Ancient Texts for New Testament Studies: A Guide to the Background Literature.

Ancient Texts for New Testament Studies: A Guide to the Background Literature. By Craig A. Evans. Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2005. xxxvi + 539. Cloth, $34.95.

This book is simultaneously indispensable and frustrating. It is frustrating because the title suggests, at least to this reader, that the book will offer primary sources relevant to the study of the New Testament. Although there are many of these, I think there is room for more. The book contains no primary sources. On the other hand, what the book does offer makes it indispensable for libraries, lay readers, and New Testament readers with all levels of academic training.

This book offers brief introductions to the various classes (e.g., Old Testament Apocyphra, Targums, Early Church Fathers, etc.) of material that one needs to understand the New Testament in its religious context, as well as brief (single paragraph) introductions to many of the individual writings themselves (e.g., "Prayer of Manasseh," "Targum Ruth," "2 Clement," etc.). What is more, Evans provides secondary source treatments of the classes and the individual works themselves under the headings: Texts, Surveys, and Commentary/Critical Studies. In other words, the book is, more than anything, a guide to pertinent secondary literature on these various writings. I estimate there are approximately 1600 secondary sources named.

The classes of writings Evans covers are: Old Testament Apocrypha, Old Testament Pseudepigrapha, the Dead Sea Scrolls, Versions of the Old Testament, Philo and Josephus, the Targums, Rabbinic Literature (Talmudic, Tannaic, Amoraic), New Testament Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha, Early Church Fathers, Gnostic Writings (including Mandaean materials), and Other Writings (Greco-Roman authors, Corpus Hermeticum, Papyri, and Inscriptions, etc.).

The book also contains one hundred pages of indices that are worth noting: comparative canons; parallels between the New Testament gospels and pseudepigraphal gospels; comparisons between Jesus' parables and Rabbinic parables; comparisons between Jesus' miracles and Jewish miracles; and finally messianic claimants in the first and second centuries. Appendix Two is worth mentioning in detail: here Evans provides New Testament passages that quote, allude to, or parallel materials found in the rest of the book. The appendix is organized by New Testament verse in canonical order, and it comprises an incredible 66 pages of material.

The one drawback to the book is its under-emphasis of Greco-Roman sources in comparison to the depth accorded to Jewish sources, not to mention that it is hidden away in a chapter called "Other Writings"! The chapter itself contains a helpful "who's who" of Greek and Roman figures, but otherwise discusses only those few Roman historians who refer to early Christianity. The material on inscriptions is good, and offers all the classic secondary sources, but misses one new treatment, important especially for introducing New Testament readers to the practice: Bradley H. McLean, An Introduction to Greek Epigraphy of the Hellensic and Roman Periods from Alexander The Great Down to the Reign of Constantine (323 B.C.-A.D. 337) (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2002).

Finally, the book includes in one chapter a brief essay on why these materials matter for New Testament exegesis and in another a number of examples of an exegesis that is informed by these sources. For example, there is an exegesis of the Parable of the Wicked Tenants (Mark 12:1-12; Matt 21:3346; and Luke 20:9-19). Evans focuses on the question of why the religious authorities felt the parable had been directed at them when Isaiah's parable, to which this one alludes, was directed at the whole people (Isa 5:1-7). The answer according to Evans is provided by the Targum Isaiah, which is directed against the temple establishment. This book is most certainly worth having.

Zeba Crook

Carleton University

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Ottawa, ON, K1S 5B6, Canada