Why it matters for reading Scripture
The Gospels, Acts, the letters and Revelation, with the scholarship on each. Most questions about Jesus and the early church start here.
Biblical studiesWhat does the text say?
New Testament studies is the scholarly study of the 27 writings that form the second part of the Christian Bible. It asks how the texts arose in the Greek, Roman and Jewish world of the first century, and how they have been and are read. Its working core is the exegesis of individual texts in their original Koine Greek.
Study v1.1, 14 October 2026
The Gospels, Acts, the letters and Revelation, with the scholarship on each. Most questions about Jesus and the early church start here.
New Testament studies is the historical and interpretive study of the 27 writings, centred on the Greek text, and the critical text itself is still being refined as the Editio Critica Maior proceeds.
The Synoptic problem, dating and authorship, the historical Jesus, Paul and Judaism, and early Christology stay contested, with serious scholars in every tradition holding the main positions.
Holds that historical study is required and is done within the faith of the Church, and that the Gospels formed in three stages, from Jesus to the evangelists.
Interpretation is subject finally to the judgment of the Church. The 1964 instruction of the Pontifical Biblical Commission accepts the sound elements of form criticism while rejecting philosophical premises that deny miracle and prophecy, and Verbum Domini (2010) holds historical-critical study necessary, because faith concerns history, but insufficient by itself.
Holds that Scripture lives within the Church and its Tradition, and that the Church is its interpreter.
Stylianopoulos holds that the exegetical level should ideally be simply biblical rather than confessional, and that traditions differ at the hermeneutical level, where Scripture is read within Tradition. Its voices include Florovsky, Stylianopoulos, Breck and the Oxford Handbook of the Bible in Orthodox Christianity (2022).
Keeps commentary traditions in West Syriac and in Ge'ez and Amharic, the andəmta, which offer several readings for different readers.
Its voices include Ephrem, shared by all the Syriac churches, and Dionysios bar Salibi, and the andəmta has been studied in a Hamburg project from 2025. The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church counts the 27 books in its narrower canon and adds church-order writings, such as the Sinodos and the Book of the Covenant, in its broader canon.
Keeps the East Syriac commentary tradition, which follows the historical reading of Theodore of Mopsuestia, known in it as the Interpreter.
Isho'dad of Merv (fl. c. 850), bishop of Hdatta, is among its commentators.
Practices historical-critical exegesis in university faculties, with a hermeneutical aim, and German faculties set much of the modern agenda.
German Protestant faculties still teach the classical subjects of Old Testament, New Testament, church history, systematic theology and practical theology. Its representative voices include Bultmann, Käsemann, Bornkamm and Conzelmann.
Practices grammatical-historical exegesis with a high view of Scripture.
The Chicago Statement on Biblical Inerrancy (1978) is one influential formulation: it locates authority in the inerrant autographic text, and its Article XVIII rejects source inquiry that relativizes or dehistoricizes the text. Its representative bodies include the Evangelical Theological Society (1949), which affirms the inerrancy of the autographs, the Institute for Biblical Research (1973) and Tyndale House.
Reads Spirit, Scripture and community together, with experience tested by the text, so that the Spirit is one of the poles of interpretation.
Its works include Stronstad on Luke (1984), J. C. Thomas (1994) and Keener's Spirit Hermeneutics (2016), and the Society for Pentecostal Studies dates from 1970.
Is not a confessional reading: Jewish scholars read the New Testament in its Jewish context and as part of Jewish history.
The Jewish Annotated New Testament, edited by Amy-Jill Levine and Marc Zvi Brettler, brought together some eighty Jewish scholars in its second edition, and Géza Vermes presented Jesus as a Galilean holy man in Jesus the Jew (1973). The Hebrew University's Center for the Study of Christianity describes itself as secular.
Origen writes his commentaries on John and Matthew at Caesarea, the first systematic commentary on the Gospels.32
Athanasius' Festal Letter 39 gives the first list identical to the 27 books of the New Testament.33
Erasmus publishes the Novum Instrumentum at Basel on 1 March, the first published Greek New Testament, with a new Latin version.34
John Mill's Greek New Testament, with some 30,000 variants, makes the scale of textual variation visible.35
Lessing publishes the fragments of Hermann Samuel Reimarus, conventionally taken as the beginning of the historical Jesus question, which entered the field from outside the churches.36
The Society for New Testament Studies is founded at Selly Oak, Birmingham, on 14 to 16 September, an international learned society.45
Ernst Käsemann's lecture opens the new quest for the historical Jesus.48
The Second Vatican Council's Dei Verbum, of 18 November, endorses historical study within the faith of the Church.2
The first part of the Editio Critica Maior, on James, appears: a new critical edition with the full evidence.51
Establish the text first: no autograph of any New Testament book survives, and modern editions aim at the initial text, the earliest form the surviving evidence allows editors to reach66.
Read the text in Greek: the working core of the field is the exegesis of individual texts in their original Koine Greek671868.
Settle the questions of introduction: the authorship, date, place, purpose and composition of each book6970.
Ask what written sources lie behind the Gospels, what oral forms and community settings shaped each unit, and how each evangelist edited his sources: source, form and redaction criticism577172.
Ask what story world the text builds and how it persuades: narrative and rhetorical criticism7374.
Set the text in its world: Second Temple Judaism, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Philo, Josephus and the Greco-Roman world, with social-scientific criticism and social history for the life of the early communities75767778.
Trace the reception of the texts: how they have been read, used and represented since antiquity7980.
Weigh each method's limits: no method stands alone, and the historical-critical method is held necessary but insufficient by itself815.
The works below shaped the field and are cited in this study, from the earliest to the most recent. Hover over a book, or select it, to see its author and the sources behind it.
Listed because this study draws on their published work; no association with or endorsement of Numa Verse is implied. Suggest a correction.
The words that carry the most weight in this field, each defined from the sources of this study. Turn a card over to read its definition.
AI-generated imageNew Testament studies
AI-generated imageNew Testament studiesTwenty-seven: four Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, 21 letters and the Revelation to John142. The Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant churches share the same 27-book New Testament, while the Syriac churches received the Peshitta New Testament of 22 books, without 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Jude and Revelation143144.
It is the question of the literary relationship of Matthew, Mark and Luke57148. The two-source hypothesis, that Matthew and Luke independently used Mark and the sayings source Q, is the majority view, and the Farrer, Griesbach, Matthean posteriority and Augustinian hypotheses are each held by a minority14857. The most recent handbook still presents the problem as unresolved58.
A reading of Paul, associated with Stendahl, Sanders, Dunn and Wright, which holds that Judaism was a religion of grace, covenantal nomism, and that the works of the law are boundary markers between Jews and Gentiles4950. Defenders of Paul within Judaism argue that it still implies that Paul found Judaism lacking149.
Reviewed and approved by Duane Herholdt, BA (Theology), Chief Executive Officer, Numa Verse
Study version: v1.1, 14 October 2026 (theology map v1.27)
Last reviewed: 7 November 2026