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"Important both historically and theologically. Readers will not be able to see the New Testament in the same way again."—Marcus Borg, author of The Heart of Christianity
“A New New Testament does what some of us never dreamed possible: it opens the treasure chest of early Christian writings, restoring a carefully select few of them to their rightful place in the broad conversation about who Jesus was, what he did and taught, and what all of that has to do with us now.” — Barbara Brown Taylor, author of Leaving Church and An Altar in the World
There are twenty-seven books in the traditional New Testament, but the earliest Christian communities were far more vibrant than that small number might lead you to think. In fact, many more scriptures were written and were just as important as the New Testament in shaping early-Christian communities and beliefs. Over the past century, many of those texts that were lost have been found and translated, yet are still not known to much of the public; they are discussed mainly by scholars or within a context of the now outdated notion of gnostic gospels. In A New New Testament Hal Taussig is changing that. With the help of nineteen important spiritual leaders, he has added ten of the recently discovered texts to the traditional New Testament, leading many churches and spiritual seekers to use this new New Testament for their spiritual and intellectual growth.
“Remarkable . . . Not meant to replace the traditional New Testament, this fascinating work will be, Taussig hopes, the first of several new New Testaments.” — Booklist
- Sales Rank: #389816 in Books
- Published on: 2015-09-01
- Released on: 2015-09-01
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.00" h x 1.60" w x 5.31" l, .0 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 640 pages
Amazon.com Review
Amazon Exclusive: A Conversation with Hal Taussig
Q. Aren’t the texts of the Bible set in stone?
A. Although the western branch of Christianity has implied that the Bible is eternally stable, this has really never been the case. Both now and for the past 400 years Catholics and Protestants don't agree on what is in the Bible, and neither do Episcopalians and Lutherans. Internationally the eastern Orthodox, Ethiopian, and Syriac Bibles all contain different books than the western Catholic and Protestant Bibles. From this perspective A New New Testament is simply yet another variation on what is in the Bible and what is not. From another perspective, it is the first edition of a Bible ever to include the gospels, letters, and prayers that have been recovered from in recent times.
Q. What will Christians learn from A New New Testament?
A. They’ll learn that their early roots are deeper, more diverse, and more widespread than the general story of how Christianity began is told. Perhaps most importantly for Christians, they will be able to claim a set of new resources for their 21st century life. A New New Testament opens the door to a wider set of expressions, practices, stories, and teachings than they have previously known.
Q. What will non-Christians learn from A New New Testament?
A. Non-Christians will learn that some of the narrow-minded doctrines of orthodox Christianity and the old-fashioned ideas of the traditional New Testament are not the only way that the early Christ movements expressed themselves.
Q. 19 religious leaders gathered to debate which non-canonical texts would be included in A New New Testament. What credentials do they have to make such a decision?
A. Eight of them have held national and international leadership positions in the Roman Catholic, Episcopalian, United Methodist, Evangelical Lutheran, Presbyterian Church USA, United Church of Christ, and Reconstructionist Rabbinical movements. Others are best-selling authors. Others are nationally known scholars. Sixteen are Christian, three are non-Christian. Four have had the highest rank possible within their own national or international Christian denomination.
Q. Won’t changing the Bible offend people who have a deep connection with it in its current state?
A. The Bible has always been a contested book. Christians argue about it regularly, even within the same denomination. Indeed, it is a fairly regular occurrence that one Christian will be offended by another's understanding of what the Bible does and does not say. Martin Luther himself tried to remove some books from the New Testament, and successfully did so from what he called the Old Testament. Debating about what the Bible does or does not say is a primary way that Christians claim who they are.
Q. The Gospel of Mary, the Acts of Paul and Thecla, and The Thunder: Perfect Mind, which are parts of A New New Testament but weren't in the traditional New Testament, each have strong female characters. Why weren't they included before?
A. The traditional New Testament includes both strong attacks on women's rights ("women must not speak in the assembly") and strong affirmations of women's mutuality ("there is neither male nor female in Christ"). So it is difficult to make a case that the traditional New Testament portrays a consistent bias against women. Since, however, there are a number of texts in the traditional New Testament which do reject leadership for women, it is certain that certain parts of the traditional New Testament and early Christianity may not have liked the affirmations in these three new books.
From Booklist
*Starred Review* This remarkable book arises from editor Taussig’s 30 years of pastoral and seminary teaching, during which he discovered that many people found their faith deepened and refreshed by studying the extracanonical Christian writings found in 1945 at Nag Hammadi, Egypt, together with the books of the New Testament. He and a council of 18 others—pastors, scholars, and teachers, representing (unofficially) Catholicism, Protestantism, Judaism, and Native American and Asian religions—selected nine of those lost writings, along with the never-lost, once highly esteemed Acts of Paul and Thecla, to add to the standing New Testament canon. Most appear with the kinds of writings in the canon they resemble and complement—gospel with gospel, epistle with epistle—while two freestanding prayers and the contents of a large collection of prayers, the Odes of Solomon, serve as devotional introductions to the collection’s six sections. Each writing, old or new, is separately introduced, and a concluding 70-page companion sketches the history of all the writings, explains how the selection council worked, clears up some misunderstandings (especially about Gnosticism), and suggests, citing examples, how to study old and new writings comparatively. The writings themselves are newly translated into common English and divided into chapters and verses in the manner of traditional bibles. Not meant to replace the traditional New Testament, this fascinating work will be, Taussig hopes, the first of several new New Testaments. --Ray Olson
Review
"This brilliant contextualization of the familiar New Testament in the context of other early Christian writings illuminates both. It is important both historically and theologically. Readers will not be able to see the New Testament in the same way again."
—Marcus Borg, author of The Heart of Christianity "A New New Testament does what some of us never dreamed possible: it opens the treasure chest of early Christian writings, restoring a carefully select few of them to their rightful place in the broad conversation about who Jesus was, what he did and taught, and what all of that has to do with us now. This new constellation of early Christian scriptures adds brilliant facets to the diamond of divine revelation, waking up those of us who thought we knew it all. While this book will be a welcome addition to the academic courses in New Testament, Christian origins, and theology, I expect it will have its greatest impact in churches, as people of faith become better acquainted with some of their first forebears in faith." —Barbara Brown Taylor, author of Leaving Church and An Altar in the World "A New New Testament offers its readers an expansive opening onto the world of the early Christians. For the first time, modern readers can explore a range of voices and theological perspectives that have not been heard for centuries, set side-by-side with well-known biblical books. Old texts become freshly vibrant, and new texts open ancient avenues for renewed reflection and spiritual practice. A New New Testament will be a vital resource for the 21st century." —Karen L. King, Hollis Professor of Divinity, Harvard Divinity School "Remarkable...Not meant to replace the traditional New Testament, this fascinating work will be, Taussig hopes, the first of several new New Testaments." —Booklist, starred "A culminating work of the Jesus Seminar era and of others influenced by it, this collection of manuscripts serves to complete and update the standard Christian New Testament." -- Kirkus
Most helpful customer reviews
87 of 95 people found the following review helpful.
A bold attempt
By J. W. Kennedy
It's the New Testament, with ten "new" books from 1st & 2nd century sources added. The preface explains a bit of the reasoning behind doing this, and extra material in the back describes the process in a bit more detail, but the short story is: A council of 19 people selected these ten books from a larger list of about 60 early Christian writings which, for various reasons, never made it into the official New Testament "canon."
The books are grouped together thematically into sections, so the sequence is not quite the same as in the traditional New Testament, but within each section they follow the old Canonical sequence (except Hebrews and James are flipped out of order; I don't know why) Each book is prefaced with a brief essay talking about the book's historical context, its discovery, probable authorship, and prominent themes. Information about the provenance of these documents and the formation of the Canon is invaluable in encouraging readers to question why the New Testament contains what it does, and why the Canon should (or should not) be considered closed, authoritative, or absolute.
I think this book is worthy of every spiritual seeker's attention, but my criticial forte is .. well .. criticizing. So let me tell you about the things I found wrong.
First of all, the translation really goes out of its way to be PC and "gender inclusive" to the effect of ruining the beauty of phrases like "Son of Man" (which rolls off the tongue) by replacing it with the inelegant "Child of Humanity." This is especially senseless in passages where the substituted word "Child" or "person" or "human" clearly refers to Jesus, who was male - or did I miss something? The generic masculine pronoun is _already_ supposed to be all-inclusive. By refusing to understand this, we empower the language to be MORE divisive than it already was. Insisting that "man" can ONLY refer to males puts translators and editors in a position where they can't be neutral without writing REALLY CLUMSY sentences (John 19:5, Pilate's famous quip, rendered by Jerome as the unforgettable "Ecce Homo" is here given to us as "Here is the human one." I kid you not; I'm typing this through my tears...) So if translators don't want to sound idiotic they must wimp out to the compromise position of alternating gender pronouns, which lets them decide which half of the reading population they will alienate from one paragraph to the next. There's a double burn here because in the Companion & Study Guide at the end Taussig blithely states - regarding some of the New Testament's unsavory endorsements of slavery and bloody revenge - that his translation team has "refused to alter -or improve- them beyond what the ancient texts themselves reveal." Scrupulously faithful to the originals EXCEPT when it comes to that evil, wicked old patriarchal bias lurking in the pronouns! I could go on and on about this; it's a pet peeve.
The translation for most of the traditional New Testament in this volume comes from the "Open Bible" which I understand is an open-source online translation project, sort of like a "WikiBible," with all the accuracy and reliability that implies. I have at least six other Bible translations on hand, and none of them render the Centurion's comment in Mark 15:39 as a sarcastic question. HMMMM...
Another thing about this project that puzzles me is: If you're going to go to the trouble to ADD books to the New Testament and regroup them according to your own editorial judgment, why not go ahead and re-arrange the sequence as well? I would have liked to see the Gospels presented in the chronological order in which they were written. Scholars all agree that Mark is the oldest, so why is it 2nd (in this case 3rd because we open with the newly discovered Gospel of Thomas)? The order I'd like to see is Thomas, Mark, Matthew, (John), Luke-Acts. John is in a different section, grouped with similarly-themed mystical writings, but I'd put him after Matthew.
I really, really REALLY appreciate the grouping of the authentic letters of Paul and the "contested" letters in separate sections - but again, I wish they had been arranged in chronological order instead of the Canon order of longest-to-shortest, which is arbitrary and inhibitory to context & meaning.
I object to the inclusion of "Thunder: Perfect Mind" because - as cool as it is - Hal Taussig himself admits in the intro that it is not identifiably Christian, and could have been written at any time from THE FIRST CENTURY BC(!!!) to his pre-set cutoff date of 175 CE (or AD for you traditionalists). He argues for its inclusion because the narrator's divine/profane, exalted/humiliated, suffering-savior motif seems to him to be an exclusively Christian property. Unfortunately those themes were developed by a myriad of Mystery religions in the centuries before Christianity, and then appropriated by gentile (aka pagan) converts as the story of Jesus spread throughout the Roman empire. All I should have to say here is: Osiris, Attis, Dionysus, Mithra, and you get my point. The only thing different about "Thunder" is that the main character is female (ooh, how revolutionary!) but that still doesn't mean it belongs in a collection of "Christian" writings, no matter how noble (but especially how ulterior) the council's motives for including it. Throw it out, please.
"The Secret Revelation of John" closes out the collection, and I question its inclusion as well, but it provides me an excellent opportunity to berate Hal Taussig for his proposal that the term "Gnostic" be retired from public discourse. While I agree with him in asserting that there were no ancient Christian groups who identified themselves as Gnostic, I still think the term is a useful label to apply to a particular set of beliefs which involve pantheons of allegorically personified emanations from the Divine, and the central operating proposition that the god who made the world is not the true God, physical matter is inherently evil, and it is the disciple's job to help correct the "mistake" of creation. The Secret Revelation is a full-on Gnostic cosmogony in all its incomprehensible glory, with all the classic elements in play. Wisdom-Sophia does something irrational and inexplicable! Yaldabaoth the demiurge, in cahoots with his Archons, creates Adam in the image of the true Divinity which he sees reflected in the water, but is unable to give him life! Man emerges, a higher being than the godling who created him! The Old Testament God is a petty tyrant with delusions of grandeur, who created the physical universe as an act of arrogant Error! Jesus, far from being this deity's Son, is his ENEMY, sent by the higher divinity to free us from the demiurge and this sinful physical body in which he has trapped us! This nonsense is so far removed from the recorded though of Paul, or John the mystagogue, or what we can reconstruct of the historical Jesus, its only value is to demonstrate how far out in left field some of these ancient writings were, such that they could be unequivocally declared "heretical" and unanimously rejected from the canon.
Nevertheless, this stuff is interesting enough you really should see it for yourself. Dr. Taussig states it is one of his intentions to start conversations by exposing the general Bible-reading public to this material which has heretofore been the sole domain of academics and professional researchers. Juxtaposing the "new" texts with the familiar New Testament texts brings new meaning to both. Assessing your own feelings about the material, as I have done, is part of the process. Get the book. Read it. Think about it. Talk about it. In a spiritual sense, it could be one of the most important things you do this year.
125 of 141 people found the following review helpful.
useful, but limited
By John P. Plummer
First, the good: It's an excellent idea to present canonical and noncanonical early Christian texts together. Clearly, this is how early communities would have encountered these texts before the canon began to solidify, and it is very instructive to see them alongside one another.
But then there's the not-so-good: The editor is a member of the Jesus Seminar, and readers will not be surprised to find the Seminar's perspective presented throughout the notes, introductions, and other material. The editor is also very presumptuous - to put it mildly - in repeated assertions that this new collection of texts may prove useful to Christian communities as scripture. The references to the "council of New Orleans" (a gathering of the editor's friends and colleagues who selected the texts) are also tiresome in their exaggerated importance. Further, there are omissions (e.g. the Gospel of Phillip and the Dialogue of the Savior) which seem very odd, given the other texts which have been chosen. Lastly, I understand that the translators were striving to render sometimes challenging texts into modern English, but they missed any sense of poetry, and allowed modern concerns over gendered language to lead them to some incredibly clunky readings (e.g. realm of the sky for kingdom of heaven, and Child of Humanity for Son of Man).
Take this book for what it's worth, and know there are better and more beautiful translations of most of these texts. Perhaps someone will produce a better-translated, larger, and more even-handed collection of early Christian texts (canonical and non-canonical) for the general reader. It is certainly a worthy project, and it is disappointing to see far short this volume falls.
20 of 22 people found the following review helpful.
Fascinating reading
By Amazon Customer
First: This book is NOT for everyone. I've read the Bible close to a dozen times, I've studied various commentaries and read philosophers, I've read the Gnostic Gospels, I've read Elaine Pagels' books...and this "New New Testament" is one more voice in a long line of very good and diverse research on early Christianity. The difference this time, however, is the editors' attempts to marry the old with the old-and-newly-discovered in a way that feels familiar to those who already engage in more traditional Bible study.
This is the New Testament, and in that, this book offers very little new. All the New Testament books are here, and the commentaries about them are very good. Alongside those, however, are the 10 "new" books, many of which come from the 1945 Nag Hammadi find in Egypt - a treasure trove of early Christian writing. The placement of the books next to each other is both an interesting aspect to this book...and also redundant. Any Christian who has read (or who actively reads) the New Testament may find the placement interesting, but it made me simply want to skip around more. "Yeah, read that a zillion times...seen that before...Oh! Now that looks interesting...."
On the other hand, though, the Study Bible-type introductions to the NT books is wonderful reading, containing good summaries of scholarly research in an everyday writing style that makes those introductions at once familiar but also enlightening. Again, though, not everyone will appreciate them, especially when the authors deviate from Christian traditions, such as the dates at which certain books were written, the "authors" of certain books, or the consistent use of CE instead of AD.
I'm not sure for whom this book was written, but I enjoyed it immensely. A bit too embracing of Christianity for the devout scholar, yet far too heretical for the devout Christian (especially those Christians who take a more God-written view of the Bible and New Testament), I'm afraid this excellent book will find far fewer readers than it deserves.
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