Rethinking Introduction situates classical introductory studies of the Bible at the intersection of theology, history, literary studies, and cultural studies. It consistently understands New Testament texts as identity texts that cannot be interpreted apart from their historical and literary contexts, nor apart from their significance for the identity (or identities) of Jesus-followers and their respective social, intellectual-historical, and lived-world contexts (“frames”).
The image of the family album—an everyday medium that remains readily accessible today—offers a low-threshold entry into the unfamiliar world of the early followers of Jesus. At the same time, it makes it possible to conceptualise and explore general and special introduction as the relationship between the family album as a whole and the individual photograph.
In twenty-seven individual “pictures,” the New Testament narrates the story of the first five generations of Jesus-followers as a story of identity formation, marked by the characteristic questions and challenges faced by each generation. These narratives can be fruitfully connected with knowledge of New Testament-era history, media, and literary forms.
The canonical perspective—the composite view of the images within the early Christian family album—reshapes the way individual pictures are perceived, as well as the understanding of Christian identity as a whole. The individual portraits of Jesus in the four Gospels are transformed when viewed canonically, just as the Deutero-Pauline letters reshape the remembered figure of Paul. Pauline, Synoptic, and Johannine writings, along with the Catholic Epistles, each contribute distinct facets or characteristics to Christian identity. In attempts at canonical harmonisation, however, these facets are often hierarchised, with the risk that their full range of variation is diminished.
Rethinking Introduction reunites the etic and emic perspectives on the twenty-seven books of the New Testament, takes them seriously as identity texts, and helps to overcome problems arising from excessive segmentation and specialisation. Through the metaphor of the family album, the approach remains accessible even to Christians without formal theological training and may also enable non-Christians to engage with the early Christian family album as a cultural text.
