I figure that other religions shouldn’t get short shrift in my various reading projects, besides, from a psycho-sociological perspective, they’re all on equal footing in terms of my interest. Queue the folk who are going to object that I dare to impugn “the word of God”, who had no qualms over my dissection of the “Old Testament” over the last years. For the New Testament, or Christian Bible, it turns out there are a whole lot of versions of it, and they don’t all agree. I mean, not even close in some cases. I had a bit of a chat with the Claude AI and we settled on the NRSVue, or New Revised Standard Version Updated Edition for my dive.
“Formal-leaning, produced by a broad ecumenical/scholarly committee, widely used in academic biblical studies. Uses gender-inclusive language where the translators judged the original intent to be inclusive (e.g., “brothers and sisters” for adelphoi in some contexts).”
Then it became a question of what order to read the 27 books in…
“For a sociological and historical approach, the standard biblical order is not ideal because it hides how early Christian communities actually developed.
You should read the texts chronologically by composition date. This lets you track the evolution of the movement in real time: from a small, apocalyptic Jewish sect to a structured, institutionalized religion spreading across the Roman Empire.”
And then we have a four stage reading order that groups the books in that suggested order. One way or another, it covers it all, so I’m not sure that the order matters. It’s also an interesting approach, since, for example, chronologically it starts with the Epistles of Paul, who was preaching early Christianity, but in a period before the New Testament itself was actually written down – it was still all oral.
And, away we go!
Stage 1: The First Network (c. 50–58 CE)
“Start with the genuine letters of Paul. These are the absolute oldest surviving Christian documents. They provide an unfiltered look at active, chaotic first-generation house churches wrestling with identity, social class, and boundary lines.”
Galatians – Faith over Formula
Thessalonians – Time Management for the Apocalpse
Corinthians – Unity at Any Cost
Romans – One Gospel to Rule Them All
Romans is the longest of Paul’s letters, and was supposedly written after he finally made it back to Corinth – after all that back and forth that we read in Corinthians. Settled in, and having completed, for the moment, his proselytizing around the Aegean – Greece and Turkey, for the most part, he’s contemplating his next moves. Spain is the target, but heading there passes him through Roman territory, and in particular, the city of Rome. There, Christianity is split, between those who were formerly Jews and those who were formerly Gentiles of one or another persuasion. His aim is to unite them in Christ, and this letter is a treatise on Christian doctrine, a blueprint for the future of faith.
- Romans opens like the prologue to an epic saga: Paul, servant and apostle, unfurls his credentials and declares the gospel as the single ring of power – One Gospel to Rule Them All. He greets Rome, tosses in his ubiquitous “I’ve always meant to visit, but life got in the way,” and stresses faith as the universal key to, well, everything. He then pivots into a dark panorama of human corruption. Idolatry, lust, and moral collapse are paraded as evidence that humanity has traded the Creator for created things. Paul sets the tone of the letter, making sure everyone knows they’re equally guilty and equally in need of the Gospel.
- This is Paul’s… “Black Mirror” chapter. He turns the moral spotlight on the reader and says, “You’re not better, you’re just louder.” After condemning evildoers in chapter 1, he pivots to the self‑righteous crowd and basically drops the ancient equivalent of “Judge not, lest ye be judged.” He then turns again, to the Jews, and basically says, “If you claim to be following the Torah, and you really are, great, but if you really aren’t, then you’re just a hypocrite.”