The Bearing of Recent Discovery on the Trustworthiness of the New Testament by William Mitchell Ramsay

PART I. PRELIMINARY
I. Explanation Of Method And Order
II. Introductory Statement

PART II. LECTURES AT UNION SEMINARY, RICHMOND, VA., ON THE BEARING OF RECENT DISCOVERY ON THE TRUSTWORTHINESS OF THE NEW TESTAMENT
III. The First Change Of Judgment
IV. Iconium And The Frontier
V. The Language Spoken At Iconium
VI. General Impression Of Trustworthiness In The Acts
VII. Trial Scenes In The Acts
VIII. The Magicians In The Acts Of The Apostles
IX. Simon The Magician
X. Paul And The Magicians
XI. The Magi At The Birth Of Jesus
XII. Sergius Paullus And His Relation To Christian Faith
XIII. "Salvation" As A Pagan And A Christian Term
XIV. Prayers For Salvation Among The Pagans Of Asia Minor
XV. The Imperial Salvation
XVI. Trustworthiness Of The Acts, Chapters I To Xii
XVII. Rhoda The Slave-Girl
XVIII. Approach To The Gospel Of Luke
XIX. Luke's Account Of The First Census
XX. The Augustan Census-System
XXI. When Quirinius Was Governing Syria
XXII. Analogies And Fulfilment Of Prophecy
XXIII. "Your Poets Have Said"

PART III. ASSOCIATED QUESTIONS
XXIV. The Old Testament In The Roman Phrygia
XXV. The Name Of The Evangelist Luke
XXVI. The Firstfruits Of Achaia
XXVII. The Pauline Churches In The Third Century

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

A great discovery has resulted from modern investigation, viz. the wide and familiar use of writing in Western Asia as furnishing the basis on which the Roman bureaucratic administration was able to rest. That is really a great principle; and yet how little is its importance understood! I adhere to the inferences drawn in the first chapters of the "Letters to the Seven Churches " and in the paper on " The First Written Gospel " in " Luke the Physician and other Studies in the History of Religion". Yet many of us will wait until some German scholar has stated the same conclusions before accepting them.

The only way, the necessary and the useful method, is to go over the New Testament sentence by sentence, and to show how great principles and big ideas form the texture of the thought everywhere.

Carrying out the view stated twenty years ago in "St. Paul the Traveller," pp. 303 to 309, I see in the earliest Church history the religion of freedom engaged in a conflict with the Imperial power. Luke shows the conflict beginning at Christ's birth. The strange situation in which He was born was caused by an order of Augustus, a world-wide order expressing a vast force that moves through many centuries of history and always makes for slavery. The worse side of Imperial policy, as embodied in that order, drove Mary from Nazareth to Bethlehem. And what was the result? Only the fulfilment of the ancient truth and prophecy that in Bethlehem, the humble village which was the centre of old Hebrew tradition, there must be born, when the fulness of the time was come, the King of the Jews and the Saviour of the world. Autocracy compasses its own destruction, and the freedom of the Divine Will works out its perfect expression through the autocrat's error.

The episodes in the first and third Gospels, describing the circumstances of the Saviour's Birth, are of the highest importance; Luke sets that event in relation with the tides and forces of Imperial world-history; and Matthew describes how the traditional wisdom of Asia recognized the new-born King. On the other hand, John says nothing about such mundane matters, because his thought moves on a far higher plane, and his eye is fixed only on the infinite Divine nature; while Mark restricts himself to recounting what he had learned about the public career of Jesus as a Teacher.

• We just started tracking this book.
• The current price of this book is £1.44 last checked 10 hours ago.
• This book is currently at its lowest price since we started tracking it.

• Religion & SpiritualityChristianityReference

• Publication Date: September 7, 2021
• Text-to-Speech: Disabled
• Lending: Disabled
• Print Length: 455 Pages
• File Size: 87 KB