A New New Testament

Hal Taussig

Description

“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 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yet are still not known to much of the public; they are discussed mainly by scholars or within a context of the now outdated notion of gnostic gospels.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

Sujets

• Bible
• Doctrine
• Thomas
• Christ
• Excommunication
• Sacrilège
• Gospel
• Church
• Unknown
• Mary
• Peter
• John
• Bishop
• Mark
• Priest
• Chronicles
• Luke
• CREED
• Matthew
• Solomon
• Faith
• Forbidden
• Jesus Seminar
• Truth
• Apocrypha
• History of religions
• Prayer
• Spirituality
• Worship
• Blasphemy
• Belief
• Heretical
• Teacher
• Study
• Scholarly method
• Ban (law)
• Early Christianity
• New Testament apocrypha
• Maß
• PAST
• God
• SACRED
• Unorthodox
• Philosophy
• Heresy
• Religión
• Philosophie et théologie

Informations

• Publié par: Open Road Media
• Date de parution: 05 mars 2013
• Nombre de lectures: 5
• EAN13: 9780547792118
• Langue: English

Extrait

Contents
Title Page
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Foreword
Preface
Preface to the Translations
Introducing A New New Testament
How to Read A New New Testament
The Books of A New New Testament
AN ANCIENT PRAYER FROM THE EARLY CHRIST MOVEMENTS
The Prayer of Thanksgiving
GOSPELS FEATURING JESUS’S TEACHINGS
The Gospel of Thomas
The Gospel of Matthew
The Gospel of Mark
The Gospel of Luke
The Acts of the Apostles
GOSPELS, POEMS, AND SONGS BETWEEN HEAVEN AND EARTH
The First Book of the Odes of Solomon
The Thunder: Perfect Mind
The Gospel of John
The Gospel of Mary
The Gospel of Truth
THE WRITINGS OF PAUL AND AN INTRODUCTORY PRAYER
The Prayer of the Apostle Paul
The Letter to the Romans
The First Letter to the Corinthians
The Second Letter to the Corinthians
The Letter to the Galatians
The Letter to the Philippians
The First Letter to the Thessalonians
The Letter to Philemon
The Letter to Philemon
LITERATURE IN THE TRADITION OF PAUL, WITH A SET OF INTRODUCTORY PRAYERS
The Second Book of the Odes of Solomon
The Letter to the Ephesians
The Acts of Paul and Thecla
The Letter to the Colossians
The Second Letter to the Thessalonians
The First Letter to Timothy
The Second Letter to Timothy
The Letter to Titus
DIVERSE LETTERS, WITH A SET OF INTRODUCTORY PRAYERS
The Third Book of the Odes of Solomon
The Letter of James
The Letter to the Hebrews
The First Letter of Peter
The Letter of Peter to Philip
The Second Letter of Peter
The Letter of Jude
LITERATURE IN THE TRADITION OF JOHN, WITH AN INTRODUCTORY SET OF PRAYERS
The Fourth Book of the Odes of Solomon
The First Letter of John
The Second Letter of John
The Third Letter of John
The Revelation to John
The Secret Revelation of John
A Companion to A New New Testament
BASIC HISTORICAL BACKGROUND FOR THIS NEW BOOK OF BOOKS
A Preamble
1. The Discoveries of New Documents from Old Worlds
2. The Books of A New New Testament : An Overview
3. Two Surprising Stories: How the Traditional New Testament Came to Be; How A New New Testament Came to Be
4. What’s New in A New New Testament : Claiming a New Vision of the Early Christ Movements
5. Giving Birth to A New New Testament and Retiring the Idea of Gnosticism
6. A Rich Explosion of Meaning
Epilogue: What’s Next for A New New Testament ?
The Council for A New New Testament
Acknowledgments
Appendix I: Sixty-seven Major Writings of the Early Christ Movements
Appendix II: The Books of the Nag Hammadi Library
Appendix III: Study Guide
Appendix IV: Recommended Reading
Subject Index
Scripture Index
About the Author
Footnotes
First Mariner Books edition 2015

Copyright © 2013 by Hal Taussig

All rights reserved

For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.

www.hmhco.com

The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
A new New Testament : a reinvented Bible for the twenty-first century combining traditional and newly discovered texts / edited with commentary by Hal Taussig ; with a foreword by John Dominic Crossan.
pages cm
Includes index.
ISBN 978-0-547-79210-1 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-0-544-57010-8 (pbk.)
1. Bible. N.T.—Criticism, interpretation, etc. 2. Christian literature, Early—History and criticism. I. Taussig, Hal, editor of compilation.
BS2361.3.N467 2013
225.5'208—dc23 2012046359

Cover design by Hsu and Associates
Cover illustration © Dae Yoo

e ISBN 978-0-547-79211-8 v2.0815


Photograph of Papyrus P52 courtesy of John Rylands University Library of Manchester.
Translation of the traditional New Testament (except for the Letter to the Colossians) from the Open English Bible , with permitted revisions by Hal Taussig. Courtesy of Russell Allen, holder of copyright, and under Creative Commons Zero license, http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0.
Translation of the Acts of Paul and Thecla, the Gospel of Mary, the Gospel of Truth, the Letter of Paul to the Colossians, the Letter of Peter to Philip, the Prayer of the Apostle Paul, and the Prayer of Thanksgiving by Celene Lillie. Permission granted to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. All rights reserved.
Translation of the Odes of Solomon by Elizabeth Ridout Miraglia. Permission granted to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. All rights reserved.
Translation of the Gospel of Thomas by Justin Lasser. Permission granted to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. All rights reserved.
Translation of The Thunder: Perfect Mind by Hal Taussig, Jared Calaway, Maia Kotrosits, Celene Lillie, and Justin Lasser. Permission granted to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt by Hal Taussig.
Translation of the Secret Revelation of John by Karen King. Reprinted by permission of the publisher from The Secret Revelation of John by Karen L. King, pp. 28–81, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, Copyright © 2006 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.
Introduction to the Secret Revelation of John by Karen L. King. Permission granted to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. All rights reserved.
For
Robert Funk, who first thought about A New New Testament
Candice Olson, who seized the idea with passion
Russell Allen, who handed the New Testament to the public
Foreword
T HE TRADITIONAL NEW TESTAMENT was already established by the end of the fourth century. The pressing question, then, is why suggest A New New Testament —even with A , not The —after a millennium and a half have passed?
It is not—emphatically not—that all or most of what is inside that traditional New Testament is bad or deficient while most or all of what is outside it is perfect and preferable. But why, then, entitle this book A New New Testament rather than, say, Other Early Christian Texts ?
For myself, I see two reasons why this particular book and this precise title are necessary and needed. I put them to you as challenges, maybe even as principles, and in aphoristic format to facilitate memory and thought.

My first reason is a rather simple redundancy with regard to the traditional New Testament: to know what is outside it, you must know what is outside it . In other words, it is a matter of adult education because education affirms options while indoctrination denies them. Since that is probably obvious, I offer only one example.
You open your standard New Testament and find four versions—four “according to”s—of the gospel. Stay inside that volume and you could easily conclude that all existing versions had been gathered and presented. Go outside to A New New Testament and you realize immediately that many other versions—and indeed types, modes, and styles—of gospel were available—and avoided.
What you do with that knowledge, and how you judge between texts in or out, is a separate issue. But you should know that all gospel versions were not taken, that a selection was made, that some were accepted and others rejected. And that knowledge is, to repeat, an education, and education is about knowing options.

My second reason for A New New Testament is that, with regard to the traditional New Testament, to know what is inside it, you must know what is outside it . I offer you two examples of that principle, two cases to illustrate that, even if you are exclusively focused on the traditional New Testament, you cannot do so. You must know what was rejected to understand what was accepted. And why, and when, and where. Both of my examples involve images to remind us that we do not live in a world made only of words—be they old words or new words.

A first example. High on the northern slopes of the Bülbül Daği, off the mid-Aegean coast of Turkey, is a small flat clearing on the hillside with a stone frontal for a small doorway. This opens into a cave carved in antiquity to an eight- by-eight-by-fifty-foot passageway shrine called the Grotto of St. Paul by excavators from the Austrian Archaeological Institute in the 1990s. Beneath later plaster they found frescoes from around the year 500 CE .
On entrance, to your immediate left, is a scene almost completely obliterated but still residually recognizable. A standing man holds aloft a large knife above a much smaller kneeling figure whose tiny feet are about all that has been left by time the destroyer. It is, of course, the story of Abraham and Isaac from Genesis 22.
You turn next to the fresco on the wall at entrance right. It is much better preserved, with the upper half almost totally untouched by decay. But it is not a scene you recognize from either the Hebrew Bible or the Christian New Testament. Of its three figures, the central one is definitely “Paulos”—bald-headed, double-goateed, named, but not haloed. He is seated and reading from an open book on his lap ( A New New Testament , maybe?). His right hand is raised in the teaching-and-blessing gesture of Byzantine iconography—fingers separated into two and three, for the two natures in Christ and the three persons in the Trinity.
To viewer right of Paul is a standing woman named “Theoklia,” coiffed as a matron by the veil around her hair. She is slightly taller than Paul, and her right hand is raised in a gesture identical to h