by Shawn Wilhite | Assistant Professor of Christian Studies, California Baptist University
While many NT scholars may know a whole lot about Matthew–Revelation, many lack the ability to pick up and read Josephus and Clement in the original Greek, or Seneca and Cicero in Latin. This reveals not just a severe lack of language ability, but, more importantly, a lack of familiarity with the ideas and historical contexts of Early Jewish, Greco-Roman, and Early Christian authors and texts.
My belief (and I’m not alone in this) is that, as a NT and Early Christian scholar, I must do more than be mindful of the vast body of literature outside the NT; I actually have to read it.
Let me show you how I developed a plan to read every background text to the New Testament.
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