SECTION D NEW TESTAMENT 



(Hall 1, September 23, 10 a. ra.) 



CHAIRMAN: PROFESSOR ANDREW C. ZENOS, McCormick Theological Seminary. 

 SPEAKERS: PROFESSOR BENJAMIN W. BACON, Yale University. 



PROFESSOR ERNEST D. BURTON, University of Chicago. 

 SECRETARY: PROFESSOR CLYDE W. VOTAW, University of Chicago. 



THE Section of the New Testament in the Department of History 

 of Religion was presided over by Professor Andrew C. Zenos of the 

 McCormick Theological Seminary of Chicago, Illinois. In introducing 

 the speakers Professor Zenos said, in part, that this Section might 

 be regarded as the central one of the whole system of the Congress 

 of Arts and Science. The religious is the highest nature of man, and 

 among religions Christianity is conceded the place of preeminence, 

 even from the point of view of the purely scientific student of relig- 

 ion. Christianity emerges in a definite historical setting and under 

 clearly ascertainable conditions. That its origin is buried in a myth- 

 ical age, that the facts regarding its foundation and first stages are 

 lost beyond recovery, is a theory which was put forth and defended 

 with great acumen by the brilliant Hegelian of the early nineteenth 

 century. But the greater the ability with which it was expounded 

 and urged, the more certain is its untenableness since its complete 

 collapse and abandonment. Nothing stands better established than 

 the absolute historicity of the basal facts of the Christian religion. 

 The field was much larger than it first appeared. First into one part 

 of it, then into another, research has been pushed until, out of the 

 apparently simple and single study of the New Testament as a book 

 of religious instruction, there have arisen one after another the 

 associated sciences of New Testament Philology, New Testament 

 Archaeology, New Testament Criticism (Higher and Lower), New 

 Testament History, with its subdivisions of the Life of Christ, the 

 Life of Paul, the Apostolic Age, New Testament Times, and finally to 

 crown the whole group, the Biblical Theology of the New Testament. 

 A great science has truly been born. A living interest, always existing 

 in the first writings of Christian men, has found a legitimate field 

 and a large and diversified expression. New Testament science 

 stands to-day before the world, not as a seeker for consideration 

 upon extra-scientific grounds, but because it offers a great and su- 

 premely important field to its votaries, and because its methods are 

 just those which inspire confidence in every science throughout the 

 whole scheme. 



