Dictionary of New Testament Background

Changing the scenery?

DICTIONARY OF NEW TESTAMENT BACKGROUND
Edited by C.A. Evans & S.E. Porter
IVP. xxxiv + 1328 pages. £29.99
ISBN 0 85111 980 8

Here is a novel and stimulating experiment. One might have thought Inter-Varsity had said it all in the dictionaries of Jesus and the Gospels, Paul and his Letters and The Later New Testament and its Developments. What could DNTB add to them?

The aim is modest, and vague. It only 'hopes to supplement' them. But it is stepping onto quicksand. The editors know that 'background' is inadequate but settle for the term (perversely) because it will be 'widely and immediately understood', whereas 'context', 'setting' or 'world' all 'pose difficulties of their own'. We need, however, to hear about the problems with 'background' as well, since the aim is 'to clarify the world of thought and experience in the light of which the New Testament should be read'. This 'should' hints at something more. Perhaps as a 'dictionary' it only sets out to clarify detail, but this 'world of thought and experience' is far more extensively and profoundly analysed than that. How far does it then shape the thought and experience of the New Testament itself? That question is not properly faced.

Only 300 topics are selected for treatment. The editors have left innumerable lesser people, places and practices to the preceding dictionaries, going instead for major intellectual or social themes. Especially prominent are literary authors, their works (three dozen Qumran finds examined individually) and methods ('Intertextuality', 'The Rewritten Bible in Pseudepigrapha and Qumran'). A subject index multiplies the range several times, and there are frequent cross-references built into the alphabetical sequence of articles, into their text and prior to their (extensive) individual bibliographies. A second edition would make it all easier to handle, however, by merging the subject and article indexes, the page references for the latter being given in bold type.

Some 150 authors have been recruited, typically current researchers in the fields they treat. There are plenty of distinguished names. Notable Jewish scholars have been enlisted, and a sprinkling of experienced classicists. The bulk of the contributors come from North American departments of religion or theology (only a handful from continental Europe). It is impressive to meet much fresh talent, but mostly we see New Testament specialists looking beyond their usual bounds, rather than others looking in. Hence a difficulty: we are told of many background points of contact, but not much about aspects of the New Testament phenomenon that Jews, Greeks or Romans would have found strange. It seems too much at home in its world.

Two very different approaches to 'background' appear. 'Philosophy' (J.M. Dillon) is treated largely in terms of its own broad history, with occasional references to its influence on Christianity, but none to the New Testament. 'Social Values and Structures' (S.C. Barton) starts from the first letter of Paul to the Corinthians, and demonstrates how selected 'background' values and structures help to explain problems Paul was tackling. Both approaches miss aspects of their topic important for this project. For example, the social phenomenon of the philosophical school is not treated by either, nor does the dictionary appear to capture at all the distinctive New Testament enterprise of reconstructing community life through teaching. This points again to the weakness of 'background' on its own as a way into the subject.

Some contributors do tackle the questions of definition. In 'Pagan Sources in the New Testament', J.D. Charles distinguishes ten forms of 'convergence': common idea, common convention, expansion, reminiscence, parallel, borrowing (e.g. images of metropolitan life), transposition, adaptation, imitation, allusion (or citation). Each of these is illustrated by particular details, and there is a two-page catalogue of New Testament instances of convergence. But what has happened about 'divergence'? Very few contributors recognise the importance of noting major elements that do not match the 'background'. D.S. Stamps, however, on 'Rhetoric' devotes a whole section to 'The distinctives of Christian rhetoric', while C.B. Forbes on 'Epictetus' treats 'Parallels and contrasts'.

It is only when the reactive and innovatory features of the New Testament are also defined that one is in a position to measure the influence of its background upon it. Out-standing examples of this two-sided approach may be found throughout the Reallexikon fŸr Antike und Christentum (e.g. A. Dihle, 'Ethik'). The lack of it has led to the reigning conceit among Anglo-Saxon historians that nothing much changed. According to R. MacMullen there was an unbroken flow from non-Christian into Christian usage, 'all but the cross a part of pagan tradition' (Christianity and Paganism, New Haven 1997, 125, 157). C. Robert Phillips, III (Journal of Roman Studies 90, 2000, 257) denounces as 'triumphalism' the work of G.G. Stroumsa, Barbarian Philosophy: The Religious Revolution of Early Christianity (TŸbingen 1999). Stroumsa is a patristics specialist at the Hebrew University. He was no doubt following the principle of the great Jewish historiographer, A.D. Momigliano: 'No fully aware historian of the ancient world ... can get away with the refusal to recognise that ancient history only makes sense when it is seen to evolve in such a way as to end naturally in the rise of Christianity' (cited in Proceedings of the British Academy 74, 1998, 408). The idea of cultural progress was itself a product of Christian thought, according to W. Kinzig, Novitas Christiana (Gšttingen 1994).

None of this need detract from the extraordinary richness of DNTB. I endorse everything said on its dust jacket, and salute the creativity of the editors. But I want them now to turn their hand to the other side of 'background', that is, as a counterfoil to the 'new creation', the 'canon' by which walks the 'Israel of God' (Galatians 6.16).

E.A. Judge
Emeritus Professor of History, Macquarie University, New South Wales

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