A dozen years later, Paul and others were travelling through the cities of the Eastern Mediterranean, teaching what increasingly became a religion about Jesus (rather than the stuff Jesus taught) and doing it in Greek. Around 30 AD, Jesus of Nazareth wandered through the Jewish villages of Galilee, accompanied by a few peasant-disciples and teaching a reformed version of Judaism in Aramaic to those village folk who would listen. Here’s the first puzzling thing about the New Testament. (Aside: the image for this post is a view of the modern Greek city of Thessaloniki.) It’s All Greek to Me That’s 15 or 20 years after Jesus preached in Galilee. So Borg’s book is a great place to start, and the first “book” is 1 Thessalonians, written about 50 AD. Yes, the order the books were written really matters if you are trying to understand who wrote it and who it was written to and how that helps a reader interpret the content of the book.
I’m going to use Marcus Borg’s Evolution of the Word: The New Testament in the Order the Books Were Written (HarperOne, 2012) as sort of a guide for the order of discussion. I expect readers, of course, to chime in with their own thoughts, maybe expanding on my points or possibly presenting a different or contrary view. It takes a long time to really grasp how different the Mormon Bible is (and by “the Mormon Bible” I mean the Mormon view of the Bible, how Mormons read the Bible, how LDS leaders want LDS to read the Bible, how the Bible is covered in the LDS curriculum and in LDS Seminary, etc.). LDS read the same Bible as other Christians, but take a rather different view of it. I’ll highlight my own scholarly sources as I go along, but of course some of the discussion will cover the LDS view or treatment of the particular book or topic.
I’m going to try something different for awhile: do a series of posts on the New Testament, but not with any particular reference to the order or content in the LDS Come Follow Me New Testament manual for LDS adult Sunday School, this year’s course of study.
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