Apocryphal Literature Archives - Page 2 of 11

IVP Academic Set to Release My Book on the Second Century

January 2, 2018

Last year (2017) my book on second-century Christianity was released with SPCK in the UK: Christianity at the Crossroads: How the Second Century Shaped the Future of the Church.

For my American colleagues and friends however, this book has not been easy to get. Since it is a dual publication between SPCK and IVP Academic, and since it was released by SPCK first, it has thus far only been (technically) available if ordered from the UK.

I am pleased to say that its US release is almost here. IVP Academic plans to release it March 6th (see here).

And I have to say I love the new cover (see inset picture). I also thought the SPCK cover was great, so I am blessed that I like both of them (which is not always true for authors).

In addition, the volume has a new description, and a new set of endorsements: [Read more…]

The Heresy of Orthodoxy: How and When was the New Testament Canon Put Together?

November 20, 2017

For the last few weeks, I have been posting a series of videos where Andreas Köstenberger and I discuss our response to Walter Bauer’s thesis on heresy and orthodoxy in early Christianity.

These discussions are based on our book, The Heresy of Orthodoxy: How Contemporary Culture’s Fascination with Diversity Has Reshaped Our Understanding of Early Christianity (Crossway, 2010).

The first week was an overview of Bauer and why we wrote the book (see here), and the second week was on the role of diversity in the NT books themselves (see here).

In this video below, we discuss an area very central to the Bauer thesis, namely the development of the NT canon. Bauer argues that we have no reason to think the books in our NT are the “right” books because they are simply the books chosen by the theological winners. And the winners get to determine the scope of the canon.

After all, argues Bauer, what if another early Christian group had prevailed? What if the Gnostics had won? Then we might have the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Philip in our Bibles instead of, say, Matthew and John.

This sort of narrative about the origins of the canon has been repeated countless times over the years, in both popular and academic literature. But it runs into a significant problem: [Read more…]

The Heresy of Orthodoxy: Who is Walter Bauer and Why Write a Book About Him?

November 6, 2017

In 1934, the German scholar Walter Bauer wrote a landmark work entitled Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity. The problem was that no one yet knew it was a landmark work. The Germans (and the world) had other things on their mind during this phase of European history.

But, in 1971 the book was translated into English. And with all the new found (largely American) fascination with apocryphal Gospels like the Gospel of Thomas, the English translation proved to be well timed.

Bauer’s core thesis was that early Christianity was profoundly diverse in terms of its theological commitments. Various Christian groups believed all sorts of contradictory things about Jesus, salvation, creation and a myriad of other Christian doctrines. [Read more…]

Codex and Canon: A Response to John Meade (Part 2)

October 12, 2017

The conversation between myself and John Meade continues. He offered an initial critique of chapter 7 of Canon Revisited, to which I responded. And now he has responded to my response. (I know, the back-and-forth is hard to keep up with!).

I appreciate Meade’s interaction with my material. In some ways, our conversation is making progress. But in other ways, unfortunately, it is not. Let me offer some reflections on his latest post.

Understanding the Argument from the Codex

In my initial response to Meade, I argued that he has misunderstood the argument I (and others) are making about the codex. The argument is not that the codex book format can provide exact boundaries of the canon. Nor is the argument that any book that appears in a codex is automatically canon.

Thus, simply pointing out that non-canonical books appear in a codex format is not a valid counter-argument. Meade keeps making this counter-argument and that is why I suggested he is taking an “all-or-nothing” approach to the codex. He acts as if one exception makes the codex irrelevant for canon.

In his latest post, Meade defends himself against this “all-or-nothing” approach, but I confess I do not understand his defense. [Read more…]

What Do Manuscripts Tell Us About the Origins of the NT Canon? A Response to John Meade

October 10, 2017

Over at Evangelical Textual Criticism, John Meade has posted an article reviewing chapter seven of my book, Canon Revisited. In particular, he challenges a number of the arguments I use to show how NT manuscripts may illumine our understanding of the development of the NT canon.

Meade focuses his comments on two issues, namely the number of manuscripts and the use of the codex. Before offering a response to those issues below, let me begin by making a simple observation about the purpose of this chapter. If one understands the flow of the argument in the book, and sets chapter seven in the larger context of the prior chapters, it will become clear that the exploration of these manuscripts is not intended to provide a definitive answer to which books are in the canon. Nowhere do I argue that we know which books are in the canon simply be looking at the features of early Christian manuscripts.

Indeed, the prior six chapters are making a very different argument about how we know which books are in and which books are out (an argument I will not rehearse here). The discussion of manuscripts, then, is provided simply as something that further illumines the history of the canon. It provides a general (but not absolute) confirmation of what we see from other kinds of evidence (patristic and otherwise). [Read more…]