Journal: Tyndale Bulletin
Volume: TYNBUL 52:2 (NA 2001)
Article: Harvesting Evidence For New Testament Studies
Author: Bruce W. Winter

---

TynBul 52:2 (2001) p. 319

Harvesting Evidence
For New Testament Studies

Bruce W. Winter

The extensive discussion by ancient historians of the world in which early Christianity took root is largely bypassed by NT scholars, although its corpus intersects with many important aspects of life and thought in the early period of the Roman empire. In the history of scholarship unprecedented access is now available through electronic means to the primary first century material and bibliographical information of secondary discussion of it. The yield in the areas of philology and NT studies has generally been disappointing. One of the major obstacles for New Testament scholars has been to find a way into these vast fields of evidence and to harvest the insights of other scholars. The cultures in Rome and the Roman East (of which Palestine was part) need to be understood in order to appreciate critiques of them by NT writers.

The goals of the Institute for Early Christianity in the Graeco-Roman World, Tyndale House, Cambridge, are not only to engage post-doctoral research fellows in innovative, long-term projects in NT studies, but also to expose those contemplating or beginning doctoral studies to the vast array of extant information from that world germane to their own discipline. The Institute ran an intense eight-week introductory course on the sources of the first century in the summer of 2001.

Ten days were spent in Corinth, Ephesus, and Aphrodisias learning how to ‘read’ the archaeological sites. There are inscriptions unique to Corinth which are bypassed by students of the NT when they visit the museum on the site which has been operated by the American School of Archaeology for over a century. Ephesus now boasts the largest number of houses under cover of any archaeological site in the East. They are in an excellent state of preservation thanks to Austrian archaeologists. That provides an ideal setting to reflect again on the social phenomenon of households as venues for early Christian meetings and the ideological reasons for adopting familial language to reinforce their perception of one another as ‘siblings’ in the family of

TynBul 52:2 (2001) p. 320

God. Aphrodisias is a significant site excavated largely by Turkish archaeologists. It supplements evidence of aspects of the setting of the churches discussed in the book of Revelation and other important background information relevant to the whole book. On-site lectures were followed by an examination of the evidence and aimed at deprogramming many misconceptions about the first century in the Roman East and allowing the material evidence to begin to reprogram perceptions of that world in order to begin to read the NT through a different lens.

There then followed...

visitor : : uid: ()