Designed for introductory students and presuming virtually no previous knowledge, this textbook substantially differs from those presently available in the field. It has several special emphases: 1) It encourages students to read the New Testament, to make direct contact with the actual texts; 2) It urges students to think analytically rather than to learn by rote; 3) It shows students the New Testament texts had antecedents in written and oral tradition; 4) It enables students to discriminate between the ideas of the various documents they study and, thus, argues against the common naïve belief that all the New Testament authors say the same thing using somewhat different language. Each chapter on a Gospel begins with an account of the date and authorship of the Gospel.