Kirby

DaninGraniteCity

http://www.medmalexperts.com/POCM/go...istianity.html

Celsus

This misnamed book is full of conjecture and wishful thinking. I strongly recommend you get Joseph Blenkinsopp's Introduction to the Pentateuch instead, at least for the survey of scholarly opinion rather than the idiosyncratic (if mainstream) views of one scholar.

Joel

Toto

This is a mythicist site that some here hold in contempt, but if you can get to the site, it recommends

which I picked up at a half price sale a few years ago. It is a journalistic treatment with some interesting commentary on the search for the historical Jesus.

and, among other books,

DaninGraniteCity

Why is it held in contempt?

Vorkosigan

I'd definitely pick Schnelle, although it is a mite conservative, it nevertheless covers all the bases.

The History and Theology of the New Testament Writings by Udo Schnelle.

Second, you'd want some historical and social background. I'd go for Crossan, not J:aRB, but

The Birth of Christianity by Crossan which has discussions of everything from scholarly methodology to relationships among texts to sociology and economic theory.

Finally, I'd get Metzger's

The Text of the New Testament: Its transmission, corruption, and restoration because it will talk about text criticism along with the history of the NT documents. Establishing the text is absolutely crucial to discussing it.

After that, you should pick one or two texts and specialize. Generalism is nice, but at some point you need to really know a text inside and out so you can see how all the theories, text criticism, and understandings work in practice.

Hope this helps.