New Documents Illustrating Early Christianity Vol. 11 A-B

Last updated on: May 14, 2025 at 1:48 am by Ben Witherington

New Documents Illustrating Early Christianity Vol. 11 A-B 2025-05-11T08:12:28-04:00 Ben Witherington

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There are few series in Biblical Studies that have gone through a more interesting pilgrimage than the New Documents series. It began as just a project of the Ancient History department of Macquarrie University in Sydney with Greg Horsley overseeing the first five volumes, and Stephen Llewelyn shepherding the second five volumes. The goal was to relate recently discovered manuscripts, ostraca, and inscriptions to the New Testament in some meaningful way. Vols. 1-5 focused on philology, Vol. 6-10 on social and administrative issues. In the course of time Eerdmans picked up the American rights to this series, realizing its extreme value. Finally now, after a considerable hiatus the SBL is publishing vol. 11 in 2 parts, with a promise to finish the series in vol. 11-17 focusing on epigraphic evidence from the major cities in the Empire, with Ephesus being first up to bat. I can think of no series that is more important than this one for showing how the historical contexts of the NT are vital to interpreting and understanding the NT itself. The focus is on what I will call social history of the sort that Edwin Judge and Alanna Nobbs and others from Macquarrie have long championed as a key to understanding the NT, though I note that these new volumes also take into account social scientific methodologies used to make sense of the NT. The new series of volumes is being overseen by James Harrison of Macquarrie, and Brad Bitner of Westminster West. If Vol. 11a is any indication we are in for a treat at the sheer degree of illumination these new volumes will bring to the understanding of the NT. No NT scholar should be without these volumes if they care at all about the historical contexts of the NT itself.

The list of cities to be covered are: 1) Volume 11– Ephesus; 2) Vol. 12– Colossae, Laodicea, Hierapolis (frankly they should put this at the end of the project because the dig at Colossae is finally to be started this coming Fall); 3) Vol. 13– Philippi; 4) Vol. 14–Rome Ostia and Puteoli; 5) Vol. 15– Thessalonica; 6) Vol. 16 Ancyra, Pessinous, Pisidian Antioch and the Galatian cities; and 7) Vol. 17– Corinth Cenchreae and Isthmia.

Missing in these lists are Tarsus, Antioch, Antalya, Perge, Miletus, Pergamon, Sardis the island of Patmos to mention a few places, and it would have been helpful to have a volume on Pompeii and Herculaneum as well, but I suppose we can’t have everything. In my next posts I will give a singular sample from Vol. 11a that shows the value of the series.

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