A New New Testament: A Bible for the Twenty-first Century Combining Traditional and Newly Discovered Texts
640
A New New Testament: A Bible for the Twenty-first Century Combining Traditional and Newly Discovered Texts
640eBook
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Overview
“A New New Testament does what some of us never dreamed possible: it opens the treasure chest of early Christian writings, restoring a carefully select few of them to their rightful place in the broad conversation about who Jesus was, what he did and taught, and what all of that has to do with us now.” —Barbara Brown Taylor, author of Leaving Church and An Altar in the World
There are twenty-seven books in the traditional New Testament, but the earliest Christian communities were far more vibrant than that small number might lead you to think. In fact, many more scriptures were written and just as important as the New Testament in shaping early-Christian communities and beliefs. Over the past century, many of those texts that were lost have been found and translated, yet are still not known to much of the public; they are discussed mainly by scholars or within a context of the now outdated notion of gnostic gospels. In A New New Testament Hal Taussig is changing that. With the help of nineteen important spiritual leaders, he has added ten of the recently discovered texts to the traditional New Testament, leading many churches and spiritual seekers to use this new New Testament for their spiritual and intellectual growth.
“Remarkable . . . Not meant to replace the traditional New Testament, this fascinating work will be, Taussig hopes, the first of several new New Testaments.” —Booklist
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780547792118 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Houghton Mifflin Harcourt |
| Publication date: | 11/01/2017 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 640 |
| Sales rank: | 536,184 |
| File size: | 2 MB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
Introducing A New New Testament
It is time for a new New Testament. A New Testament that causes people—inside and outside church—to lean forward with interest and engagement. This is meant to be that book. It contains astounding new material from the first-century Christ movements and places it alongside the traditional texts. Among its offerings are a new gospel whose primary character is a woman, a previously unknown collection of songs in Christ’s voice lifting to God, another gospel with more than fifty new teachings from Jesus, and a prayer of the apostle Paul discovered in the sands of Egypt less than seventy years ago.
This New New Testament is not simply the product of one author. The ten added books have been chosen by a council of wise and nationally known spiritual leaders. An eclectic mix of bishops, rabbis, well-known authors, leaders of national churches, and women and men from African American, Native American, and European American backgrounds have studied many of the recent discoveries from the first two centuries, deliberated rigorously together, and chosen those new books.
What have these deliberations produced? Where did it come from? And what do readers need to know before immersing themselves in this new New Testament experience?
Where did these new books come from?
How could new books from the first centuries of Christianity, ones not in the New Testament, just suddenly appear? Where did they come from? And why aren’t they in the New Testament to begin with? There is no simple answer to these questions. And these are not questions that need to be in the foreground of our experience of A New New Testament. So, they are addressed them in a number of chapters that follow the scriptures included here, a "Companion to A New New Testament: Basic Historical Background for This New Book of Books."
But there is a short answer to these important questions that can be summarized here. In the past hundred years a number of new works from the first centuries have been discovered in the desert sands of Egypt, the markets of Cairo, and the libraries of ancient monasteries. In some cases, scholars already knew about the existence of these books because they were mentioned in other, more familiar ancient texts, but the books themselves had never been found. In other cases, these newly found documents from the beginnings of Christianity had never before been heard of at all. In still other cases, some of these "new" documents have actually been in hand for quite a while but have been ignored, repressed, or known only to scholars.
There is no reason, then, to think that the Gospel of Thomas, which is not in the traditional New Testament, was read any less in the first and second centuries than the Gospel of John, which is in the traditional New Testament. Indeed, in the ancient world the Gospel of Thomas was distributed widely and translated into at least two languages. Early Christian writings that did not make it into the New Testament had, in their time, similar status to the works that did find their way into it. There was no "stamp of approval" until at least three hundred years after Jesus’s birth.
Wait a minute! Wasn’t the New Testament written, selected, and collected very soon after Jesus?
No. The New Testament did not exist for at least the first three hundred, if not five hundred, years after Jesus. Some of its books appear to have been written some twenty to thirty years after his death, but others probably not for at least 140 years after Jesus.
In the early centuries of Christianity the only hints of a sacred collection of texts are several lists of some gospels, letters, and apocalypses suggested for reading, with different Christ communities following different lists, and many communities not following any list. The second through fourth centuries after Jesus did see some actual bound books of collected early Christian works, but none of them are identical to, or even progenitors of, the New Testament. In other words, as is shown in more detail in the "Companion to A New New Testament" at the back of this book, these new additions to the New Testament existed for many years and during the crucial early period of Christianity alongside the books we know, without any privilege of one over any other, for a very long time. This "new" New Testament, then, in a very real way restores the kind of mix of early Christian documents about Jesus that existed in the first centuries.
The assumption that the existing New Testament was always the privileged, authorized book about Jesus is not true. The New Testament did not somehow descend from God after Jesus was gone. Christian churches spent centuries engaging in arguments and political deals to decide which early books would be included in their most sacred collections. This, of course, does not mean that the New Testament is fraudulent or less meaningful. It simply means that the historical record shows that collection to be a product of complex human negotiation over a long period of time.
So, if the New Testament as a collection of early Christian books did not come into existence in the first century, where did all these different books from the traditional New Testament and beyond it come from? And when were they written?
The introduction to each ancient text in A New New Testament gives an approximate date for when it might have been written. But it is difficult to know these dates exactly. None of these individual books make note of when they were written, and historians are left with many imponderables in dating them. It is reasonably clear that Paul’s letters to the Galatians and Corinthians were written in the 50s CE (AD). On the other hand, the Gospel of Luke could have been written anywhere from 60 CE to 140 CE, according to different historians. Many scholars now argue that the Gospel of Thomas (not included in the traditional New Testament but included in this New New Testament) was written much earlier than the Gospel of Luke. We will look more closely at the difficulties and approximations of when the books in and outside of the traditional New Testament were written later, in both the individual introductions to each ancient text and in the "Companion to A New New Testament."
The books inside and outside the traditional New Testament specify little about the conditions in which they were written, though from their hints at times, places, and real-life circumstances it is clear that they were written by and for particular people. The precise origins of the individual works of the traditional New Testament are in many cases just as elusive as the new additions to this new New Testament.
It can be shocking to learn just how many ambiguities and unknowns surround the origins of these documents, both familiar and new. However, it is worth stepping back from specific questions about individual texts to look at the bigger picture of the things we do know about them—because all of these documents have much in common. For instance, none of the traditional New Testament was written after 175 CE; so the 2012 council that chose the new books also did not allow books definitely written after 175 CE. Although there is little certainty about when, by whom, and for what these individual works were written, there are some general similarities in all of them. They were all—traditional and new—composed by and for people between 50 and 175 CE, somewhere around the Mediterranean Sea, with certain similar themes and within certain realities of life. All these books had a life of their own long before they were in the New Testament—not unlike the new books added to this new New Testament.
Table of Contents
Foreword xi
Preface xvi
Preface to the Translations xx
Introducing A New New Testament xxiii
How to Read A New New Testament xxviii
The Books of
A New New Testament
An Ancient Prayer from the Early
Christ Movements
The Prayer of Thanksgiving 5
Gospels Featuring Jesus’s Teachings
The Gospel of Thomas 15
The Gospel of Matthew 27
The Gospel of Mark 64
The Gospel of Luke and the Acts of the Apostles 89
The Acts of the Apostles 127
Gospels, Poems, and Songs Between
Heaven and Earth
The First Book of the Odes of Solomon 172
The Thunder: Perfect Mind 183
The Gospel of John 189
The Gospel of Mary 224
The Gospel of Truth 231
The Writings of Paul and an
Introductory Prayer
The Prayer of the Apostle Paul 243
The Letter to the Romans 246
The First Letter to the Corinthians 265
The Second Letter to the Corinthians 283
The Letter to the Galatians 296
The Letter to the Philippians 304
The First Letter to the Thessalonians 369
The Letter to Philemon 314
Literature in the Tradition of Paul
with a Set of Introductory Prayers
The Second Book of the Odes of Solomon 320
The Letter to the Ephesians 328
The Acts of Paul and Thecla 337
The Letter to the Colossians 347
he Second Letter to the Thessalonians 351
The First Letter to Timothy 355
The Second Letter to Timothy 361
The Letter to Titus 365
Diverse Letters with a Set
of Introductory Prayers
The Third Book of the Odes of Solomon 372
The Letter of James 379
The Letter to the Hebrews 386
The First Letter of Peter 401
The Letter of Peter to Philip 409
The Second Letter of Peter 414
The Letter of Jude 418
Literature in the Tradition of John
with an Introductory Set of Prayers
The Fourth Book of the Odes of Solomon 427
The First Letter of John 434
The Second Letter of John 439
The Third Letter of John 441
The Revelation to John 445
The Secret Revelation of John 467
A Companion to
A New New Testament
BASIC HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
FOR THIS NEW BOOK OF BOOKS
A Preamble 483
1 The Discoveries of New Documents from Old Worlds 485
2 The Books of A New New Testament: An Overview 491
3 Two Surprising Stories: How the Traditional New Testament Came to Be; How A New New Testament Came to Be 500
4 What’s New in A New New Testament? 519
5 Giving Birth to A New New Testament
and Retiring the Idea of Gnosticism 529
6 A Rich Explosion of Meaning 537
Epilogue: What’s Next for A New New Testament? 544
The Council for A New New Testament 555
Acknowledgments 559
Appendix I: Sixty-seven Major Writings of the Early Christ Movements 560
Appendix II: The Books of the Nag Hammadi Library 567
Appendix III: Study Guide 569
Appendix IV: Recommended Reading 582
Subject and Author Index 584
Scriptural Index 000
