The New Testament Assignment | Custom Assignment Help

I will be grading you according to:
A: Knowledge of the Bible: paraphrases/citations including book, chapter and verse references
(this is foremost a scholastic exercise). Examples: Mt. 12.34. / Lk. 6.12. / Cor. 18.21
B: Knowledge of the historico-cultural context: the jargon or keywords of religious studies (but
do not force it. Terms such as Pauline epistle, Johannine comma and Apocalypse should be
used where necessary to support your arguments – do not just throw them around).
C: Originality – I do not want to see any wiki-business; we had class sessions and you should
have filtered those class sessions through yourselves individually: ideally, I’ll see 50% class
sessions and 50% you to support your readings of the Bible.
D (or “C” continued): Personal insertion: you may, in any response, report how the experience
of having read the New Testament has enriched, or may enrich, your own existence (but fulfill
points A, B, and C first – thus, don’t overdo it).
QUESTIONS
1: The New Testament can be broken down into four main blocks: 1) the Synoptic Gospels with
the Acts of the Apostles (Mt., Mk, Lk., Acts); 2) the Pauline Epistles (Rom., Cor., etc.); 3) the
Pastoral Epistles (James, etc.); 4) the Johannine corpus (Jn, I Jn, Rev., etc.). What theologically
distinguishes these four blocks, one from the other? If I were you, I would not do too much
research here. I’d rather see that you can prove you’ve read your Bible and remember our class
discussions than see wiki-nonsense. A wrong response that proves the former is in my opinion
better than a “correct response” that proves the latter. Because, ultimately, there is no correct
response anyway.
2 (or 1 bis., in detail): Discuss the authority and chronology of New Testament writers: who
wrote? – who is Mark, Matthew, Luke and John? Who are the various John(s)? Who are the
missionaries of the Acts of the Apostles? Who wrote first, last? What passages give us a feeling
of who our writers were? What is perhaps missing? – for this last question, think both prior to the
gospel narratives, and what was left out of the N.T. considering many texts were used to bolster
faith in the very early years of the Church, which today are either lost or considered
non-canonical.
3) What makes Paul the central missionary figure of Christianity?
4) Discuss elements of the theology of the New Testament (those of Jesus, Paul and James –
those that we namely went over in class) that marked the debates between Catholic dogma and
the belief structures of the Protestant Churches (think, for example: “justification by faith”,
“predestination”, the “Holy Trinity”, the “saints”, “Church hierarchy”).
5) Discuss the beauty of the Christian Bible. (Think of both the stories themselves and what
culturally they have influenced. But think above all of the stories themselves.)
KEY SCENES
Think of ten key scenes and develop them, i.e., you create your own key scene exam, and you
justify why you chose the key scenes you chose. (Any key scene we discussed in class from the
Gospels, from the book of Acts, from the Pauline epistles, from the book of Revelation is fair
game, etc., but the more concise, minute in detail, descriptive – descriptive – your key scenes
are, the better your grade. Don’t just think of “the Crucifixion”, but rather the elements – an
element – of the crucifixion.)