The New Testament: Introducing the Way of Discipleship

by Wes Howard-Brook and Sharon H. Ringe

Book Overview

Accentuating the link between discipleship in the time of Jesus and today. This volume combines critical scholarship with a passionate concern for the meaning of faith in a world of violence and... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1570754187
• ISBN13: 9781570754180
• Release Date: April 2002
• Publisher: Orbis Books
• Length: 214 Pages
• Weight: 0.72 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.0" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

Truly inspirational. Not quite perfect, but great.

First, in the hope that knowing something about me will make the review more helpful... I am a Unitarian Universalist Christian. My approach to Christianity is more that I feel called by Jesus to be a disciple, rather than an adherence to a particular belief system. My beliefs about the nature of God are complex and often-changing and are not the point of my approach to Christianity. I read the Bible daily and conduct Bible study classes and look to it for the lion's share of my spiritual inspiration. I wasn't sure whether to give this book 4 or 5 stars. But I think the book as a whole is so good that four seemed to undersell it Perhaps a 4-3/4 star rating would be about right. My only complaint about the book is the chapter on the Gospel of Luke. It starts off with a lot of great and useful information about the author, style and audience, but then around 8 paragraphs into it takes a bizarre turn into what seems like a harsh critique of Luke and never quite returns. Which is a shame, because this chapter's author, Sharon H. Ringe, has a great command of the material and a good writing style. Embedded in the critique is a powerful message of her ambivalence as to what it means to be a faithful disciple when one belongs to the more priveleged classes of our society. However, that message gets kind of muddied by the critique surrounding it. I will read this part again to see if I missed something, but this was the only disappointing chapter in the book. The rest of the book, however is truly incredible. It's highly informative, yet not too academic, but rather an easy read and truly revelatory and inspirational. It cuts through centuries of institutional interpretation that has subverted the initial intent of the authors in a way that's plausible. And it does so without debasing faith, but rather enhanced my sense of reverence along with my resolve. Chapters that I found especially wonderful were the ones on Mark, John and Revelation. These enlightened interpretations gave me a new appreciation of the genius of their authors and how discipleship is really at the heart of what it means to be a Christian. These chapters explained the sophisticated use of metaphors that, once understood, makes the whole work of each of these Biblical books make sense and have amazing relevance to our world and what we are called to do. This isn't meant to undersell the chapters on Matthew, Paul's letters and the "Deutero-Pauline/Pastoral Epistles" and the Catholic Epistles. These were also very well-written and inspirational. Also the context of the world in which these works were written was informative and helpful. Once understanding how different that world is from our own, I was able to clearly draw revelatory parallels between that world and our own to drill down to the universal truths that the works address.