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The IVP Dictionary of the New TestamentHelp or hindrance?THE IVP DICTIONARY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT This is a one-volume compilation based on four of InterVarsity Press’s large dictionaries: Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels (1992), Dictionary of Paul and His Letters (1993), Dictionary of the Later New Testament and Its Developments (1997) and Dictionary of New Testament Background (2000). To achieve the reduction in size, entries have been restricted to the ‘essential articles’ from the previous dictionaries, usually with little change or abbreviation. ‘The selection of articles in this volume has been made with students and the classroom in mind, though it is expected that others who have not collected the series — including those engaged in ministry — will find it a valuable addition to their libraries’ (Preface, p.ix). Standard workAs the editor intends, this one-volume work is certainly most useful and will no doubt become a standard reference work in the future. The 95 distinguished contributors present us with a total of 132 articles. All these are at least a double-columned page in length and the Dictionary displays a distinct preference for longer articles, many being of around 15 pages. This may be illustrated by considering the pages at which the nine articles under letter A begin: ‘Abraham: New Testament’ (p.1); ‘Acts of the Apostles’ (p.16); ‘Adam and Christ: Paul’ (p.33); ‘Adoption, Sonship: Paul’ (p.40); ‘Adversaries I: Paul’ (p.43); ‘Adversaries II: General Epistles, Pastorals, Revelation’ (p.52; note that the Pastoral epistles are not counted under Paul!); ‘Apocalypticism: New Testament’ (p.61); ‘Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha’ (p.73); ‘Apostle: New Testament’ (p.79). The decision to present a limited range of longer articles obviously means that the Dictionary is not the place where someone will turn to look up such subjects as ‘Anathema’, ‘Antichrist’, ‘Apollos’, ‘Aramaic’, or ‘Arimathea’. Though there is a Scripture index, there is no name or subject index and so, though it may cover these topics, the compilation was clearly not intended for the kind of reference that a previous generation of Bible dictionaries tended to service. Moreover, since the 132 articles often include topics that spread over two or three articles (e.g. Baptism, parts I, II and III), the real number of topics covered in this dictionary is actually only 87. The 19 topics treated in three articles, one each for the gospels, Paul and the rest of the New Testament, are: Baptism, Christ, Church, Death of Christ, Eschatology, Ethics, God, Holy Spirit, Judgement, Kingdom of God, Law, Lord, Resurrection, Riches and Poverty, Righteousness, Salvation, Son of God, Women, and Worship. The articles are all written by experts in the field and are both lucid and informative. Bibliographies at the end of each article will prove of great benefit to theological students and pastors, and the final glossary helpfully makes some of the technical language more widely accessible. I am happy, therefore, to commend this volume for purchase by anyone involved in serious theological study. However, before purchasing the volume, it is worth considering the following issues: A minor problem is that the bibliographies of articles originally printed in the 1992 and 1993 dictionaries have not always been adequately updated. As stated in the Preface, the volume is intended for students (one presumes, theological students). Consequently it covers thoroughly a limited range of topics chosen because they tend to be at the centre of academic theological debate, not necessarily because they are of concern or interest to the church (though some definitely are). Those unfamiliar with the machinations of the theological guild will be puzzled by the fact that one article is about the ‘Birth of Jesus’ and another about the ‘Death of Christ’ and may wonder why ‘Christ’ is a separate topic from ‘Christology’. The articles are not written so as always to tackle the issues that a thinking reader of the Bible will generally wish to investigate and, in places, the Dictionary is more a dictionary of New Testament scholarship than a dictionary of the New Testament itself. Evangelical indentity?Most seriously, this dictionary should give us evangelicals grounds for reflection about evangelical identity. By bringing together in one volume contributions on the New Testament by such a wide range of individuals supposed to represent evangelicalism, it gives us an uncomfortably clear idea of where ‘evangelical’ scholarship is currently positioned. It is worth noting that while many contributions are impeccably orthodox, the stances adopted in a considerable number of others differ significantly from those that evangelicals have historically held. The article on John’s Gospel steers the reader definitively away from the view that John was the author and the article on 2 Peter denies that it was by Peter, while the article on Romans, by J.D.G. Dunn, promotes the so-called ‘New Perspective’ without serious consideration of the historic evangelical position. Dale C. Allison argues that Jesus did not speak about his second coming and maintains that ‘Jesus’s expectations [about the end] were probably more contingent and indeterminate than many have supposed’ (p.329). In contemplating Barry L. Blackburn’s view that, ‘It is true that difficult questions face the defender of the substantial historicity of the empty tomb story’ (p.810), I have to confess that I had previously been unaware that it was the defenders of the empty tomb who had the problem on their hands. One wonders what publishers who avow their commitment to historic Christian orthodoxy hope to achieve by helping to disseminate these views. These volumes were produced by InterVarsity Press (USA), but receive a joint imprint with InterVarsity Press (UK). Perhaps it is time for the British partner to seek to have a stronger influence in its transatlantic ‘special relationship’. P.J. Williams, © Evangelicals Now - April 2005 |