The New Testament is not a single work - but we will still recognize it as a unified document. The gospels, prophecies and letters are not single genres, nor are they chapters of a book advancing a single story line - I would argue however, they all contribute to the advancement of a unified thesis. The New Testament (I contend) is unified by its purpose - that purpose being the revelation of Jesus Christ.
For us then, the line of examination will be to explore the text by asking finite questions like who wrote each component of the New Testament, where, why, for whom and when? We will consider what the human author's purpose was in writing this text. However, we will also ask how the Divine author uses the text to reveal Himself.
Once we establish this base understanding, then we might explore how we in our moment in time, given our history and within our social setting might hear text. We will challenge our reading against our known biases. We will seek and examine the impact of our blind spots (those assumptions and presumptions which we bring to our reading that we may be unaware of). Our blind spots can significantly distort our hearing of God's Word. This draws us back to remembering we must always closely examine and challenge our hermeneutic.
One interesting side-point here is to remember that we read the New Testament as Scripture. We must remember the human authors and the first readers did not. These documents were written and heard as instruction, histories, rhetoric or letters. Surely the presumption of "Scripture" greatly impacts our reading and understanding of the text. This illustrates the point that I am trying to make - our presumption that what we are reading is Holy Scripture given us from God impacts the authority and character we give the text and so impacts our reading.
Also remember the documents we have compiled, collated and called the New Testament did not exist in their current form in the early Church. In fact, there were other documents kicking around that if read with, before or after what we call the New Testament, they could lead us to different conclusions and understandings. All the authors (because of the subject matter) certainly would have attached significance to their work - but few would call these writings Scripture.
Here is another thought. The gospels are all very different works in terms of their literary style. John is certainly more poetic, lyrical and ethereal than the others. Luke seems more bent on providing testimony. Matthew seems intent on illuminating the Messianic Jesus predicted by the Hebrew Scriptures. Mark is a narrative that orbits around revealing the messianic secret like a divine mystery novel of some sort. All the gospels use the Old Testament in some way, but not always in the same way. Some works will lean more on imagery, analogy, metaphor and idioms; some may use the songs and poetry of the early Church - so recognizing and identifying these literary genres, and how and why they are used will impact our reading. How these all fit together impact the mosaic we come to see; so care must be taken as we fit it all together.
Much like the bits and pieces of this blog - the bits and pieces of the New Testament are intended to fit together for the purpose of communicating something. The New Testament is a mosaic - bits and pieces that may be very different, yet when taken together reveal a single image. As I have said - I believe that image is of Jesus of Nazareth.
Be blessed
HE
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