Abstract
Among the many differences between Anglophone and German scholarly traditions is the status of Introductions. The German Einleitungsliteratur is appreciated as serious scholarship, useful to beginners and academics alike, whereas the English Introduction is often intended or regarded as elementary, perhaps especially in the UK. In 1998, Professor Boring translated Udo Schnelle’s Einleitung in das Neue Testament, which is one of Germany’s finest and most renowned examples of the genre. His own Introduction to the New Testament, which now appears fifteen years later, deserves to be ranked in the same league. Far from offering a mere ‘resource’ (although that is a part of what he provides), Boring uses the genre of the Introduction to articulate a conception of what kind of document the New Testament is, and how it should be approached.
Central to the originality of what Boring proposes is the sequence in which he introduces the books of the New Testament: all the letters precede all the gospels,
This novel arrangement of material may understate the theological and religious importance of the shape of the canon, but as a historical portrayal of the development of early Christianity, Boring’s account raises important questions. It underscores the social and Christological significance of genre in the early church, and in particular invites greater consideration of the epistolary form and its role in framing Christian ethics. These issues have not been absent from scholarly debate, but they have never been thrown into such high relief in the architecture of introductory literature. This coincides opportunely with fresh attention to letter-writing in contemporary New Testament research, for example Lutz Doering’s 600-page monograph on early Christian epistolography appeared in the same year as Boring’s introduction, drawing greater attention to the influence of Jewish letter-writing in early Christianity. Boring’s emphasis on letters within the New Testament is complemented by his interrogation of the gospel genre and its relationship to the epistles. He takes seriously the problems with defining the gospels as biographies, and he argues for an affinity between gospels and letters inasmuch as they share narrative interest.
This is not an ‘introduction’ for the faint-hearted beginner. One has read 200 pages by the time one begins to work through the texts that compose the New Testament. Those first 200 pages raise important questions of what the New Testament is, and they offer a fulsome introduction to the historical events and sources that are needed for scholarly study of the New Testament. There is a helpful discussion of transmission of the text and of the English versions and their relative merits. The epistles are treated in the chronological sequence that Boring finds most plausible, and for each book of the New Testament a brief running commentary is offered, in addition to discussion of major historical, literary and theological issues. A short ‘epilogue’ places the New Testament more fully in relation to different traditions within Christianity. Throughout the book, Boring includes some Hebrew and Greek script, usually transliterated and/or translated; he never condescends to provide lists of ‘key questions’ for those in the beginners’ class; his sections on ‘further reading’ tend to cite learned literature, highlighting scholarly classics in the field, in all relevant modern languages; there is an index but no glossary. It is an Introduction that offers considerable scope for engagement by students with a serious academic interest in the New Testament, while also containing much of value to those more widely-read.