July 2024 | LISLE, IL—On Tuesday, July 23, Fuller Seminary hosted a launch party for the August 6 release of the highly anticipated The New Testament in Color, the first volume of its kind written by a multiethnic team of scholars.
IVP President Terumi Echols said, “The New Testament in Color serves as a laser-focused Bible commentary that digs deeper into Bible teachings to provide context from a multicultural perspective, which is pioneering for the North American church.”
“The New Testament in Color is a book I long hoped would eventually be written and is in many ways overdue,” said Max J. Lee, Paul W. Brandel Professor of biblical studies at North Park Theological Seminary, Chicago, Illinois.
Theologically orthodox and multiethnically contextual, The New Testament in Color: A Multiethnic Bible Commentary fills a gap in biblical understanding for both the academy and the church.
Esau McCaulley, Jonathan Blanchard Chair of New Testament and Public Theology at Wheaton College and author of Sharing in the Son’s Inheritance and Reading While Black, served as the general editor for the volume. He said, “We wanted to create a project that embodies the North American church at its best. We wanted to bring together a diversity of cultures united by a common desire to read, understand, obey, and apply God’s word.”
Lee said, “The editors have done a superb job of gathering scholars from diverse ethnic backgrounds who interpret the biblical text adeptly using the familiar critical tools of exegesis, and who also demonstrate how reading from their particular social location provides theological insight germane to all of God’s people. They show how the New Testament addresses a range of issues important to today’s readers, including topics of restorative justice, immigration and hospitality, racial bias and violence, the priority of families and ecclesial communities, and so much more. Not to be missed are the excellent introductory essays, which trace the ethnic histories of peoples of color and their practice of reading the Bible with a hermeneutic of trust.”
In addition to the twenty-two contributing scholars, the associate editors for the project include Amy L. B. Peeler, Kenneth T. Wessner Chair of Biblical Studies at Wheaton College and author of Women and the Gender of God;Janette H. Ok, associate professor of New Testament at Fuller Theological Seminary and author of Constructing Ethnic Identity in 1 Peter; andOsvaldo Padilla, professor of New Testament and theology at Beeson Divinity School of Samford University. He has published on the Acts of the Apostles and Paul.
Each scholar who contributed to the volume brings exegetical expertise coupled with a unique interpretive lens to illuminate the ways social location and biblical interpretation work together.
Padilla said, “I have often found myself wrestling with what it meant to engage my own ethnic identity. We all have the gift of contributing scholarly insights because of our social location, but we also run the risk of missing important insights because of our social location. My own Hispanic background, for example, that helped me (I think) get at some hidden aspect of the text could also be used to smuggle in some of the idolatrous baggage that is also part of my background. I was surprised how much I had to grapple with the danger of becoming just like the ‘colonizers’ we passionately have criticized when forgetting that this is a two-way street.”
Ok said, “Our collaborative editorial process embodied the joys, challenges, and fruits of bringing together scholars with different expertise, experiences, perspectives, and social locations that you see reflected in the work of our contributors. Creative processes of this magnitude are messy, but I have learned to embrace the messiness as a gift to the church. The ideas for this volume took shape over time and the contributors submitted and resubmitted their work in conversation with the editors while keeping true to their voice and vision. I am proud of this collective labor of love.”
The editors collectively expressed a hope for the readers of The New Testament in Color to grow in appreciation for the wider perspectives on biblical interpretation.
Peeler said, “My deepest hope is that all readers grow in their appreciation for the beauty of many perspectives and when they do so, they also grow in their awe of the creativity and abundance of God’s truth.”
“I hope that people are neither hyper critical nor paternalistic,” McCaulley said. “All biblical commentaries worthy of the name help people understand God’s Word so as to be captured by the vision of the human life contained therein. We hope that it inspires the reader to live more faithfully. Since no one corner of the church has the market on faithful living, the varied cultures included within the commentary might provide fresh insight into the nature of Christian fidelity. I also hope that alongside the differences they hear, they also note elements of familiarity. We are not completely closed off from one another. The same Spirit that inspired the Scriptures also moves in and among the varied cultures in which the gospel has taken root.”
Contact: Krista Clayton | kclayton@ivpress.com
