Introduction to the New Testament

Most people tend to think of the New Testament as a Christian work. However, the New Testament was written by nine Jews and they wrote before the separation between Judaism and Christianity. The central focus of the New Testament is about the life and ministry of a Jew named Jesus of Nazareth and how His teachings should affect the lives of both Jews and Gentiles. The writers of the New Testament thought of themselves as Jews who had encountered the Jewish Messiah that was promised in the Scriptures. They did not consider themselves to be Christians. Therefore special emphasis is placed in this book on understanding the New Testament in its Jewish context. This requires an understanding of the Jewish expectations concerning the Messiah at the time that the New Testament was written, and the historical and political situation in the first century before and after the birth of Jesus. Each book of the new Testament is introduced with an emphasis on the identity of the author, a profile of the intended audience, an overview of the book, the earliest textual evidence for the text and an outline of the structure of the book. This book is actually the English text of a course taught at a theological institute in Bulgaria. No prior knowledge of the New Testament is necessary to understand the material presented, but at the same time (though footnotes and endnotes) even graduates of Bible schools will be able to have a better grasp of the purpose and principles that are taught in the New Testament. There is an extensive appendix that list all the early manuscripts of the New Testament, their approximate dates, and a list of their contents. A second appendix lists the early manuscript evidence for each chapter of the New Testament. Please note that about 1/4 of this book is appendices; also approximately 1/4 of the book is taken up with footnotes and endnotes. So although the book contains about 200,000 words the actual text is only about 100,000 words