New Testament Introduction Archives

How Then Shall We Read?

How Then Shall We Read, Max Botner. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. (ISBN: 9780802883841) 2026.

Summary: An introductory textbook combining New Testament introduction and biblical hermeneutics.

In How Then Shall We Read?, Max Botner has written a book that may be used as a college text or for adult education. He combines two separate fields, New Testament introduction and biblical hermeneutics in a single book that may be used over a semester. This is less a traditional introduction to the New Testament, than an approach that uses hermeneutical basics with application to the New Testament, getting at many of the issues that arise in a more traditional introduction.

After an introduction where he lays out this approach, he proceeds with seven chapters concerning what “matters” in New Testament interpretation.

Interpretation Matters. He argues off the bat that biblicism, as Christian Smith has outlined it, perverts sola Scriptura. Rather, the issue is to develop interpretive virtues reflecting our embodiment. We look behind, within, and in front of the text. Then we also seek to cultivate the interpretive virtues of clarity, critical reflection, and charity. We do this self-aware of our interpretive location. Then we engage the text as wholly other. We follow this by opening the text to listen to the rich conversation across the canon and across the church. Finally, we embody the text as it intersects with our world. The following chapters proceed from this process.

Theology Matters. Consideration is given to the text of scripture as we have it and the canon(s). What does this mean for reading this text as Holy Scripture and how does our theology of inspiration and authority inform that reading? While we read by faith, shaped by these beliefs, Botner argues that “we let the Bible be the Bible.” We should not ask it to behave in ways it never promises to.”

History Matters. This addresses historical criticism, particularly understanding the world behind Jesus, Paul, and the gospels. This includes the ideas, identities, and institutions that shaped the early Jesus movement. Botner includes discussions of the synoptic problem, the undisputed and disputed Pauline letters, and the Jewish and Roman worlds behind the text.

Literature Matters. The chapter focuses on genre analysis and the basic genres of different books and the genres to be found within books. Many interpretive differences arise in disagreements about the genre of the text.

Language Matters. Botner begins by exploring how words mean and avoiding linguistic fallacies. Rather, words are part of discourses and Botner shows the student how to do a discourse analysis of the text.

Canonical Conversations Matter. Here the student will explore how the different voices within scripture are part of one conversation, illuminating each other. Botner considers how New Testament writers interpreted scripture. He elaborates five guiding principles for reading canonically.

Catholic Conversations Matter. Finally, he suggests we ought to read with the whole church in three ways: with the dead, with the majority world (outside the West), and with minority scholars within our own culture.

Each chapter also begins with quotes drawn from a variety of figures throughout history, illustrating how we read with the whole church. The chapters conclude with both a prayer from scripture and from a person in church history. Discussion questions on chapter content follow. Finally, each chapter includes an exercise, ranging from a self-awareness essay at the beginning, through use of historical, genre, discourse, and canonical analysis, and several concluding essays.

I found the way Botner models clarity, critical reflection, and charity to be the most winsome aspect of the book. Apart from the initial discussion of biblicism, which I felt important in “ground-clearing,” the book was free from polemical discussion. As exemplified in the prayers, the focus of the book was indeed on discovering divine love through the study of the scriptures. The exercises give readers room to develop their own interpretive skills and voice while growing more aware of their own social location. While the focus is the New Testament, much of what readers learn about interpretation is applicable to the Old Testament. Finally, I so appreciate his concluding chapter on reading the Bible with the whole church, a dimension I’ve only discovered later in life.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary copy of this book from the publisher for review.

From Pentecost to Patmos, Second Edition, Craig L. Blomberg and Darlene M. Seal with Alicia S. Dupree. Nashville: B & H Academic, 2021.

Summary: A New Testament Introduction covering Acts through Revelation, with introductory material and commentary, review questions and bibliography for each book, useful as a textbook or reference.

Some of the introductory New Testament texts for college or seminary that I have read are dense and turgid reads. Not this new edition in which Craig L. Blomberg and Darlene M. Seal combine up to date scholarship with a highly readable text. The text for each book of scripture includes some of the standard introduction sections including discussions of authorship, date, audience, purpose, genre, and structure. Where relevant, as in Acts, material on textual criticism, sources, and chronology vis a vis Paul are included. A commentary summarizing the text and dealing with textual and interpretive questions follows organized on the basis of the structure provided. Review questions are included for students as well as concluding applications. A select bibliography offers recommendations of advanced, intermediate, and introductory commentaries, as well as other relevant scholarly works on the book in question.

A fifty-eight page introductory article to the Pauline epistles is also included. The first portion covers the life of Paul including the question of the nature of the Damascus road encounter–conversion, call, or commission–or perhaps all three? Then the authors turn to epistolary writing, uses of rhetoric, genres, literary forms, their occasional nature, and the mechanics of letter writing. This part includes with questions about pseudonymity (they judge this lacking acceptance in the first century) and the collection and canonization of Paul’s epistles. They then turn to Paul’s theology, summarizing contemporary discussions of the New Perspective, the question of Paul and Jesus, Paul and the Old Testament and recent scholarship seeing apocalyptic and empire themes in Paul. I thought this an excellent, succinct discussion of Pauline scholarship with all the key figures appearing in the bibliography.

A few highlights of the authors’ discussion of various books may give a flavor of this introduction:

While noting the boundary marker treatment of “works of the law” they see a more general reference to Torah-obedience, and justification referring to imputed righteousness–though relational and transformative rather than “impersonal and transactional.”
They argue for the unity of 2 Corinthians (an A-B-A structure) with a lost letter between it and 1 Corinthians.
They foresee a large scale turning of Jews to Christ foretold in Romans 11 but that this does not require repatriation.
They favor the Pauline authorship of Ephesians, with Paul giving an amanuensis greater liberty in writing within directions on topics to address, and that the letter was likely intended to be a circular letter.
They survey the discussion of the authorship of the pastorals, often thought to be pseudonymous works. They go with the unanimity of the church fathers and attribute these to Paul, allowing for an amanuensis, perhaps Luke, to account for the stylistic differences.
On 1 Timothy 2:11-15, they offer a helpful chart of the interpretive decisions involved in this passage. They do not commit to a view, suggesting the need to hold views tentatively. They propose that even within more traditional interpretations, there are not constraints on women serving on pastoral teams or as part of church leadership. This seems like an attempt to find a via media between complementarian and egalitarian position with a complementarian flavor that will probably satisfy few.
I found the outline of James structuring it around three iterations of three key themes quite helpful: trials in the Christian life, wisdom, and riches and poverty. Similarly, seeing Hebrews structured around five warnings was a rubric that seems to arise from the text.
Perhaps the most difficult book to square with traditional claims of authorship is 2 Peter, which much of modern scholarship considers late, and pseudonymous, noting the dependence on Jude, and significant stylistic differences. They note the claim of the author to have witnessed the transfiguration, that the stylistic differences argue against pseudonymity, that Symeon Petros in 1:1 is elsewhere used only in Acts 15:14 and sounds like a signature.
The treatment of Revelation takes a premillenial, though not dispensational reading.

Overall, the approach is theologically conservative and evangelical, though nuanced and appreciative of other scholarship. Reflective of the publisher, it seems its target audience would be Baptists schools and seminaries and educated pastors and laity. Yet the engagement with other scholarship and views makes it representative of the best of this tradition. It is an introduction where a committed evangelical is able to read with, rather than against, the grain of one’s convictions as it were, while being introduced to the range of scholarship. And as observed earlier, one of the great strengths of this work is the readable, flowing text that one needn’t fight with to understand. It’s greatest challenge comes in the trenchant applications that question how one will live and act on truth outside the study and classroom.

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Disclosure of Material Connection: I received a complimentary review copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for an honest review. The opinions I have expressed are my own.