New Testament scholar offers ‘context’ to provide insights and inspiration

While Christians are often guilty of reading the New Testament in isolation, without going back to the roots of the prayers, hymns and teachings that are so familiar or the times in which they were written, New Testament scholar and Jesuit priest Daniel J. Harrington takes a decidedly different approach in Jesus and Prayer (978-1-593-25153-6, $10.95, The Word Among Us).

Focusing on context, Harrington offers a tour of the New Testament—writing about the prayers of Jesus as well as the prayers about Jesus—to provide insights and explanations that help readers appreciate where these prayers, hymns and creeds came from and where they can lead when prayed personally.

A professor of New Testament and chairman of the Biblical Studies Department at Weston Jesuit School of Theology in Boston, Harrington illustrates how Old Testament images and words are reused in these passages in fresh, new ways.

He notes that the Lord’s prayer is rooted in the Psalms and in the Eighteen Benedictions recited by observant Jewish males each day and the well-known Jewish prayer the kaddish. And, yet, with its expression of intimacy and dependence on God and hope for the full coming of God’s kingdom, “it fits perfectly with what we know about the teachings and activities of Jesus himself,” he observes.

A chapter examining the early hymns and creeds about Christ shows how the early Christians quickly came to celebrate Jesus as Lord (Phil. 2:6-11), the Wisdom of God (Col. 1:15-20) and the Word of God (John 1:1-18). These passages, says Harrington, “provide eloquent testimony to the explosion of beliefs about Jesus in the twenty or so years after his death.”

In an exposition of the book of Revelation, Harrington notes that although the author “never speaks explicitly about Scripture being fulfilled, almost every verse contains an allusion to or an echo of the Old Testament.” Yet “the theological context—the saving significance of Jesus’ life, death, and resurrection and hope for his second coming—places the Old Testament in a decidedly new context.” And, Harrington adds, “as we have seen throughout this book, context is everything, or at least almost everything.”

A “think, pray, and act” section at the end of each of the six chapters moves readers from study to prayer. In one, Harrington asks: “When you say the Lord’s Prayer, how do you imagine God? What do you want God to do? Where do you fit in?”

To order Jesus and Prayer, call 800-842-0646, or go to www.wau.org.

Patricia Mitchell is editorial director for The Word Among Us.

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