Richard Neitzel Holzapfel - The Life and Teachings: 4-in-1 eBook Bundle

FROM BETHLEHEM THROUGH THE SERMON ON THE MOUNT

From Bethlehem Through the Sermon on the Mount

_________________

TO TED D. STODDARD, EDITOR, MENTOR, AND FRIEND

TO MARY STODDARD, COUNSELOR, SUPPORTER, AND FRIEND

Richard Neitzel Holzapfel

FOR MY FATHER, LOWELL TOMAS WAYMENT, A TRUE DISCIPLE AND SCHOLAR

Thomas A. Wayment

Acknowledgments

We thank Cory Maxwell, our publisher; Jack Lyon, our editor; and Shauna Gibby, our designer, for their efforts in bringing the volume to fruition.

We thank Ted D. Stoddard for his sleepless nights and long days at the end of our efforts to finish editing this book. His good humor, inquisitive nature, and ability to make us look good are appreciated and acknowledged.

Several Brigham Young University student research assistants helped us along the way: Jamie Karpowitz and Rex Price, who helped with the source editing, and W. Kenneth Hamblin, Adrianne Gardner Malan, and Jon Rainey, who helped track down articles and books and performed other duties that greatly facilitated the completion of this project.

We have benefited greatly from the collaboration between the faculty of Religious Education and the Department of Classics at Brigham Young University. Their contributions, presented in this volume, will make a lasting impression on our understanding of the New Testament.

Last, but certainly not least, we thank our wives, Jeni and Brandi, for their support, insights, and patience.

Introduction

The World of the New Testament

Richard Neitzel Holzapfel and Thomas A. Wayment

As John finished his Gospel narrative, he reflected, These [things] are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name (John 20:31), thus revealing his own personal reasons for retelling the story of Jesus of Nazareth.

Anyone who has studied the life of Jesus has felt a compelling desire to learn more about Him from the earliest witnesses of His life. From Bethlehem through the Sermon on the Mount, the second book (although volume 1) in the series dealing with the life and ministry of Jesus Christ, is a result of our passionate interest in the greatest of all lives. Like our earlier volume, this compilation takes advantage of the most recent developments and advances in New Testament studies, as viewed through the lenses of faith and the Restoration by some of the best New Testament scholars in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. Their efforts provide context to the story that was published throughout all Judea, and began from Galilee, after the baptism which John preached; how God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Ghost and with power: who went about doing good (Acts 10:3738).

Like other Deseret Book publications, and even the study helps published in the current LDS edition of the scriptures themselves, From Bethlehem through the Sermon on the Mount is not intended to be an official or revealed endorsement of the Church of the doctrinal, historical, cultural and other matters set forth. Rather, it is based on the best available scholarship of the world and [is] subject to reevaluation based on new research and discoveries or on new revelation. The final word on doctrinal interpretation will always rest with the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, those called and chosen to provide authoritative doctrinal insights for the Church.

Even with this important limitation, we hope to provide deeper insight into the culture, language, and history of the New Testament. Ultimately, we want the book to help believers come closer to the historical setting of Jesus own world so they will figuratively begin a sacred journey along the dusty paths and roads, through the valleys and wilderness, and into the villages and towns of first-century Jewish Palestinea land made holy by the presence of God's own Son. We hope this journey will help the reader not only to realize the value of mentally walking where Jesus walked but also, as our friend and colleague D. Kelly Ogden so poignantly expressed a number of years ago, to realize the importance of walking as Jesus walked.

Reconstructing the Past

Many questions are of interest to New Testament students todayquestions that simply never dawned on the original authors of the books of the New Testament when they took stylus and papyri in hand to record their witnesses of Christ for a specific audience in a specific geographic setting and at a specific time in history.

As a result, for example, we can look in vain to find solid information that would help identify, without question, who the Herodians are as mentioned in the Gospels (see Matthew 22:16) or that would give us such things as a physical description of Jesus of Nazareth or of the other disciples who followed Him.

The New Testament witnesses presupposed that certain parts of their culture would be assumed by the readers who lived in their day. The writers probably did not envision readers thousands of years in the future asking of them (through their texts) questions about people, places, events, and practices of the day. We cannot imagine that Mark, Luke, Matthew, or John ever thought that readers at the beginning of the twenty-first century would say, I wish you had told me Jesus height, the length of His hair, the color of His eyes, and the color of His beard, if He even had one. They probably never thought about such issues or about sharing with modern readers the myriad of other linguistic, cultural, and historical clues that would have illuminated the story for those living beyond (both in time and place) their days.

When the original authors wrote the stories preserved in the four Gospels, they wrote in the common language of the eastern Roman Empire, Koine Greek (meaning common [dialect]). Written Greek is significantly more concise than English, resulting in verbal constructions and implied pronouns that cannot be reproduced in English without the addition of explanatory words or phrases.

Translators of the New Testament faced the daunting task of reproducing the nuance and intent of the Greek text in addition to translating accurately the precise meaning of the original words. One convention that developed in the Middle Ages was to place in italics all additional words used by the translators to make sense of difficult Greek idioms, implied subjects, or pronouns.

Additionally, the authors wrote without punctuation, without chapters and verses (even without paragraphing), and without spaces between words. Our modern English translation provides much more than a rendering of two-thousand-year-old Greek words into English; it involves a whole system of verses and chapters, giving us an easy way to access the texthelpful tools and context not envisioned by the original authors themselves.