Dictionary of the Later New Testament and its Developments

Dictionary of the Later New Testament and its Developments
Ed. Ralph P. Martin & Peter H. Davids
InterVarsity Press (USA and UK)
1289 pages. Hardback £32.99

A subtitle on the dust cover of this massive volume describes it as 'A Compendium of Contemporary Biblical Scholar-ship.' It is the third in a series, the first of which were 'The Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels' and 'the Dictionary of Paul and his Letters.'
The main focus of this volume is the book of Acts, the Epistles of Peter, James, Jude and John and the books of Hebrews and Revelation, which the blurb on the dust cover calls 'the most neglected books of the New Testament.' In addition most articles carry the reader into the world of the early apostolic fathers and try to show how 'orthodox Christianity continued and developed in the years just following the New Testament era'. There are some 237 articles, most of which are quite long, the average length being above 5,500 words.
There are three comprehensive indexes: Scripture references, topics and article titles.
It is impossible in a short review to evaluate the immense content of this volume. I will, therefore, focus on one specific article and then make one concluding comment.

Specimen Article

The article, Mission, Early Non-Pauline, is by E.J. Schnabel of Geissen, Germany and covers some 23 pages - much more of the New Testament than the documents this particular dictionary professes to handle. It is, in fact, a fairly comprehensive survey of New Testament and early apostolic missiology. The first section (numbered 1.1 - 1.5) deals with the basis of early Christian mission in the life and ministry of Jesus.
The section (2, 2.1 - 2.8) is headed 'Vision, Strategy and Methods' and surveys from Acts and the Epistles issues such as outreach to all nations, the relationship of human planning and divine guidance and the means used in the early church to communicate the good news. Sub-section 2.6 outlines the challenges faced in the early days of mission - the dissimilarity of basic beliefs and values, social, cultural, and psychological barriers. The final sub-section (2.8) headed, The Missionaries, considers the various titles applied by the New Testament to the Lord's missionary servants - apostles, witnesses/ martyrs, fishers of people, evangelists, servants, preachers/heralds, fellow workers and partners. It then notes that some 30 missionaries are mentioned by name and proceeds to indicate something of what is known of their work.
Sections 3, 4, 5, and 6 summarise respectively the references to mission and missionaries in the Acts, the Letter to the Hebrews, the General Epistles and the Revelation. The final subsection 7.4 seeks to offer some explanations for the spread of Christianity. The author says that many earlier explanations have now been modified of discarded. The three most popular explanations nowadays are the miracles and exorcisms, the courage of the martyrs and the ideal and practice of Christian love. To these he adds the Christian view of life after death, the historical nature of the Christian faith as against the myths of paganism and the inclusiveness of Christianity which transcended national geographical and ethnic boundaries as well as social and financial ones. None of these factors and no combination of them is sufficient to explain the astonishing spread of Christianity - we must, therefore, 'see the growth of the church as the work of divine providence.'
My only question mark in relation to this excellent article arises from the use on several occasions of the word 'if' in relation to our Lord's thinking about his death and about his commissioning of the disciples. In each case the 'if' seems to cast doubt on what the New Testament presents as fact and suggests that the writer might have doubts about the integrity of the Gospel records.

General comment

I would like to comment on the fact that the Dictionary sets out to give 'full coverage of the apostolic fathers and early Christianity through (to) the middle of the second century.' In the preface the editors say that the bringing together of the biblical and the extra-biblical strands 'is in no way intended to blur the line of demarcation the church has accepted (since Athanasius) between canonical and noncanonical, even if the story of the canonisation of the New Testament has the ragged edges admitted by Eusebius.' In some articles the data found in the various sections of Scripture is followed immediately by that from the apostolic fathers without any indication that those documents carry less authority that the biblical ones. Unless readers carry the disclaimer of the preface in their minds they could easily assume that the extra-canonical literature is being presented as equal in authority to Scripture or, perhaps, as the most reliable interpretation of Scripture available to us. I would much prefer to have had such material in a completely separate volume.

Dictionary of the Later New Testament and its Developments

Specimen Article

General comment

Norman A. Shields, Belfast

Main Articles

Other articles