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Ben Witherington
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The New Testament Story Paperback – April 26, 2004

by Ben Witherington III (Author)
4.5 4.5 out of 5 stars 14 ratings
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  1. Print length
    293 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co.
  4. Publication date
    April 26, 2004
  5. Dimensions
    6 x 0.74 x 9 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    0802827659
  7. ISBN-13
    978-0802827654
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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Witherington (The Brother of Jesus), a professor at Asbury Theological Seminary, teams up with Asbury student Hyatt to introduce the New Testament to laypeople without sucking the life out of it, covering origin, plot and main characters. The first section is a thorough, lively discourse on the cultural background of the writing and compiling of the Testament. The second section delivers insights on entire books and individual passages, from the grand themes of Paul to the similarities among various episodes in the life of Peter. Readers used to taking scripture a few verses at a time may find that such observations inspire new appreciation for the New Testament as a whole. But lay readers might trip on the stumbling block of the book's scholarly bent; discussions of academic issues—such as the literary relationship among Matthew, Mark and Luke, or John's indebtedness to Wisdom literature—risk losing all but the most dedicated. Conservative evangelical readers should also know that the book casts doubt on Peter's authorship of 1 Peter and Paul's writing of 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy and Titus. Nevertheless, the depth and big-picture perspective of Witherington's work will succeed in bringing serious Bible students a fresh appreciation for the New Testament story.
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Review

Publishers Weekly
"The depth and big-picture perspective of Witherington's work will succeed in bringing serious Bible students a fresh appreciation for the New Testament story."

Darrell L. Bock
"The New Testament is a collection of a wide variety of stories. Ben Witherington is a sure guide through this library of stories and how they were collected. His book is a fresh take on introducing the New Testament. It comes highly recommended for its treatment of the wealth of testimony to the story."

Craig S. Keener
"Synthesizing much of his earlier work in a very readable way, Ben Witherington traces the development of New Testament stories into our New Testament books and canon. Along the way he rightly challenges time-worn schemes of an evolution from lower to higher Christology and also retells stories of New Testament individuals without losing the distinctives of the various New Testament sources where we find them."

James C. Howell
"What a valuable book for the beginner eager to probe the New Testament more deeply! Ben Witherington has packaged his enormous learning in clear, understandable, accessible ways. With its excellent illustrations and charts, The New Testament Story will be an open window into the world of stories found in the Bible."

About the author

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Ben Witherington

Ben Witherington

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Bible scholar Ben Witherington is Amos Professor of New Testament for Doctoral Studies at Asbury Theological Seminary and on the doctoral faculty at St. Andrews University in Scotland. A graduate of UNC, Chapel Hill, he went on to receive the M.Div. degree from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and a Ph.D. from the University of Durham in England. He is now considered one of the top evangelical scholars in the world, and is an elected member of the prestigious SNTS, a society dedicated to New Testament studies.

Witherington has also taught at Ashland Theological Seminary, Vanderbilt University, Duke Divinity School and Gordon-Conwell. A popular lecturer, Witherington has presented seminars for churches, colleges and biblical meetings not only in the United States but also in England, Estonia, Russia, Europe, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Australia. He has also led tours to Italy, Greece, Turkey, Israel, Jordan, and Egypt.

Witherington has written over thirty books, including The Jesus Quest and The Paul Quest, both of which were selected as top biblical studies works by Christianity Today. He also writes for many church and scholarly publications, and is a frequent contributor to the Beliefnet website.

Along with many interviews on radio networks across the country, Witherington has been seen on the History Channel, NBC, ABC, CBS, CNN, The Discovery Channel, A&E, and the PAX Network.

Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
4.5 out of 5
14 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars Theological
Reviewed in the United States on September 7, 2012
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Great book, for those pursuing theological studies, this book will enhance your education. I am undertaking Contemporary Ministry studies and find this to be an excellent help and source of information.
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5.0 out of 5 stars Great historical work that ties together all NT Scripture
Reviewed in the United States on February 13, 2005
The New Testament Story is an impressive survey. Starting from important historical considerations, such as the methods of writing during the gospel period, the author develops a consistent story of (1) how the New Testament (NT) canon developed, and (2) how the knowledge of Yeshua (or Jesus) grew in gospel times. I highly recommend this book because of the amazing way the author ties together ALL of the NT books, while keeping a consistent Jewish and historical perspective.

In some ways Prof. Witherington is an ideal candidate to write this text. He has written a many commentaries about important books in the NT; you will find a sampling of his work on these documents (Mark. Acts, Romans, and Revelation, just to name a few). In addition, Prof. Witherington has also done extensive "historical Yeshua" research.

The book is divided into two parts. The first part is a survey of the documents of the NT. The first chapter, which discusses writing in gospel times, is required reading. Prof. Witherington then discusses each NT scroll in chronological order. Generally he has early dates, and does provide reasons for all of them. Major themes for each scroll are given, as well as intended audience. The second part of the book builds a picture of major themes in NT stories. There is a large and useful chapter about how the NT writers and Yeshua used stories and concepts from the Tanach (or Old Testament). There is a large discussion about Peter and Paul. The book closes with major discussions about how both non-gospel (ie Paul, Acts) sources describe Yeshua and also how gospel sources describe Yeshua.

The strength of this book is the way Prof. Witherington ties everything together. Rather than just looking at how one author wrote about the Messiah, we can see how all of them did. You can really see how the message of the Messiah develops because the documents are discussed in chronological order. Prof. Witherington does a superlative job of linking all the documents together. Additionally, because he is a good historian, Prof. Witherington is well aware of the Jewish context of the Scriptures.

I was especially happy that the author chose to take a high view of Scripture. By this I mean that whenever a "problem" seems to manifest, he doesn't chicken out and say the Scripture erred. Rather, the author simply looks deeper, and resolves several problem passages. This is a good source of "Bible difficulties," although it is hardly encyclopedic.

You might not agree with all of his assertions. For example, I'm not so certain that Mark was really the first gospel. And people can argue all day about exact dates. But you will find that this is a solid conservative, historical, and biblically accurate description of the corpus of literature we call the NT. It is not a detailed NT introduction such as the excellent work by Cason, Moo, and Morris. But for a good handle on the historical background of the NT and how it ties into the entire canon, this is one of the best books around. I highly recommend this work for the beginner as well as the scholar.
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Alan D. Roselieb
5.0 out of 5 stars The New Testament Story (Ben Witherington III)
Reviewed in the United States on April 19, 2009
Excellent book for study along with Witherington's New Testament History! A necessary supplement for the serious Bible student!
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Kindle Customer
3.0 out of 5 stars Good, but not great.
Reviewed in the United States on April 9, 2007
Verified Purchase
I bought this book, looking for a textbook to teach a course "Survey of the New Testament" at a theological school in Nairobi, Kenya. Having read some other books by Witherington, I was expecting more. He spends some time discussing the story of how the New Testament came together, but doesn't really address the story told within the New Testament. Certainly, he briefly covers all of the New Testament books, but he doesn't tell us how these different writings tell the one story of Jesus and the meaning of his life, death and resurrection.

It seems that this small book came out of the research that he had done for the many commentaries and writings on Jesus and Paul that he has done. In other words, he didn't seem to do fresh research and thinking in putting this book together. He's simply assembled and simplified the findings that he'd done in his other work.

It's not a bad read, and one can learn from it. It's not particularly difficult. I don't think it is suitable as textbook for a New Testament Introduction course. But I'd recommend the writings on the New Testament from NT Wright over this book.
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Top reviews from other countries

Mr. R. W. Menzies
5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 25, 2016
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Peter Bender
2.0 out of 5 stars Not for the faint hearted
Reviewed in Australia on April 17, 2014
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Difficult to read due to jargon and the like and not real sure of the evidence to some of the assumptions.
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