New New Testament Archives

Tag Team with Michael Horton on “A New New Testament”

May 1, 2013

Over the last month, I have offered an extended review of Hal Taussig’s A New New Testament (see here for the final post with all the links). Taussig tries to add 10 apocryphal books to the existing NT canon.

Over at the White Horse Inn Blog, Mike Horton and I have offered a tag team review of this book. Mike offered his own review yesterday (April 30), and then he has posted my review today (May 1). He tackles the book more from a theological perspective and I examine it more from a historical perspective.

Since my portion was already posted here on my own website, let me give a portion of Mike’s excellent review:

Only in America do scholars imagine that they can invent a new kind of Christianity by casting votes. Talk about a conspiracy of elites ignoring the voices of millions of believers from every continent and language! Contrast this with the reception of the biblical canon—early and geographically widespread—by the whole church.
It’s a simple point, but I think it goes to the heart of this whole genre of “Re-Imagining Christianity” as if early Christianity were an extended Oprah show. The point is this: certain canons give rise to certain communities. Representing the wider church (long before the rise of the Roman papacy), church councils met not to select texts for inclusion in the canon but to discern which texts were already canonical. As church historians like Eusebius recount, the church’s act was discernment and submission, not creativity and decision. There’s a reason you’ve heard of the 27 New Testament books we have.
…
If the church created rather than recognized the canonical Word as the voice of its Great Shepherd, then two problems arise. First, we must discount the way in which the earliest Christian writers appealed to Scripture, imposing the anachronism of a later (medieval) development. Second, we have little to say when writers like Hal Taussig, Elaine Pagels, Karen King, John Dominic Crossan, Bart Ehrman, and others claim that the only reason we have these 27 books is the arbitrary will of a circle of leaders claiming the mantle of the apostles.

Read the whole thing here.

Review of a “New New Testament”: Part 1

March 19, 2013

There has been much chatter recently about the new book by Hal Taussig called A New New Testament (Houghton Mifflin, 2013). It intends to combine the traditional 27 books of the New Testament along with 10 apocryphal writings from early Christianity. As I observed in a prior post, there is nothing particularly “new” about this sort of project—it has been tried again and again since the time of Marcion.

This post is the first installment of my review of this book, with many more to come. We will focus here just on the promotional description on the inside cover flap. This is an unusual place to begin a book review, I know, but it is warranted by the imprecise and sometimes false statements contained there. And these statements serve to frame the entire book.

The inside flap begins with the following:

Over the past century, numerous lost scriptures have been discovered, authenticated, translated, debated, celebrated.

Notice that right from the beginning these apocryphal writings are described as “lost scriptures.” Thus, it is already assumed from the outset that these books are scripture, but somehow they have been left out of the canon (no doubt by those pesky, narrow orthodox folks).

The problem with this language, of course, is that the scriptural status of these books is precisely what is in dispute. If one is writing a volume about why apocryphal literature should be regarded as scriptural, it is hardly appropriate (or persuasive) to just assume your conclusion before you even begin.

Next we read the following:

Many of these documents were as important to shaping early-Christian communities and beliefs as what we have come to call the New Testament;

Again, this is misleading. Although some communities no doubt where influenced by some of these books, they were not nearly as influential as the books of the New Testament. I have argued elsewhere (see here), that apocryphal writings are not nearly as popular within early Christianity as often claimed. Thus, there is little reason to say they are “as important” as the canonical books.

The next sentence reads:

These were not the work of shunned sects or rebel apostles, not alternative histories or doctrines, but part of the vibrant conversations that sparked the rise of Christianity.

Again, this is simply not true. None of these “new” documents were written in the first century. None have any claim to be original or early. And none were written by apostles. And yes they were shunned. The Gospel of Thomas, for example, was widely and broadly condemned by early Christian leaders and never made it into any NT lists, nor is it ever found in manuscripts alongside any other New Testament writings. Thus, one could hardly say the Gospel of Thomas was one of the books that “sparked the rise of Christianity.”

Finally, we read:

Why should these books be set aside? Why should they continue to be lost to most of us? And don’t we have a great deal to gain by placing them back into contact with the twenty-seven books of the traditional New Testament—by hearing, finally, a full range of voices that formed the early chorus of Christians?

Here we finally come to the plea for inclusiveness—a plea that will no doubt ring true in many postmodern ears. These apocryphal writings are presented to us as the unfortunate victims of exclusion and oppression, and now finally in the modern day we have the opportunity to right the wrongs of the past and let these writings have their rightful place.

Notice that such language entirely skips the issue of the historical merits of these books. What matters is not so much the books themselves, but the principle that no books should be privileged over any other. This is 21st century relativism at its best.

In the end, the promotional description of the book actually reveals a lot about this project. While this book has the guise of neutral scholarship, it is, at its core, a book with a clear religious commitment. To be sure, it is not the religious commitment of historical Christianity. Instead it is the religious commitment of postmodernity. But it is a religious commitment nonetheless.

Now, there is nothing wrong with writing a book that has a religious commitment. But it should at least be acknowledged when it is done.

A New ‘New Testament’ is an Old, Old Idea

March 13, 2013

My email inbox has been flooded over the last day or so with queries about the recent book by Hal Taussig called A New New Testament (Houghton Mifflin, 2013). I have to admit, I love the title. When it comes to sensationalistic claims about the New Testament canon, modern publishers know what sells. This volume has bypassed the normal catchwords found in the titles of such books—words like “lost”, “forgotten”, “secret”, or “banned”—and has set a new standard for marketing apocryphal writings.

This volume also sets itself apart by the grandiosity of its claims. Here is the promo for the book:

To create this New New Testament, Hal Taussig called together a council of scholars and spiritual leaders to discuss and reconsider which books belong in the New Testament. They talked about these recently found documents, the lessons therein, and how they inform the previously bound books. They voted on which should be added, choosing ten new books to include in a New New Testament.

It’s one thing to suggest apocryphal books are early, or that they contain some true historical nuggets, but it is quite another to pick an entirely new canon on the basis of some arbitrarily chosen council of modern “scholars and spiritual leaders.” Do we really think these 19 people are in a position to decide such things? Is that the way we know which books are Scripture and which are not?

But while such grandiose claims about the New Testament canon may seem entirely new, it is in fact a very, very old idea. For one, there are other modern examples of such activity. The book The Five Gospels (Harper One, 1996), effectively rewrote the 4-Gospel canon by adding a fifth gospel, The Gospel of Thomas. Moreover, the book included the results of the votes of members of the “Jesus Seminar” about which sayings/stories of Jesus were authentic and which were not.

In the end, we were left not with a New Testament, but with the Jesus Seminar’s personal, private New Testament. And that is something entirely different.

But, the idea of rewriting the canon according to one’s personal preferences goes back even further. In fact, this was a challenge faced by the very earliest Christians. In the 140’s, a wealthy ship-owner named Marcion decided that the canon of the church was not the one he preferred and proceeded to offer his own—a truncated canon composed of only Luke and 10 epistles of Paul. But, Marcion went even further. In addition to selecting his own books, he took out the scalpel and edited these books, attempting to take out as much of the “Jewish” aspects as he could.

Marcion’s actions were widely condemned by the early church. He was condemned not only for his heretical views, but for his willingness to reshape and rewrite the New Testament canon according to his own personal preferences. The canon is just not something that one person (or 19!) can create.

Thus, despite the claims of this modern book to be doing something new and original, it is nothing of the sort. The idea of a New New Testament, is an old, old idea. One that has already been tried, and already been rejected.

Over the next few months, I will offer an extended review of Taussig’s new book, spread over a number of different blog posts. And I want to assure my friend Michael Bird that I will take a “nice deep breath” before I do so!