THE PRESENT PROBLEMS OF NEW TESTAMENT STUDY 



BY ERNEST DE WITT BURTON 



[Ernest De Witt Burton, Professor of New Testament interpretation, and head of 

 New Testament Department, University of Chicago, b. February 4, 1856, 

 Granville, Ohio. A.B. Denison University, 1876; D.D. ibid. 1897. Studied, Uni- 

 versity of Leipzig, 1887; University of Berlin, 1894; Instructor in New Testa- 

 ment Greek, Rochester Theological Seminary, 1882-83; Associate Professor and 

 Professor of New Testament Interpretation, Newton Theological Institution, 

 1886-92; Professor of New Testament Interpretation, and head of Department, 

 University of Chicago, 1892 . Member of Society of Biblical Literature and 

 Exegesis. Author of Syntax of the Moods and Tenses in New Testament Greek, 

 1893; Short Introduction to the Gospels, 1904, etc.] 



THE topic of this paper was not chosen by me, but assigned by 

 the Programme Committee of the Congress. I am required to state 

 the problems of New Testament study as they confront scholars 

 to-day. I am asked to take my stand on the frontier of New Testa- 

 ment study and formulate the questions which the scholarship of 

 the immediate future will be called upon to investigate and answer. 

 As far as possible personal opinion is to be eliminated, and the state- 

 ment to be objective and representative of the most enlightened New 

 Testament scholarship. 



The progress of biblical study has converted the New Testament 

 student from an interpreter of a body of sacred and authoritative 

 literature into the historian of a movement of mighty significance 

 in the history of religion, the rise of Christianity. So long as Christian 

 thought was controlled by the conception of the plenary inspiration 

 of the New Testament Scriptures and the final authority of each 

 passage of them, the only function of the New Testament student 

 was that of the literary interpreter, and his only tasks that of inter- 

 pretation and such others as were necessary to it. To the inter- 

 pretative task the history of the canon was subsidiary as showing 

 the process by which the books contained in the canon attained - 

 rightly, of course, it was held their position of eminence and author- 

 ity. Textual criticism furnished the letter of the inspired text. 

 Grammar and lexicography were implements of its interpretation. 

 And there was even a place for the history of New Testament times, 

 and the introduction to New Testament books, since these contrib- 

 uted to the interpretation of the books by furnishing their historic 

 setting. 



Such was once the point of view from which the work of the 

 New Testament student was defined. Such is still the point of view 

 from which some regard it. But with the great body of New Testa- 

 ment students this is no longer true. Clear definition of the nature 

 of the interpretative process and the more faithful application of it 

 to the New Testament have made it impossible to maintain that 



