If you were going to be writing a summary/introductory discussion of New Testament studies for people who aren’t New Testament scholars, which introductory textbook would you use?

Introduction of the New Testament by Henry Clarence Thiessen (1958)

Or maybe one of these?

• An Introduction to the New Testament by D. A. Carson & Douglas Moo (2005)
• An Introduction to the New Testament by David A. deSilva (2004)
• Introducing the New Testament by Mark Powell (2009)

If you would prefer one of the latter three (or any number of the other NT intros published in the past 15 years–there are plenty), then you can understand why I groan in pain every time someone refers to John Lyon’s Introduction to Theoretical Linguistics from 1968 as if its a good place to start introducing linguistics to New Testament students.

It isn’t.

What you want is something like:

• Contemporary Linguistics: An Introduction by O’Grady et al. (2017)
  • O’Grady et al.’s previous 6th edition (2009) good cheaper option
• Language Files: Materials for an Introduction to Language and Linguistics by the Department of Linguistics at Ohio State University (2016)
• Linguistics: An Introduction by McGregor (2015)

Stop recommending John Lyon’s intro to people. It’s historically interesting, but it isn’t theoretically or practically interesting today. It’s out of date throughout, factually deficient in many places, and represents theoretical and methodological frameworks that are no longer in use. And if a linguist saw you doing it, they’d be disturbed and confused.