Читать книгу A Contemporary Introduction to the Bible - Colleen M. Conway - Страница 41

This chapter has given an overview, which will be filled in by the following chapters. It may be disorienting to encounter so many terms and dates at once. Nevertheless, it is important to get this larger picture in order to understand the details of what follows. The next seven chapters of this Introduction will unfold the story of the creation of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament. This story moves from discussion of oral traditions in pre-literate Israel all the way through to the writing of the latest books of the Hebrew Bible during the Hellenistic (and Hasmonean) period. Though the first chapters will uncover a strange and different ancient Israel unfamiliar to many readers, this historical approach will illuminate many aspects of the Bible that otherwise make little sense. In addition, it will provide a starting point for engaging other scholarly methods of looking at biblical texts in new ways. Similarly, Chapters 9–15 will trace the development of the New Testament writings, beginning with a discussion of the earliest oral traditions about Jesus.

Of course, the analysis of the formation of the Bible and its texts is always in flux. Within the space of this brief Introduction we will only be able to touch on a few of the major debates. Nevertheless, scholars have been doing this kind of historical analysis of the Bible for about three hundred years, and these efforts have produced some interesting and important results. This textbook draws on the breadth of that scholarship in giving a historical orientation to the Bible that can be a starting point for further study, questioning, and correction. For now, use this textbook as your initial guide, rather than doing internet searches on Bible-related topics (internet sites are particularly variable in quality). Each chapter concludes with recommended written resources, and this chapter concludes with websites that also provide high-quality resources for further study.