Loading...When I started the “New Testament in a Nutshell” series I promised to provide one-sentence, fifty-word summaries of each book of the New Testament, and promised, when I was done, to put them all together in one post. Here is the post! (It includes a few other 50-worders on the Gospels and Paul).
The idea behind this is that if someone asks you, “What is the letter to the Galatians about?” — you should be able to give a brief statement that covers what it is in a way that is distinctive (so what you say for Galatians is not the same thing you would say for Romans or Ephesians, etc.).
So here they are. You may well be able to improve upon them! But hopefully you will find them of some good use.
The Gospels as a Whole
Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are our oldest narrative accounts of Jesus, the Son of God who fulfilled Scripture in his life, death, and resurrection, who taught the way of salvation, performed miraculous deeds, was rejected by his own people, crucified by the Romans, and then raised from the dead.
The Gospel of Matthew
Matthew portrays Jesus as the miracle-working messiah who fulfilled the predictions of Scripture, taught the correct understanding of the Law of Moses, insisted his followers keep it by living lives of love, came to be rejected by his own people, but died for others before being raised from the dead.
Unlock 4,000+ Articles Like This!
Get access to Dr. Ehrman's library of 4,000+ articles plus five new articles per week about the New Testament and early Christianity. It costs as little as $2.99/mth and every cent goes to charity!
Learn More!
An off-topic question: I heard you recently saying that Jesus preached forgiveness rather than atonement. But wasn‘t that exactly what the pharisees of his period were teaching: teshuvah? Wasn‘t it the point of Oral Torah that sacrifice should be replaced by repentance?
I started typing a response but then I realized I wasn’t sure what you are asking. It sounds like you’re objecting to my claim that Jesus preached forgiveness instead of atonement on the grounds that the Pharisees taught forgiveness. Why would that mean Jesus didn’t teach forgiveness instead of atonement?
The problem with knowing what Pharisees taught in the days of Jesus is that we don’t have a single writing about any of them about anything
Wish this were in pamphlet form to slip into my Bible.
Print it out! But I”m afraid it would be a largish sheet. Maybe double sided, nicely decorated?
a Markan Priority question,
Does Mark 1:1 αρχη say that it’s the origin?
It’s the “beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.” It’s not claiming to be the first Gospel, but it is explaining that it is about what happened at the beginning of the Xn faith.
It’s such a luxury and privilege to have such pithy summaries of the most important texts in the history of Western civilization served up on a plate.
This is why I love this blog. I really appreciate this stuff.
Thanks.
wow outstanding I’ve wanted something like this for a long time TY
I Ioved this summary but … sorry to see that the message from I Thess 5:18-21 is overlooked,i.e. the importance of reality-testing inspiration from the spirit .For me one of the most important statements Paul ever made.
It didn’t seem like a central enough point to put into a summary of 50 words! What other words would one drip out? disabledupes{bb2d914e7324a6e3e90e59ca8b12a447}disabledupes
Great list! Thank you, Bart.
Re John 2, what do you make of argument that “the address should be rendered Ἐκλέκτῃ τῇ κυρίᾳ and translated “to the lady Eclecte” so that the principal recipient of the letter is a named woman” as Lincoln Blumhall argues in “Lady Eclecte: The Lost Woman of the New Testament”?
I think it’s a stretch, but I haven’t studied the arguments closely.
I am new to academic New Testament studies and found this summary very useful – a Scaffold
Bart,
On your podcast, you have been talking about Paul’s understanding of salvation that he lays out in Romans. I have used your discussion as a reason to re-read the epistle. Yes indeed. Paul describes sin, not as a verb, but a noun; and a cosmic noun at that. This brings up a question: The scholarly consensus is that Paul wrote in the 50’s, Mark around 70, Matthew and Luke sometime later and John near the turn of the century. Yet Paul’s cosmic ideas seem more in line with the Gospel of John than the Synoptic Gospels. Are we sure we have the timing right? Are there scholars who place Paul’s letters later, closer in time to the Johannine author/community? Are there extra-biblical or Gnostic writings that shed light on this apparent connection between the ideas of the Pauline author and Johannine author?
The real difficulty is that theological views do not develop in a linear fashion, where every believer has one view, and then adopts another, and then another; instead, different believers have different views at the same time and at different times, so that a “more developed” view is not necessarily “later” than a “less developed” one, and someone may well hold an old and generally-seen-to-be “outdated” view while someone else may hold a more avant garde view well before its time. So dating the Gospels and Paul etc. may involved talking *account* of their views, but their views cannot be decisive for the dates.
Thanks!!!!!
Regarding your answer to my question about Jesus, the Pharisees and repentance instead of atonement: What I questioned was whether you mean that this was Jesus‘ innovation or whether he repeated that the Oral Tradition had taught before him, at least since the destruction of the First Temple? Thank you for answerinh
Even in the Hebrew Bible there are passages that discuss the importance of atonement and others that stress God’s forgiveness based on repentance.
All I see is the gospel intro and Matthew. Is the rest of it for a higher subscription tier?
Nope, should all be there. It may be a problem with your subscription. Click the link for Help and Jen will work it out for you.
amazing, going through the nt in 15min. & then we can deep dive the books or letters.
Of course I was most interested in the 1st 5 books.
Where in Matthew: history as king; Mark portrayed as man; Luke as son of man [what is that? a slave]; John as the Son of God.
but my whole issue with God is his inability to communicate: eve who GOD didn’t until afterwards. & all over the anthology. NT figuring out methods to walk aright!
THANKS for simplifying complexity
Great job Bart!