In the preface to his commentary on Romans, the twelfth-century Benedictine monk William of Saint-Thierry acknowledged his great debt to Augustine, Ambrose, Origen, and others who went before him. He then refers to Horace’s fable to describe his own meager contribution to studying Scripture in light of all the greater thinkers who influenced him: “We have festively clothed our little bird in plumes and colors of other birds, so that if these should come and each one carry off what he recognizes as his own, our little crow would be naked or even nonexistent.”
So too with this New Testament survey in front of you. This book is the result of us laboring for six years to write a hopefully helpful introduction to the New Testament as Christian Scripture. But it is really the result of two thousand years of thinkers and teachers who have gone before us and whose ideas, articulations, insights can be found on every page. If they were to come and take back what was originally theirs, we would have little left! To change the metaphor, we are able to offer our thoughts on the New Testament because we are happily standing on the shoulders of giants—countless scholars and writers who have gone before us in the great and joyful task of understanding Holy Scripture.
Beyond the unnamable many, we are also glad to acknowledge several named and known friends who have helped bring this six-year project to its completion. First, thanks to Jim Kinney and James Ernest, who approached us and asked if we’d be willing to work together to write Baker’s next-generation textbook—to which the answer was an eager yes! This was followed by recurrent gatherings of a group of delightful and bright people from the Baker editorial team (including Bryan Dyer and Dave Nelson) as well as our Old Testament counterparts, Mark Gignilliat and Heath Thomas. Over several years we wrestled and wrangled our way to conceiving a genre-bending project that would seek to introduce students to a reading of the Old and New Testaments as Scripture, not just as historical and literary documents.
After the many years of writing, others came alongside and served the (nearly) thankless tasks of reading, editing, indexing, and glossary production. In addition to the always-exceptional Baker editorial and production teams, this included Anna Poole Mondal, Ben Hussung, and Billy Wilhelm. We also offer thanks to professorial friends near and far who read portions of the manuscript and gave us valuable feedback, including David Croteau, Jeff Dryden, J. Scott Duvall, Douglas Huffman, Jeffrey Lamp, Darian Lockett, Greg MaGee, and Amy Peeler.
Visit www.bakeracademic.com/professors to access study aids and instructor materials for this textbook.