Tag new testament

Doing Business with the Gods in the Ancient World

Jennifer A. Quigley— People today don’t usually think of going to the bank, buying groceries, and signing a lease as religious acts, but in the ancient world, they very often were. While many people today tend to think of religion and the economy as distinct, in the ancient Greco-Roman world,

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What Can We Know about Early Christ Groups?

John Kloppenborg— A common misconception about early Christ groups is that we know quite a lot about them—their approximate size (50–100), their meeting places (private houses), and the ways they functioned financially. (I use “Christ groups” rather than “Christian groups” for a simple reason: The use of “Christian” of persons

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The Spirit of the Text

David Bentley Hart— When I came to the task of producing my own translation of the New Testament, I knew that there are certain words and phrases in the text that present special difficulties, and that no solution I chose would please everybody. In some cases, the difficulty lies in

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The Particularity of the New Testament

Marion L. Soards— In the course of a conversation about religion, it would not be surprising to hear someone refer to the New Testament, meaning by that phrase to name the portion of the Christian Bible that is regarded as sacred Scripture by many people and that was written originally

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How Well Did Jesus Know His Bible?

Michael Satlow— Imagine Jesus as a boy. Growing up with his brothers and sisters in a Jewish home in the sleepy town of Nazareth, in lower Galilee, he almost certainly would have been circumcised, followed Jewish dietary rules (kashrut), and observed the Jewish Sabbath and festivals. He would have grown

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