Changes in the history of New Testament Study
Continuing his excellent service, Rob Bradshaw has today posted F.F. Bruce’s article from 1977 summarising the history of NT study. So much of Bruce’s work is astonishingly judicious, and his carefully expressed but encyclopaedic knowledge so often stands the test of time better than a great deal of writing. This summary is no exception, brilliantly moving from the apostolic fathers to the early 1970s in a few pages.
Looking at it again, I found myself wondering what people would see as the key changes between when this article was written and the present day. How different would one person’s list be from another? These I think I my top five in descending order of importance.
- Much more emphasis on locating Jesus and early Christianity within Second Temple Judaism
- The New Perspective on Paul
- The rise of social-scientific methods in studying the NT
- A much greater emphasis on and confidence in Jesus Research (now calming down?)
- A growing divergence over the value of the Two Source hypothesis