“The Biblical History of the New Testament,” which the undersigned hereby presents to the public, is on the whole written in the same way as his “Biblical History of the Old Testament.” It is a reproduction of the Biblical account as it is presented in the four Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles, in which the necessary explanation of language and facts is interwoven. Only this explanation is somewhat more detailed here. This is already due to the character of the New Testament historical narrative, which is short and concise in comparison to the Old Testament. In the Old Testament, the Holy Spirit accommodated Himself to the peculiarities of the people of Israel, who were still children under their guardians at that time, and related what God did to the pious fathers and their descendants in a very childlike, simple and laborious manner. In the New Testament, on the other hand, the great things that happened in the fullness of time, what God did in Christ, are also handed down to the Church of the New Covenant in clear, simple, but at the same time concise and pithy language. When dealing with the history of the Old Testament, it was therefore often appropriate to briefly summarize the main points of the narrative and to highlight them, whereas with the history of the New Testament, actual exegesis, unfolding of the rich biblical text, was indicated. Here, too, the various reports of the various Gospels had to be brought together into a unified report. Furthermore, many longer and shorter speeches by the Lord and the Apostles, which require special explanation, are woven into the narrative of the New Testament history books. Of course, no detailed commentary on the four Gospels and the Acts of the Apostles will be offered here, but about the same level of exegesis as one finds in other writings of the same content, for example in Hofmann’s New Testament History and its popular adaptations.

The biblical narrative of the New Testament, like that of the Old Testament, is composed of individual stories, but the course and progress of the story is clearly evident. The undersigned has sought to do justice to both: on the one hand to highlight what each individual section offers on its own, and on the other hand to place each individual story in the context of the whole and thus to present the course of the New Testament story.

The title of each individual chapter is accompanied by only one passage from Scripture, namely the one which relates the story in question either exclusively or in the most detail. However, the parallels in parentheses have been used to the same extent. This resulted in a concise harmony of the Gospels, in which, of course, not all the different possibilities of reconciling the various Gospel reports could be discussed.

Usually, a presentation of New Testament history is preceded by a long introduction, in which the political situation of the Jewish state and the Roman Empire at the time of Christ, the religious and moral constitution of Israel at that time, the customs and traditions of the Jews, the various parties, Pharisees, Sadducees, etc., the character and significance of Jesus’ miracles, the teaching method, the Lord’s parables, and similar more general data are discussed. But then one has to anticipate a lot, and the course of the historical narrative is disrupted. So it seemed more advisable to link what is to be noted about such things to the historical text itself. The text offers enough clues for this.

Throughout, we have followed the chronological order in connecting the larger and smaller sections. Of course, this presents some difficulties as far as the life of Jesus is concerned. The four evangelists, first of all the first three, the so-called Synoptics often present the same deeds and words of the Lord in the most varied contexts. As is well known, modern theologians immediately label these differences as real differences and contradictions, and assume that one or other evangelist was wrong about the time in which he placed this or that event. We are certain that the sacred historians, who spoke under the influence of the Holy Spirit, made no error or oversight whatsoever with regard to time, place, or external circumstances. The apparent contradictions disappear when the text is examined closely. Above all, it should be noted that the conjunctions, time particles, or other time designations used in the Gospels, by means of which the individual stories are linked together, are of a different kind and nature. Some are quite general and indicate only a loose connection, others, on the other hand, mark a very specific sequence of times. When, for example, a story is introduced with an “and” or “but” or “at that time,” Τότε, or with the remark “at that time,” this does not always mean that it immediately followed what was previously reported, and the possibility is not even excluded that this story preceded the one previously told. Even if it says “afterwards,” Μετὰ ταῦτα, other events may well have occurred in the middle of the events connected in this way. If, on the other hand, we read: “on this day” or “on the same day” or “when Jesus said that” and the like, the chronological sequence is precisely determined. Where such precise, definite or even indefinite time particles are missing, it must be decided from the context of the story whether a temporal connection between the events in question is indicated in the text or not. It is a generally recognized fact that each of the three Synoptics in his narrative, in addition to a chronological order (which was relevant for determining the major periods of Jesus’ life and activity), also observed a factual order and arranged the individual stories according to a specific plan. To discover which plan or principle of arrangement underlies the individual Gospels, was not our task here. We have simply taken the historical material as it is presented in the four Gospels and arranged the individual parts according to the chronological clues contained in the text itself. Where no such clues are found, it is of course left to the interpreter to arrange the events according to his own discretion, according to the impression gained from the Gospel account. In our report we have only spoken apodictically about the chronological sequence where there was a basis for it in the text.

Two special dates should be mentioned in advance. The Sermon on the Mount has often been placed at the beginning of Jesus’ Galilean ministry, while the parables which Jesus delivered to the people on the shore of the Sea of ​​Galilee, such as the parable of the Sower, have been placed at a later time. But each of these two longer sermons of the Lord belongs to a larger group of events which are linked to one another in the biblical account by very precise chronological determinations, and thus followed one another chronologically. One group includes the following stories: the healing of a possessed man, which gave the Pharisees cause to blaspheme, the parables of the Lord, the calming of the storm at sea, the healing of the two possessed men in the land of the Gadarenes, the healing of the man with dropsy, the calling of Matthew, the healing of the woman with the issue of blood and the resurrection of Jairus’ daughter, the healing of two blind men, Jesus’ sermon in Nazareth. The other group: the calling of the twelve apostles, the Sermon on the Mount, the healing of an outcast, the healing of the sick servant of the captain of Capernaum, the resurrection of the young man from Nain, the mission of John the Baptist. Now the calling and conversion of the tax collector Levi or Matthew evidently occurred earlier than the calling of the twelve disciples. Therefore, the whole of the first series of events mentioned falls into an earlier time than the second.

We do not understand the middle part of the Gospel of Luke (9:51—18:30) as many modern exegetes do, as a second review of Jesus’ Galilean activity, nor as a collection of sayings with which the evangelist expresses his intention announced in 1:1–4 but rather, with Meyer and most of the older commentators, as a travel report and place the deeds and sayings of the Lord reported here in the last period of his prophetic activity, when he traveled through the border region of Galilee and Samaria and the East Jordan. We have given the reasons for this assumption on page 175 (#84). However, in this section Luke has also added here and there a factum or dictum of Jesus from the Galilean period and inserted it into a context appropriate to its content (for example, Lk 11:14-36, 12:1-12, 22–34).

Finally, it should be noted that the application to the present Christian generation, to the present circumstances and conditions, woven into the present historical presentation is not an accident, but only appropriate to the rule of interpretation established by the Scripture itself (Ro 15:4; 1 Cor 10:16; 2 Tim 3:16). An interpretation which merely stops at the past and completely ignores the fact that “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever” does not correspond to the intention of the Holy Spirit. What the Scripture reports about Jesus’ life, suffering, death, resurrection, and the first Christian church is intended that Christians of all times can correctly recognize what they have in their Christ and what the Christian Church is all about.

—G. Stöckhardt