Chapter 3

Chapter 3

Notes

Introduction

While there has been a wide consensus on these books, there are still modern-day exceptions: e.g., the Syrian Orthodox church still uses a lectionary that presupposes the twenty-two-book canon of the Peshitta.

More recent studies on canon include: Gerd Theissen, The New Testament: A Literary History (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2012); Michael J. Kruger, Canon Revisited: Establishing the Origins and Authority of the New Testament Books (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2012); Charles E. Hill, Who Chose the Gospels? Probing the Great Gospel Conspiracy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); Einar Thomassen, ed., Canon and Canonicity: The Formation and Use of Scripture (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2010); Michael Bird and Michael Pahl, eds., The Sacred Text (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias, 2010); Lee M. McDonald, The Biblical Canon: Its Origin, Transmission, and Authority (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2007); Lee M. McDonald, Forgotten Scriptures: The Selection and Rejection of Early Religious Writings (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2009); David L. Dungan, Constantine’s Bible: Politics and the Making of the New Testament (Philadelphia: Fortress, 2006); Christopher Seitz, The Goodly Fellowship of the Prophets: The Achievement of Association in Canon Formation (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2009); Craig Bartholomew et al., eds., Canon and Biblical Interpretation (Carlisle: Paternoster, 2006); David R. Nienhuis, Not by Paul Alone: The Formation of the Catholic Epistle Collection and the Christian Canon (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2007); Craig A. Evans and Emanuel Tov, eds., Exploring the Origins of the Bible: Canon Formation in Historical, Literary, and Theological Perspectives (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008).

The most recent example is the so-called Gospel of Jesus’s Wife, which is now regarded by many as a forgery. Before this, it was the Gospel of Judas that garnered all the attention; see Herbert Krosney, The Lost Gospel: The Quest for the Gospel of Judas Iscariot (Hanover, PA: National Geographic Society, 2006); James M. Robinson, The Secrets of Judas: The Story of the Misunderstood Disciple and His Lost Gospel (San Francisco: HarperSanFrancisco, 2006); and Bart D. Ehrman, The Lost Gospel of Judas Iscariot: A New Look at Betrayer and Betrayed (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006). In addition, there continue to be new publications on previously discovered apocryphal gospels: e.g., Mark S. Goodacre, Thomas and the Gospels: The Case for Thomas’s Familiarity with the Synoptics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012); Simon Gathercole, The Composition of the Gospel of Thomas: Original Language and Influences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012); and Paul Foster, The Gospel of Peter: Introduction, Critical Edition and Commentary (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2010).

For the most updated work on pseudonymity in the New Testament, see Bart D. Ehrman, For­gery and Counterforgery: The Use of Literary Deceit in Early Christian Polemics (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012).

Heikki Räisänen, Beyond New Testament Theology: A Story and a Program (London: SCM, 1990); James D. G. Dunn, Unity and Diversity in the New Testament: An Inquiry into the Character of Early Christianity, 3rd ed. (London: SCM, 2006); Bart D. Ehrman, Lost Christianities: The Battles for Scripture and the Faiths We Never Knew (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002).

Kurt Aland, The Problem of the New Testament Canon (London: A. R. Mowbray & Co., 1962), p. 31.

Harry Y. Gamble, The New Testament Canon: Its Making and Meaning (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985), p. 12. As we shall see below, there are variations of this sort of argument. Some scholars have argued that there was nothing about early Christianity that would have naturally led to the kind of canon Christianity ended up with (namely a closed, authoritative canon). See David Brakke, “Canon Formation and Social Conflict in Fourth Century Egypt: Athanasius of Alexandria’s Thirty-Ninth Festal Letter,” HTR 87 (1994): pp. 395-419, esp. 408-9.

Eugene Ulrich, “The Notion and Definition of Canon,” in The Canon Debate, ed. Lee M. McDonald and James A. Sanders (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2002), p. 35. Cf. Hugo Lundhaug, “Canon and Interpretation: A Cognitive Perspective,” in Canon and Canonicity: The Formation and Use of Scripture, pp. 67-90, at p. 68; and Wilfred C. Smith, What Is Scripture? A Comparative Approach (London: SPCK, 1993), p. 237. For further discussion on this concept, see John Webster, “‘A Great and Meritorious Act of the Church’? The Dogmatic Location of the Canon,” in Die Einheit der Schrift und die Vielfalt des Kanons, ed. John Barton and Michael Wolter (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2003), pp. 95-126, at pp. 98-101.

Karl Barth, Church Dogmatics (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1975), I/1:107, makes a very similar statement when he declares, “The Bible constitutes itself the Canon. It is the Canon because it imposed itself upon the Church.” However, the difference is that Barth is referring to something the Scripture itself does, whereas the extrinsic model is referring to what the church (or another ecclesiastical group) does.

Adolf von Harnack, Origin of the New Testament and the Most Important Consequences of a New Creation (London: Williams & Northgate, 1925), p. 31.

Loren L. Johns, “Was ‘Canon’ Ever God’s Will?,” in Jewish and Christian Scriptures: The Function of “Canonical” and “Non-Canonical” Religious Texts, ed. James H. Charlesworth and Lee M. McDonald (London: T & T Clark, 2010), p. 42 (emphasis his). For more on the canon as a demonstration of power, see Alan K. Bowman and Greg Wolf, eds., Literacy and Power in the Ancient World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); Gerald L. Bruns, “Canon and Power in the Hebrew Scriptures,” CI 10 (1984): 462-80; Kim Haines-Eitzen, Guardians of Letters: Literacy, Power, and the Transmitters of Early Christian Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); and Robert P. Coote and Mary P. Coote, Power, Politics, and the Making of the Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990).

Christopher Evans, Is “Holy Scripture” Christian? (London: SCM, 1971), pp. 7 and 34. See also C. F. Evans, “The New Testament in the Making,” in The Cambridge History of the Bible: From the Beginnings to Jerome, ed. P. R. Ackroyd and C. F. Evans (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), pp. 232-83, at p. 235.

McDonald, Biblical Canon, p. 426.

Brevard S. Childs, The New Testament as Canon: An Introduction (London: SCM, 1984), p. 21.

Ibid., p. 12.

Ibid., p. 19.

Dungan, Constantine’s Bible, pp. 32-53.

Ibid., p. 120.

Helmut Koester, Introduction to the New Testament, vol. 2, History and Literature of Early Christianity (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1982), p. 8. The idea that Marcion was responsible for the origins of the New Testament canon can be found most notably in Adolf von Harnack, Marcion: Das Evangelium von fremden Gott (Leipzig: J. C. Hinrichs, 1924); Hans von Campenhausen, The Formation of the Christian Bible (London: Adam & Charles Black, 1972); and John Knox, Marcion and the New Testament: An Essay in the Early History of the Canon (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1942). However, Marcion’s role in the formation of the canon has been minimized in recent years: e.g., John Barton, “Marcion Revisited,” in Canon Debate, pp. 341-54; John Barton, The Spirit and the Letter: Studies in the Biblical Canon (London: SPCK, 1997), pp. 35-62; Franz Stuhlhofer, Der Gebrauch Der Bibel Von Jesus Bis Euseb: Eine Statistische Untersuchung Zur Kanonsgeschichte (Wuppertal: R. Brockhaus, 1988), pp. 73-75; David L. Balás, “Marcion Revisited: A ‘Post-Harnack’ Perspective,” in Texts and Testaments: Critical Essays on the Bible and the Early Church Fathers, ed. W. Eugene March (San Antonio: Trinity University Press, 1980), pp. 95-107; and Robert M. Grant, The Formation of the New Testament (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), p. 126.

Koester, Introduction to the New Testament, vol. 2, p. 10 (emphasis mine). There are other versions of this hypothesis; some suggest the canon was created to counteract the flood of apocryphal literature in the second century. See Kenneth L. Carroll, “The Earliest New Testament,” BJRL 38 (1955): 45-57.

Elaine Pagels, Beyond Belief: The Secret Gospel of Thomas (New York: Random House, 2003), pp. 114-42.

For a study that emphasizes the role of the church in the development of the canon, see Craig D. Allert, A High View of Scripture? The Authority of the Bible and the Formation of the New Testament Canon (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007).

Gamble, New Testament Canon, p. 12 (emphasis mine).

Obviously, we are using the functional definition for “canon” here. For further discussions of definition, see chapter one.

Everett Ferguson, “Factors Leading to the Selection and Closure of the New Testament Canon,” in Canon Debate, pp. 295-320, at p. 295.

Childs, New Testament as Canon, p. 21.

John C. Peckham, “The Canon and Biblical Authority: A Critical Comparison of Two Models of Canonicity,” TrinJ 28 (2007): 229-49, contrasts two models, which he calls the “community” model and the “intrinsic” model. Although the terminology is similar to what we are using here, Peckham’s two models are very different because he is addressing the question of where the authority of the canon comes from—whether from the community or from the canon itself. In contrast, this volume is not using the term “intrinsic” to speak of the authority of the canon but is using it to speak of the historical development of the canon.

When we deal with the definition of canon in chapter one, we shall argue that the ontological definition is a legitimate option and should not be disallowed simply because it is theological. However, one does not need to hold the ontological definition of canon in order to affirm the intrinsic model. The latter can exist without the former.

David G. Meade, “Ancient Near Eastern Apocalypticism and the Origins of the New Testament Canon of Scripture,” in The Bible as a Human Witness: Hearing the Word of God Through Historically Dissimilar Traditions, ed. Randall Heskett and Brian Irwin (London: T & T Clark, 2010), pp. 302-21, at p. 304.

Chapter 1

Brevard S. Childs, Introduction to the Old Testament as Scripture (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1979), p. 51.

Some recent studies on the definition of canon include: John Barton, The Spirit and the Letter: Studies in the Biblical Canon (London: SPCK, 1997), pp. 1-34; Stephen B. Chapman, The Law and the Prophets: A Study in Old Testament Canon Formation (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000), pp. 71-110; idem, “How the Biblical Canon Began: Working Models and Open Questions,” in Margalit Finkelberg and Guy G. Strousma, eds., Homer, the Bible, and Beyond (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2003), pp. 29-51; John Webster, “‘A Great and Meritorious Act of the Church’? The Dogmatic Location of the Canon,” in Die Einheit der Schrift und die Vielfalt des Kanons, ed. John Barton and Michael Wolter (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2003), pp. 95-126; Eugene Ulrich, “The Notion and Definition of Canon,” in The Canon Debate, ed. Lee M. McDonald and James A. Sanders (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2002), pp. 21-35; idem, “Qumran and the Canon of the Old Testament,” in The Biblical Canons, ed. J.-M. Auwers and H. J. de Jonge (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2003), pp. 57-80; Jonathan Z. Smith, “Canons, Catalogues, and Classics,” in Canonization and Decanonization, pp. 295-311; Kendall W. Folkert, “The ‘Canons’ of ‘Scripture,’” in Rethinking Scripture: Essays from a Comparative Perspective, ed. Miriam Levering (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1989), pp. 170-79; James A. Sanders, Torah and Canon (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1972), pp. 91-98; Gerald T. Sheppard, “Canon,” in Encyclopedia of Religion, ed. Lindsay Jones (Detroit: Thomson Gale, 1987), 3:62-69; John C. Peckham, “The Canon and Biblical Authority: A Critical Comparison of Two Models of Canonicity,” TrinJ 28 (2007): 229-49; John Goldingay, Models for Scripture (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), pp. 85-197.

Our concern throughout this chapter is not the word canon itself (κανών, borrowed from the Hebrew ‭הנכ), but the concept of canon. Put differently, we are asking what sociohistorical or theological phenomenon is referred to when we use the word canon, not the etymology or history of the term. This is unfortunate, because considering only the term itself can bring confusion rather than clarity. For example, Geoffrey M. Hahneman, in “The Muratorian Fragment and the Origins of the New Testament Canon,” in Canon Debate, p. 406, has attempted to argue for a late date for the canon by appealing to the fact that the term canon (in either Greek or Latin) was not used to refer to a list of Christian Scriptures until the fourth century or later. However, there is no reason to think the appearance of the term itself is decisive—it is the concept behind the term that must be clarified and considered. Although others do not go to the extreme of Hahneman, there seems to be a fascination with the etymology of the term: e.g., Bruce M. Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance (Oxford: Clarendon, 1987), pp. 289-93; Harry Y. Gamble, The New Testament Canon: Its Making and Meaning (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985), pp. 15-18; and Ulrich, “Notion and Definition of Canon,” pp. 21-35. In fact, Alexander Souter, in The Text and Canon of the New Testament (London: Duckworth, 1954), declares, “The word ‘Canon’ has had a history unsurpassed in interest, perhaps, by any other word in the Greek language” (p. 141).

On this point, see Ulrich, “Notion and Definition of Canon,” p. 34; and Craig D. Allert, A High View of Scripture? The Authority of the Bible and the Formation of the New Testament Canon (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007), pp. 49-51. Once again, it should be noted that not all scholars in the extrinsic camp necessarily adopt this definition, nor do all scholars outside the extrinsic camp reject it. The point of this chapter is that this definition is a general tenet of the extrinsic model and therefore warrants our careful examination.

Chapman, “How the Biblical Canon Began,” pp. 34-35, uses the term “extrinsic” instead of “exclusive.” The former term is also used in Smith, “Canons, Catalogues, and Classics,” p. 297. But Chapman does use the latter term in Stephen B. Chapman, “The Canon Debate: What It Is and Why It Matters” (presented at SBL, San Diego, 2007).

Albert C. Sundberg, “Towards a Revised History of the New Testament Canon,” Studia Evangelica 4 (1968): 452-61; idem, “The Making of the New Testament Canon,” in The Interpreter’s One-Volume Commentary on the Bible (Nashville: Abingdon, 1971), pp. 1216-24. Of course, Sund­­berg is not the first scholar to propose a sharp distinction between Scripture and canon. Its roots can be traced to W. Staerk, “Der Schrift- und Kanonbegriff der jüdischen Bibel,” ZST 6 (1929): 101-19; Gustav Hölscher, Kanonisch und Apocryph. Ein Kapitel aus der Geschichte des altestamentlichen Kanons (Naumburg: Lippert, 1905); and arguably back to Semler’s original critique of canon, Abhandlung von freier Untersuchung des Canon (Halle, 1771–1775). See discussion in Iain Provan, “Canons to the Left of Him: Brevard Childs, His Critics, and the Future of Old Testament Theology,” SJT 50 (1997): 9-11; and Chapman, Law and the Prophets, p. 34.

David H. Kelsey, The Uses of Scripture in Recent Theology (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1975), pp. 104-5.

James Barr, The Scope and Authority of the Bible (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1980), p. 120.

Gamble, New Testament Canon, pp. 18-19. Elsewhere, Gamble nuances his view further and acknowledges that other definitions have some validity: e.g., Harry Y. Gamble, “The Canon of the New Testament,” in The New Testament and Its Modern Interpreters, ed. Eldon J. Epp and George MacRae (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1989), pp. 201-43; idem, “The New Testament Canon: Recent Research and the Status Quaestionis,” in Canon Debate, pp. 267-94.

Barton, Spirit and the Letter, pp. 1-34.

John Barton, “Canonical Approaches Ancient and Modern,” in Biblical Canons, p. 202; see also idem, Oracles of God: Perceptions of Ancient Prophecy in Israel After the Exile (London: Darton, Longman, and Todd, 1985), pp. 55-82.

Geoffrey M. Hahneman, The Muratorian Fragment and the Development of the Canon (Oxford: Clarendon, 1992), pp. 129-30.

Lee M. McDonald, The Biblical Canon: Its Origin, Transmission, and Authority (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2007), pp. 38-69; idem, Forgotten Scriptures: The Selection and Rejection of Early Religious Writings (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2009), pp. 11-33. As a whole, McDonald is more balanced in the way he holds Sundberg’s definition, recognizing that other definitions have some validity.

Ulrich, “Notion and Definition of Canon,” pp. 21-35.

Allert, High View of Scripture?, p. 51 (emphasis mine).

E.g., George Aichele, “Canon, Ideology, and the Emergence of an Imperial Church,” in Canon and Canonicity: The Formation and Use of Scripture, ed. Einar Thomassen (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2010), pp. 45-65; Julio Trebolle-Barrera, “Origins of a Tripartite Old Testament Canon,” in Canon Debate, pp. 128-45; David L. Dungan, Constantine’s Bible: Politics and the Making of the New Testament (Philadelphia: Fortress, 2006), pp. 1-10; H. J. de Jonge, “The New Testament Canon,” in Biblical Canons, pp. 309-19; and John C. Poirier, “Scripture and Canon,” in The Sacred Text, ed. Michael Bird and Michael Pahl (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias, 2010), pp. 83-98.

David R. Nienhuis, Not by Paul Alone: The Formation of the Catholic Epistle Collection and the Christian Canon (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2007), p. 235.

Provan, “Canons to the Left of Him,” pp. 9-10.

E.g., as noted in the introduction, the modern-day lectionary of the Syrian Orthodox Church still operates on the twenty-two-book canon of the Peshitta. For further discussion see Metzger, Canon of the New Testament, pp. 218-28.

Harry Y. Gamble, “Christianity: Scripture and Canon,” in The Holy Book in Comparative Perspective, ed. Frederick M. Denny and Rodney L. Taylor (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1985), pp. 46-47. Gamble argues that church councils such as Laodicea (in 360) were local, not ecumenical, and therefore had no binding authority. Lee M. McDonald, “The Integrity of the Biblical Canon in Light of Its Historical Development,” BBR 6 (1996): 131-32, agrees: “There was never a time when the church as a whole concluded that these writings and no others could help the church carry out its mission in the world.”

Chapman, “Canon Debate,” p. 14.

Dungan, Constantine’s Bible, p. 133.

Barton, Spirit and the Letter, pp. 18-19. We will explore this issue further in chapter five.

Dungan, Constantine’s Bible, pp. 132-33.

Webster, “Dogmatic Location of the Canon,” pp. 96-97.

Stephen G. Dempster, “Canons on the Right and Canons on the Left: Finding a Resolution in the Canon Debate,” JETS 52 (2009): 51.

Allert, High View of Scripture?, p. 67.

Ibid., p. 88.

Ibid., p. 12.

By “general consensus” I mean that the vast majority of the church was in agreement about the boundaries of the canon, even though there may have been pockets of the church that still had differing views.

Brevard S. Childs, The New Testament as Canon: An Introduction (London: SCM, 1984), p. 25.

Idem, “On Reclaiming the Bible for Christian Theology,” in Reclaiming the Bible for the Church, ed. Carl E. Braaten and Robert W. Jenson (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), p. 9.

Chapman, “How the Biblical Canon Began,” pp. 34-35, uses the term “intrinsic” for the functional definition, as does Smith, “Canons, Catalogues, and Classics,” p. 297. Elsewhere, Chapman uses the term “inclusive” (“Canon Debate,” p. 12).

Barton, Spirit and the Letter, pp. 4-8. For Harnack’s original thesis, see Adolf von Harnack, Origin of the New Testament and the Most Important Consequences of a New Creation (London: Williams & Northgate, 1925). Harnack is a good example of someone who is clearly in the extrinsic camp but does not, for whatever set of reasons, follow the exclusive definition of canon. Thus, we are reminded again that there is not a one-to-one correspondence between the extrinsic model and this definition of canon.

Barton, Spirit and the Letter, pp. 1-14. As observed by Barton, Zahn’s emphasis on the early Christian use of canonical books (instead of just formulaic markers) has found some support in the recent statistical work of Franz Stuhlhofer, Der Gebrauch Der Bibel Von Jesus Bis Euseb: Eine Statistische Untersuchung Zur Kanonsgeschichte (Wuppertal: R. Brockhaus, 1988). Stuhlhofer argues that the core canonical books of the New Testament were used substantially more often (in proportion to their size) than noncanonical books (and even the Old Testament).

Of course, Childs himself does not prefer the term “canonical criticism” (Introduction to the Old Testament, p. 82), but that term has been used to refer to this approach since it was apparently coined by Sanders (Torah and Canon, pp. ix-xx).

James Sanders, “Canon: Hebrew Bible,” in ABD 1:843 (emphasis his).

Sheppard, “Canon,” p. 64.

Chapman, Law and the Prophets, pp. 71-110; Chapman, “How the Biblical Canon Began,” pp. 29-51.

Provan, “Canons to the Left of Him,” pp. 9-11.

D. Meade, Pseudepigrapha and Canon (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1986), p. 24.

Stephanus J. P. K. Riekert, “Critical Research and the One Christian Canon Comprising Two Testaments,” Neot 14 (1981): 21-41.

Dempster, “Canons on the Right and Canons on the Left,” pp. 50-51.

McDonald, Forgotten Scriptures, pp. 23-25.

McDonald argues that terms like “decanonization” or “temporary canonization” are nonsensical (Forgotten Scriptures, pp. 23-25). For more on this issue, see A. van der Kooij and K. van der Toorn, eds., Canonization and Decanonization (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1998).

Webster, “Dogmatic Location of the Canon,” p. 101.

Harnack, History of Dogma, vol. 2 (New York: Dover, 1961), p. 62n1.

Harnack’s core thesis regarding Marcion was supported by Hans von Campenhausen, The Formation of the Christian Bible (London: Adam & Charles Black, 1972) (German title: Die Entstehung der christlichen Bibel [Tubingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1968]). For other assessments of Marcion’s influence on the canon, see R. Joseph Hoffmann, Marcion: On the Restitution of Christianity: An Essay on the Development of Radical Paulinist Theology in the Second Century (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1984); Barton, Spirit and the Letter, pp. 35-62; and Robert Grant, The Formation of the New Testament (New York: Harper & Row, 1965), p. 126.

Smith, “Canons, Catalogues, and Classics,” pp. 295-311; H. J. Adriaanse, “Canonicity and the Problem of the Golden Mean,” in Canonization and Decanonization, pp. 313-30; Aleida Assmann and Jan Assmann, eds., Kanon und Zensur, Archäologie der literarischen Kommunikation II (München: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 1987); Paul Davies, Whose Bible Is It Anyway? (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1995), pp. 17-27.

Paul Ricoeur, “The ‘Sacred’ Text and the Community,” in The Critical Study of Sacred Texts, ed. Wendy D. O’Flaherty (Berkeley: Graduate Theological Union, 1979), pp. 271-76. A number of recent studies of canon have taken on a comparative dimension, showing how other religions, groups and communities have their own sorts of “canons.” E.g., Margalit Finkelberg and Guy G. Strousma, eds., Homer, the Bible and Beyond; Tomas Hägg, “Canon Formation in Greek Literary Culture,” in Canon and Canonicity, pp. 109-28; Wilfred C. Smith, What Is Scripture? A Comparative Approach (London: SPCK, 1993); Loveday Alexander, “Canon and Exegesis in the Medical Schools of Antiquity,” in The Canon of Scripture in Jewish and Christian Tradition, ed. Philip S. Alexander and Kaestli Jean-Daniel (Lausanne: Éditions du Zèbre, 2007), pp. 115-53; Armin Lange, “Oracle Collection and Canon: A Comparison Between Judah and Greece in Persian Times,” in Jewish and Christian Scripture as Artifact and Canon, ed. Craig A. Evans and H. Daniel Zacharias (London: T & T Clark, 2009), pp. 9-47; and many of the essays in Religion and Normativity, Vol 1: The Discursive Fight Over Religious Texts in Antiquity, ed. Anders-Christian Jacobson (Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2009).

Kelsey, Uses of Scripture in Recent Theology, p. 106.

On this general topic, see Alan K. Bowman and Greg Wolf, eds., Literacy and Power in the Ancient World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994); George Aichele, The Control of Biblical Meaning: Canon As Semiotic Mechanism (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2001); James E. Brenneman, Canons in Conflict: Negotiating Texts in True and False Prophecy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), pp. 52-80; Robert P. Coote and Mary P. Coote, Power, Politics, and the Making of the Bible (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1990); Gerald L. Bruns, “Canon and Power in the Hebrew Scriptures,” CI 10 (1984): 462-80; Kim Haines-Eitzen, Guardians of Letters: Literacy, Power, and the Transmitters of Early Christian Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); Max Weber, The Sociology of Religion (Boston: Beacon, 1993), p. 68; David Brakke, “Canon Formation and Social Conflict in Fourth Century Egypt: Athanasius of Alexandria’s Thirty-Ninth Festal Letter,” HTR 87 (1994): 395-419; and Aichele, “Canon, Ideology, and the Emergence of an Imperial Church,” pp. 45-65. In response to the idea that canons always represent those in power, see Willie van Peer, “Canon Formation: Ideology or Aesthetic Quality?,” British Journal of Aesthetics 36 (1996): 97-108.

Adherents of the exclusive definition may respond that their definition does not necessarily encourage the “naturalization” of canon because it allows for books to be regarded as “Scripture” prior to their recognition by the church. While this is certainly true, two concerns still remain: (1) As we noted above, the strict demarcation between Scripture and canon tends to diminish the authority of the former; i.e., it suggests there was only a loose, unbounded collection of Scripture prior to the church’s formal decisions. Thus, whatever ontology the exclusive definition might grant to “Scripture,” it is still understood to be different from the ontology of “canon.” (2) What is still lacking in the exclusive definition is an ontology of canon where the limits are determined by the purpose for which they were given, apart from the actions of the church. If God really gave certain books to serve as a permanent guide for the church—as the ontological definition maintains—then there is nothing incoherent about arguing that those limits are already there in principle. The “canon” is always the books God intended as a permanent foundation for his church; no more and no less. In this sense, the canon is “closed” as soon as the last book is given by God.

In light of the ontological definition, one might wonder what language should be used to describe “lost” apostolic books (e.g., Paul’s other letter to the Corinthians). Are we obligated to call these books “canon”? Not at all. C. Stephen Evans, “Canonicity, Apostolicity, and Biblical Authority: Some Kierkegaardian Reflections,” in Canon and Biblical Interpretation, ed. Craig Bartholomew, et al. (Carlisle: Paternoster, 2006), p. 155, makes the argument that we have good reasons to think that lost books were not intended by God to be in the canon. He declares, “It seems highly plausible, then, that if God is going to see that an authorized revelation is given, he will also see that this revelation is recognized. . . . On this view, then, the fact that the church recognized the books of the New Testament as canonical is itself a powerful reason to believe that these books are indeed the revelation God intended humans to have.” If God did not intend these lost books to be in the canon, then we have little reason to call them “canon.” As for what to call these lost books, we could refer to them simply as “other apostolic books” or even as “Scripture.” In regard to the latter term, this would be the one place where a distinction between “canon” and “Scripture” would be useful. Whereas Sundberg advocates a more permanent distinction between Scripture and canon, we would argue that this distinction would only apply to the narrow issue of lost apostolic books. When that issue is in view, canon is rightly a subset of Scripture—all canonical books are Scripture, but not all scriptural books are canonical. However, outside of this particular issue, there seems to be little reason to make a sharp distinction between Scripture and canon.

B. B. Warfield, “The Formation of the Canon of the New Testament,” in The Inspiration and Authority of the Bible (Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R, 1948), p. 415.

For examples of those who argue theological perspectives have no place in biblical studies, see Davies, Whose Bible Is It Anyway?, pp. 51-52; and also John J. Collins, “Is a Critical Biblical Theology Possible?,” in The Hebrew Bible and Its Interpreters, ed. William H. Propp (Winona Lake, IN: Eisenbrauns, 1990), pp. 1-17.

At this point, it is important that we are clear about the role of the ontological definition of canon within the overall “intrinsic” model we are advocating in this volume. As said in the introduction, the intrinsic model, as a whole, does not require any particular theological commitments about the divine origins of these books. Thus, one need not affirm the ontological definition of canon in order to hold to the intrinsic model. Although I am arguing that these three different definitions of canon work best as a unit, a person who wants to avoid theological commitments could just affirm the validity of the functional definition. The key point of this chapter is simply that the exclusive definition of canon—a major tenet of the extrinsic model—is problematic when it stands as the only definition of canon.

Provan, “Canons to the Left of Him,” p. 23. See also Iain Provan, “Ideologies, Literary and Critical: Reflections on Recent Writings on the History of Israel,” JBL 114 (1995): 585-606.

Francis Watson, Text and Truth: Redefining Biblical Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), p. 3. See also idem, “Bible, Theology and the University: A Response to Philip Davies,” JSOT 71 (1996): 3-16.

Floyd V. Filson, Which Books Belong in the Bible? A Study of the Canon (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1957), p. 42.

Kevin J. Vanhoozer, The Drama of Doctrine: A Canonical-Linguistic Approach to Christian Theology (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2005), p. 146.

As noted above, the exclusive definition still plays a legitimate role as long as some of its weaknesses are addressed. In particular, the exclusive definition needs to view the fourth century as the time that the church reached a general consensus on the boundaries of the canon, not the time in which the church officially acted to close the canon in an airtight manner.

Barton, Spirit and the Letter, pp. 1-34.

The fact that certain definitions of canon tend to match with certain stages of canonical history should not be taken as an indication they cannot be used for other stages. For example, the ontological definition—defined as the books God gave his church—could still be used to refer to the canon in the second, third or fourth century (and even now!). Likewise, the functional definition could be used in any century where books were regarded as Scripture. It is actually the exclusive definition that is most limited in this regard; it cannot be used prior to the fourth century.

Kevin J. Vanhoozer, First Theology: God, Scripture & Hermeneutics (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2002), pp. 159-203; Nicholas Wolterstorff, Divine Discourse: Philosophical Reflections on the Claim That God Speaks (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995); William P. Alston, Illocutionary Acts and Sentence Meaning (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000); John L. Austin, How to Do Things with Words (Oxford: Oxford Paperbacks, 1976); and John R. Searle, Speech Acts: An Essay in the Philosophy of Language (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970).

Austin, How to Do Things with Words, pp. 100-103; Michael S. Horton, Covenant and Eschatology: The Divine Drama (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2002), pp. 126-27; Wolterstorff, Divine Discourse, pp. 1-36.

Chapter 2

Harry Y. Gamble, The New Testament Canon: Its Making and Meaning (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1985), p. 57.

C. F. Evans, “The New Testament in the Making,” in The Cambridge History of the Bible: From the Beginnings to Jerome, ed. P. R. Ackroyd and C. F. Evans (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), pp. 232-83, at p. 234.

Morton S. Enslin, “Along Highways and Byways,” HTR 44 (1951): 67-92, at p. 70.

James Barr, Holy Scripture: Canon, Authority and Criticism (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1983), p. 12.

Gamble, New Testament Canon, p. 12 (emphasis mine).

For discussion of Israel as still in exile, see N. T. Wright, The New Testament and the People of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1992), pp. 268-79; Craig A. Evans, “Aspects of Exile and Restoration in the Proclamation of Jesus and the Gospels,” in Exile: Old Testament, Jewish, and Christian Conceptions, ed. James M. Scott (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1997), pp. 299-328; idem, “Jesus and the Continuing Exile of Israel,” in Jesus and the Restoration of Israel, ed. Carey C. Newman (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 1999), pp. 77-100; and Stephen G. Dempster, Dominion and Dynasty: A Biblical Theology of the Hebrew Bible (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2003), pp. 224-27.

Wright, New Testament and the People of God, pp. 272-79.

For more on messianic-redemptive expectations at Qumran, see Emile Puech, “Messianism, Resurrection, and Eschatology at Qumran and in the New Testament,” in The Community of the Renewed Covenant: The Notre Dame Symposium on the Dead Sea Scrolls, ed. Eugene Ulrich and James C. VanderKam (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994), pp. 235-56.

Heightened expectations of a new redemptive kingdom are also evident in the varied attempts to lead a revolution during the first century; e.g., Theudas (Josephus, Ant. 20.5.1); Judas the Galilean (Ant. 18.1-10; Acts 5:37); the Jew from Egypt (Ant. 20.8.6). The fact that Theudas wanted people to follow him to the Jordan where “the river would be parted” (Ant. 20.5.1; cf. Josh 3:14-17) suggests that he was looking for Israel to be delivered from exile. Likewise, the Jew from Egypt sought to lead his revolution in the desert (J.W. 2.13.4-5), which also indicates an exilic motif. For further discussion, see P. W. Barnett, “The Jewish Sign Prophets—A.D. 40–70: Their Intentions and Origin,” NTS 27 (1980): 679-97; Eric Eve, The Jewish Context of Jesus’ Miracles (London: Sheffield Academic Press, 2002), pp. 296-325; and E. P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief 63BCE–66CE (London: SCM, 1992), pp. 280-89.

Evidence that Second Temple groups were looking for a proper conclusion to the Old Testament story can be found in Wis 11–19; Jub 36; and Sir 50:1-21.

Wright, New Testament and the People of God, p. 217.

Although this is disputed by some scholars, there are good reasons to think the threefold canonical structure of the Old Testament would have been established by the time of Jesus; see Luke 24:44; Sir 39:1; 4QMMTc (10); Philo, Contempl. Life, 25. For discussion see Rolf Rendtorff, Theologie des Altens Testaments: Ein kanonischer Entwurf (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1999); Roger T. Beckwith, The Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church, and Its Background in Early Judaism (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986), pp. 110-80; Stephen B. Chapman, “The Old Testament Canon and Its Authority for the Christian Church,” Ex Auditu 19 (2003): 125-48; Christopher Seitz, The Goodly Fellowship of the Prophets: The Achievement of Association in Canon Formation (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2009), pp. 97-99. However, some scholars are less sure the order of the Old Testament canon was secure by this time: e.g., Craig A. Evans, “The Scriptures of Jesus and His Earliest Followers,” in The Canon Debate, ed. Lee M. McDonald and James A. Sanders (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2002), pp. 185-95; and Julio C. Trebolle-Barrera, “Origins of a Tripartite Old Testament Canon,” in Canon Debate, pp. 128-45.

Dempster, Dominion and Dynasty, pp. 224-27.

Nahum Sarna, “Bible,” in Encyclopedia Judaica III:832.

Wright, New Testament and the People of God, p. 401.

For more on the theme of kingdom, see George Eldon Ladd, Jesus and the Kingdom: The Eschatology of Biblical Realism (New York: Harper & Row, 1964); Herman Ridderbos, The Coming of the Kingdom (Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R, 1962); and Thomas Schreiner, New Testament Theology: Magnifying God in Christ (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008), pp. 41-116.

Vern S. Poythress, The Shadow of Christ in the Law of Moses (Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R, 1991), pp. 252-55; John Lierman, The New Testament Moses (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2004), pp. 258-88; Dale C. Allison, The New Moses: A Matthean Typology (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1993); and Wayne A. Meeks, The Prophet-King: Moses Traditions and the Johannine Christology (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1967).

For more on this theme, see Tremper Longman III and Daniel G. Reid, “Jesus: New Exodus, New Conquest,” in God Is a Warrior (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1995), pp. 91-118; and David Pao, Acts and the Isaianic New Exodus (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2000).

Evans, “Jesus and the Continuing Exile of Israel,” p. 99.

D. Moody Smith, “When Did the Gospels Become Scripture?,” JBL 119 (2000): 7. Although Genesis does not begin with a genealogy, the fact that the first and last books of the Old Testament contain genealogies is further evidence of its structural unity.

W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, The Gospel According to Saint Matthew (ICC; Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1997), 1:187.

Michael S. Horton, Covenant and Eschatology: The Divine Drama (Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 2002), p. 233; Geerhardus Vos, Biblical Theology (Edinburgh: Banner of Truth, 1975), p. 5. Examples of these redemptive epochs can be found in the latter volume.

Richard Lints, The Fabric of Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1993), p. 267.

Richard B. Gaffin, Resurrection and Redemption (Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R, 1978), p. 22.

1 Sam 8:8; 12:6; 2 Sam 7:23; Neh 9:9-10; Ps 78:12-14; 135:9; Is 11:16; Hos 11:1.

David Meade, “Ancient Near Eastern Apocalypticism and the Origins of the New Testament Canon of Scripture,” in The Bible as a Human Witness: Hearing the Word of God Through Historically Dissimilar Traditions, ed. Randall Heskett and Brian Irwin (London: T & T Clark, 2010), p. 315.

François Bovon, “The Canonical Structure of Gospel and Apostle,” in Canon Debate, pp. 516-27. His fuller arguments can be found in François Bovon, L’Evangile et l’Apôtre: Christ inséparable de ses témoins (Aubonne: Editions du Moulin, 1993).

Bovon emphasizes the degree to which redemptive event and proclamation go hand in hand when he observes, “The apostolic word becomes the indispensible complement to the act of redemption” (“Canonical Structure,” p. 517).

Ibid., pp. 516-27.

C. K. Barrett, “The First New Testament?,” NovT 38 (1996): 94-104.

Bovon, “Canonical Structure,” p. 516.

Ibid., p. 516 (emphasis mine).

Charles E. Hill, “God’s Speech in These Last Days: The New Testament Canon as an Eschatological Phenomenon,” in Resurrection and Eschatology: Theology in Service of the Church, ed. Lane G. Tipton and Jeffrey C. Waddington (Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R, 2008), pp. 203-54.

Adolf von Harnack, Origin of the New Testament and the Most Important Consequences of a New Creation (London: Williams & Northgate, 1925), p. 6.

Paul Anderson, The Christology of the Fourth Gospel (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1996), pp. 174-77, argues that Deuteronomy 18 provides a broad christological framework for the entire Gospel of John. This is further evidence, therefore, that Deuteronomy 18 was paradigmatic for early Christian interpretations of Jesus.

See also Qumran’s use of this prophecy in 4Q175 1.5-8; 1QS 9.11. Richard A. Horsley, “‘Like One of the Prophets of Old’: Two Types of Popular Prophets at the Time of Jesus,” CBQ 47 (1985): 435-63, argues that there is little evidence that Deut 18:18 played a central role in Jewish messianic expectations. However, that does not affect our point here. Whether or not Horsley is correct (and one might suggest he should give more weight to the Qumran texts), we are simply arguing that Deut 18:18 was central to the Christian interpretation of the ministry of Jesus of Nazareth.

See discussion in G. K. Beale, The Book of Revelation (NIGTC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), pp. 961-63.

See also the allusions to Is 11:4 in 4 Ezra 13:10-11, 37-38.

A number of Qumran texts that show that Isaiah 61:1-2 was understood as a prophecy specifically about the coming Messiah (e.g., 4Q52; 11Q13). See discussion in Graham N. Stanton, Jesus and Gospel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 15-18; and William Horbury, “‘Gospel’ in Herodian Judea,” in The Written Gospel, ed. Markus Bockmuehl and Donald A. Hagner (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 7-30.

Luke 4:18-19 modifies the LXX text at a number of points and also includes Is 58:6. Most notably, Luke changes the καλέσαι of Is 61:2 to the verb κηρύξαι –which increases further the focus on the “preaching” of the divine message. Luke’s use of the latter term to focus on the preaching/proclaiming theme is evident elsewhere in his writings (Lk 3:3; 4:44; 8:1, 39; 9:2; 12:3; 24:47; Acts 8:5; 9:20; 10:37, 42; 15:21; 19:13; 20:25; 28:31).

E.g., Mark 1:1; Justin Martyr, 1 Apol. 66.3; Dial. 10.2, 100.1; Ignatius, Smyrn. 5:1; Did. 8:2; 11:3. For more discussion of the origin of Gospel titles, see Martin Hengel, The Four Gospels and the One Gospel of Jesus Christ (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2000), pp. 90-106 ; and Helmut Koester, Ancient Christian Gospels: Their History and Development (London: SCM Press, 1990), pp. 1-31. Koester doubts that the Isaianic passages have influenced the application of the noun Gospel to written accounts (p. 3), but other scholars disagree. Richard Bauckham, in God Crucified: Monotheism and Christology in the New Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1999), p. 48, argues that the Isaianic themes are so prevalent in the Gospel accounts (and elsewhere) that the title “Gospel” likely came from these texts.

For discussion of this text, see John T. Willis, “Isaiah 2:2-5 and the Psalms of Zion,” in Writing and Reading the Scroll of Isaiah: Studies of an Interpretive Tradition, ed. Craig C. Broyles and Craig A. Evans (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1997), pp. 295-316.

Acts 1:8; Justin Martyr, Dial. 24, 1 Apol. 39; Irenaeus, Haer. 4.34.4; Tertullian, Adv. Jud. 3; Origen, Cels. 5.33; Clement of Alexandria, Protrepticus 1.

Pao, Acts and the Isaianic New Exodus, pp. 156-57.

Michael Pahl, “The ‘Gospel’ and the ‘Word’: Exploring Some Early Christian Patterns,” JSNT 29 (2006): 219.

This same verb occurs here and also in Lk 4:18-19 and Is 61:1-2 LXX.

Luke 24:47 probably echoes other Isaianic passages, particularly Is 49:6. See discussion in Pao, Acts and the Isaianic New Exodus, pp. 84-91.

Wright, New Testament and the People of God, p. 262. Some helpful studies on covenant include: O. Palmer Robertson, The Christ of the Covenants (Phillipsburg, NJ: P & R, 1980); idem, Covenants: God’s Way with His People (Philadelphia: Great Commission, 1978); Meredith G. Kline, Treaty of the Great King (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1963); idem, Kingdom Prologue: Genesis Foundations for a Covenantal Worldview (Overland Park, KS: Two Age Press, 2000); Thomas E. McComiskey, The Covenants of Promise: A Theology of the Old Testament Covenants (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1985); William J. Dumbrell, Covenant and Creation (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1984); Steven L. McKenzie, Covenant (St. Louis: Chalice, 2000); and most recently, Michael Horton, God of Promise: Introducing Covenant Theology (Grand Rapids: Baker, 2006).

For a helpful overview of covenant in Second Temple Judaism, see the collected essays in Stanley E. Porter and Jacqueline C. R. de Roo, eds., The Concept of Covenant in the Second Temple Period (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2003); and E. P. Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1977). Some have objected to the centrality of the covenantal concept in this period on the grounds that the term itself appears infrequently (particularly in rabbinic literature). For a response, see Sanders, Paul and Palestinian Judaism, pp. 420-21; Geza Vermes, The Dead Sea Scrolls: Qumran in Perspective (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1977), pp. 169-88; and Wright, New Testament and the People of God, p. 262.

Vermes, Qumran in Perspective, p. 165.

E.g., 1 Macc 1:15; 2:20; 4:8-11; 2 Macc 8:14-18.

E.g., 4 Ezra 5:21-30; T. Mos. 4:5; see also Qumran’s expectations about God’s covenantal renewal (CDa 6.19; 8.21; CDb 19.33-34; 20.12; 1QpHab 2.3; 1QM 1.1-3; 4Q175 14–18; 1QSb 3.25-26; 5.5, 21). More on covenant renewal at Qumran can be found in Shemaryahu Talmon, “The Community of the Renewed Covenant: Between Judaism and Christianity,” in Community of the Renewed Covenant, pp. 3-24. Discussion of “covenant” in the Damascus Document and the Community Rule can be found in Craig A. Evans, “Covenant in the Qumran Literature,” in Concept of Covenant in the Second Temple Period, pp. 55-80.

Again, some have questioned the centrality of the covenantal theme in the Old Testament due to the sporadic appearance of the term for covenant: e.g., Lothar Perlitt, Bundestheologie im Alten Testament (Neukirchen Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1969); and Ernest W. Nicholson, God and His People: Covenant Theology in the Old Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986). However, see responses from James Barr, “Some Semantic Notes on the Covenant,” in Beiträge zur Alttestamentlichen Theologie, ed. Herbert Donner; Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1977), pp. 23-38; Delbert R. Hillers, Covenant: The History of a Biblical Idea (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1969), pp. 120-42; and Brevard S. Childs, Biblical Theology of the Old and New Testaments: Theological Reflection on the Christian Bible (Philadelphia: Augsburg Fortress, 1993), pp. 413-20.

John H. Walton, Covenant: God’s Purpose, God’s Plan (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1994), p. 10.

Walter Eichrodt, Theology of the Old Testament, trans. J. A. Baker (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1961), p. 13. For the distinction between covenant as theme and covenant as infrastructure, see Scott Hafemann, “The Covenant Relationship,” in Central Themes in Biblical Theology: Mapping Unity in Diversity, ed. Scott Hafemann and Paul House (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007), pp. 20-65.

A thorough and well-reasoned defense of the historicity of the Last Supper, along with the covenantal language, can be found in I. Howard Marshall, “The Last Supper,” in Key Events in the Life of the Historical Jesus, ed. Darrell L. Bock and Robert L. Webb (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2009), pp. 481-588. However, even if one disputes the historicity of the event, the key point here is that early Christians still conceived of the Last Supper within covenantal categories, as can be seen by the fact that the covenantal theme occurs in all the Synoptics plus Paul.

Peter R. Jones, “The Apostle Paul: Second Moses to the New Covenant Community. A Study in Pauline Apostolic Authority,” in God’s Inerrant Word, ed. John Warwick Montgomery (Minneapolis: Bethany Fellowship, 1974), pp. 219-41. Jones makes a compelling case that Paul is directly appealing to Jer 31:27-28 (cf. Ezek 36:36) in the texts of 2 Cor 3:6 and 13:10.

Barn. 4:6-8; 13:1-6; 14:1-7; Justin Martyr, Dial. 11.1; 34.1; 43.1; 44.2; 51.3; 67.10; 122.5; Irenaeus, Haer. 1.10.3; 3.11.8; 4.9.1-3; 4.12.3. For more on this point, see Everett Ferguson, “The Covenant Idea in the Second Century,” in Texts and Testaments: Critical Essays on the Bible and the Early Church Fathers, ed. W. E. March (San Antonio: Trinity University Press, 1980), pp. 135-62; and J. Ligon Duncan, “The Covenant Idea in Melito of Sardis: An Introduction and Survey,” Presb 28 (2002): 12-33.

Hillers, Covenant, pp. 25-71; George E. Mendenhall, Law and Covenant in Israel and the Ancient Near East (Pittsburgh: The Biblical Colloquium, 1955), pp. 24-50; Meredith G. Kline, The Structure of Biblical Authority, 2nd ed. (Eugene, OR: Wipf & Stock, 1997), pp. 27-44; Dennis J. McCarthy, Treaty and Covenant (Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1981); John A Thompson, The Ancient Near Eastern Treaties and the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Tyndale, 1964).

Overviews of the structure of ancient treaties (particularly Hittite ones) can be seen in George E. Mendenhall, “Covenant Forms in Israelite Tradition,” BA 17 (1954): 50-76; and John H. Walton, Ancient Israelite Literature in Its Cultural Context (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1989), pp. 95-107.

F. C. Fensham, “Common Trends in Curses of the Near Eastern Treaties and Kudurru-Inscriptions Compared with Maledictions of Amos and Isaiah,” ZAW 75 (1963): 155-75; Stanley Gevirtz, “West-Semitic Curses and the Problem of the Origins of Hebrew Law,” VT 11 (1961): 137-58; Hans G. Güterbock, “Mursili’s Accounts of Suppiluliuma’s Dealings with Egypt,” RHA 18 (1960): 59-60; Michael A. Fishbane, “Varia Deuteronomica,” ZAW 84, no. 3 (1972): 349-52; James B. Pritchard, Ancient Near Eastern Texts Relating to the Old Testament, 3rd ed. (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1969), p. 161.

Kline, Structure of Biblical Authority, p. 29.

Hillers, Covenant, pp. 46-71; Kline, Structure of Biblical Authority, pp. 27-44; Mendenhall, Law and Covenant, pp. 24-50. For a more updated discussion, see Kenneth A. Kitchen, On the Reliability of the Old Testament (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003), pp. 283-312.

Cf. Deut 12:32; Prov 30:5-6. The influence of inscriptional curses is notable in other Jewish literature: e.g., Aristeas 310-11; 1 Enoch 104:9-10; 1 Macc 8:30; Josephus, Ag. Ap. 1.42; 11QTa 54.5-7; b. Meg. 14a. David E. Aune, Revelation 17-22 (WBC; Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 1998), pp. 1208-16, refers to this type of language as an “integrity formula.”

Kline, Structure of Biblical Authority, p. 43. Kline argues that the rest of the Old Testament, beyond these initial Mosaic documents, is also covenantal in nature (pp. 45-68). The other Old Testament books perform critical covenantal functions: the prophets prosecute the terms of the covenant, the historical books outline the history of God’s covenant relationship with Israel, the wisdom literature is the way to live inside the covenant, etc.

Hillers, Covenant, p. 145. Of course, this is not to say that every “covenant” in biblical history has a written document (e.g., the Noahic covenant did not). The critical distinction here is that covenants between God and Israel involve written texts. Kline makes a similar point, “where there is a divine covenant of the classic Old Testament kind there is a divine covenantal document” (Structure of Biblical Authority, p. 39; emphasis mine).

Wolfram Kinzig, “καινὴ Διαθήκη: The Title of the New Testament in the Second and Third Centuries,” JTS 45 (1994): 526.

George E. Mendenhall, “Covenant,” in ABD 1:1181 (emphasis mine).

Kline, Structure of Biblical Authority, p. 70.

Harnack, Origin of the New Testament, p. 13 (emphasis his).

For more on the inscriptional curse in early Christianity see Aune, Revelation 17-22, pp. 1208-16; and Michael J. Kruger, “Early Christian Attitudes Toward the Reproduction of Texts,” in The Early Text of the New Testament, ed. Charles E. Hill and Michael J. Kruger (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 63-80.

Harry Y. Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1995), p. 206.

George D. Kilpatrick, The Origins of the Gospel According to St. Matthew (Oxford: Clarendon, 1950), pp. 72-100; Michael D. Goulder, Midrash and Lection in Matthew (London: SPCK, 1974), pp. 182-83; Phillip Carrington, The Primitive Christian Calendar: A Study in the Making of the Marcan Gospel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1952). Of course, other scholars are not convinced that there is a lectionary structure to the Gospels; e.g., W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, Gospel According to Saint Matthew, pp. 60-61, argue there is no compelling evidence of this structure in Matthew.

Kline, Structure of Biblical Authority, 172-203; see also idem, “The Old Testament Origins of the Gospel Genre,” WTJ 38 (1975): 1-27. Making a similar observation is Walter Vogels, “La structure symétrique de la Bible chrétienne,” in The Biblical Canons, ed. J.-M. Auwers and H. J. de Jonge (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2003), pp. 299.

Vogels, “La structure symétrique de la Bible chrétienne,” p. 300; Kline, Structure of Biblical Authority, pp. 72-73.

Gerald T. Sheppard, “Canonization: Hearing the Voice of the Same God Through Historically Dissimilar Traditions,” Ex auditu 1 (1985): 112.

E.g., William L. Lane, “Covenant: The Key to Paul’s Conflict with Corinth,” TynBul 33 (1982): 3-29; Calvin Roetzel, “The Judgment Form in Paul’s Letters,” JBL 88 (1969): 305-12; and John L. White, “Introductory Formulae in the Body of the Pauline Letter,” JBL 90 (1971): 91-97.

Seitz, Goodly Fellowship of the Prophets, p. 103.

For discussion of the term διαθήκη here in Gal 3:15, see Richard Longenecker, Galatians (Dallas: Word, 1990), pp. 126-30. Broader discussion of the term in early Christianity can be found in Willem C. van Unnik, “ἡ καινὴ Διαθήκη—A Problem in the Early History of the Canon,” Studia Patristica 4 (1961): 212-27.

Ralph P. Martin, 2 Corinthians (WBC; Waco: Word, 1986), p. 69, argues that Paul coined this phrase. C. K. Barrett, A Commentary on the Second Epistle to the Corinthians (London: A & C Black, 1973), p. 121, argues that in this passage “old covenant” and “Old Testament” are virtually synonymous.

Peter Jensen, The Revelation of God (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2002), p. 81 (emphasis mine).

For discussion of Paul’s phrase “the letter kills” in 2 Cor 3:6, see chapter three below.

Jean Carmignac, “II Corinthiens III. 6, 14 et le Début de la Formation du Noveau Testament,” NTS 24 (1977): 384-86, at p. 385 (translation mine). Carmignac even goes further and suggests that this “New Testament” may have contained a number of books (even Gospels) in order for it to be parallel with the Old Testament (p. 386).

Lane, “Covenant: The Key to Paul’s Conflict with Corinth,” pp. 3-29. Lane argues that Paul’s letter takes the form of a “covenant lawsuit” where the representative of God’s covenant prosecutes God’s people when they are disobedient (pp. 15-18). E.g., note 2 Cor 5:20, “Therefore, we are ambassadors for Christ, God making his appeal through us.” This same theme is evident in Kline, Structure of Biblical Authority, p. 73; Roetzel, “Judgment Form in Paul’s Letters,” pp. 305-12; and White, “Introductory Formulae in the Body of the Pauline Letter,” pp. 91-97.

Ferguson, “Covenant Idea,” pp. 150-51; van Unnik, “ἡ καινὴ Διαθήκη—A Problem in the Early History of the Canon,” pp. 212-27; Kinzig, “Title of the New Testament,” pp. 519-44; and Duncan, “Covenant Idea in Melito of Sardis,” p. 26.

Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 4.26.14. J. N. D. Kelly, Early Christian Doctrines (San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1978), p. 56. The fact that Melito also refers to the Old Testament writings as “the old books” (τῶν παλαιῶν βιβλίων) provides further reason to think that he might have a set of “new books” in mind as well (Hist. eccl. 4.26.13).

Duncan, “Covenant Idea in Melito of Sardis,” pp. 25-26; Kinzig, “Title of the New Testament,” pp. 527-28. I am not suggesting that Melito would view “new covenant” as a formal and official title for this new corpus of books. Rather, I am suggesting that there is such a close conceptual link between “covenant” and “canon” in the mind of Melito that he would naturally interchange the two ideas.

Hist. eccl. 5.16.3. Van Unnik argues that this comment from the anti-Montanist writer only refers to the “message” of the new covenant and is not a reference to any writings (“ἡ καινὴ Διαθήκη,” p. 218). However, the larger context of the quote makes it clear that writings are in view, because the author says he will not himself compose a written treatise against the Montanists “lest I might seem to some to be adding to the writings or injunctions of the word of the new covenant” (Hist. eccl. 5.16.3). Thus, Campenhausen argues that the anti-Montanist author “leaves no doubt that what he has in mind is the writing of the ‘New Testament’” (Formation, p. 265). Bruce M. Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development, and Significance (Oxford: Clarendon, 1987), p. 106, agrees that this a reference to a written corpus of books.

Hist. eccl. 5.16.3.

Willem C. van Unnik, “De la régle μήτε προσθεῖναι μήτε ἀφελεῖν dans l’histoire du canon,” VC 3 (1949): 1-36.

Ferguson, “Covenant Idea,” p. 151; Metzger, Canon of the New Testament, p. 159. For further discussion of instrumentum in Tertullian, see Harnack, Origin of the New Testament, pp. 209-17.

Pud. 10. See also Marc. 4.2; Prax. 15; 20; Pud. 1.

E.g., Strom. 1.44.3; 3.71.3; 4.134.4; 5.85.1. See discussion in Kinzig, “Title of the New Testament,” pp. 529-30; and Ferguson, “Covenant Idea,” pp. 151-52.

Ferguson, “Covenant Idea,” p. 151.

Campenhausen, Formation, p. 267.

Hist. eccl. 6.25.1. Thanks to T. David Gordon for pointing out this particular reference.

For further discussion, see C. F. D. Moule, The Birth of the New Testament (London: Adam & Charles Black, 1981), pp. 235-39; and Ralph P. Martin, “Authority in the Light of the Apostolate, Tradition and the Canon,” EvQ 40 (1968): 66-82.

1 Clem. 47:1-3. All English translations of the apostolic fathers, unless otherwise noted, are from Bart D. Ehrman, The Apostolic Fathers, 2 vols. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003).

1 Clem. 42:1-2.

1 Clem. 5:2.

Ign. Magn. 7:1.

Ign. Rom. 4:4. For more on Ignatius’s extensive discussion of apostolic authority, see Charles E. Hill, “Ignatius and the Apostolate,” in Studia Patristica (vol. 36; Leuven: Peeters, 2001), pp. 226-48.

1 Apol. 39. English translation from Alexander Roberts and James Donaldson, eds., The Ante-Nicene Fathers (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1885).

Apol. 66.3.

Haer. 3.1.1.

Moule, Birth of the New Testament, p. 236.

General treatments of oral tradition include: Samuel Byrskog, Story as History—History as Story: The Gospel Tradition in the Context of Ancient Oral History (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2002); Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006); James D. G. Dunn, Jesus Remembered (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003); Henry Wansbrough, ed., Jesus And the Oral Gospel Tradition (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 2004); Werner H. Kelber, The Oral and the Written Gospel: The Hermeneutics of Speaking and Writing in the Synoptic Tradition, Mark, Paul, and Q (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983); Birger Gerhardsson, Memory and Manuscript with Tradition and Transmission in Early Christianity, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998); Kenneth E. Bailey, “Informal Controlled Oral Tradition and the Synoptic Gospels,” Them 20 (1995): 4-11; Jan M. Vansina, Oral Tradition as History (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985); Richard A. Horsley, Jonathan A. Draper and John Miles Foley, eds., Performing the Gospel: Orality, Memory, and Mark (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2006); and, recently, Werner H. Kelber and Samuel Byrskog, eds., Jesus in Memory: Traditions in Oral and Scribal Perspectives (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2009).

The issue of whether certain New Testament books were pseudonymous (e.g., 2 Thessalonians, 1 and 2 Timothy) is not relevant to the point here. The point here is simply that (1) the earliest Christians viewed apostles as having authority and (2) they regarded certain books as having come from apostles—this alone is sufficient to explain the origins of a new canon. Whether or not the earliest Christians were mistaken about some of these beliefs does not affect our argument. Nor is our argument affected by books attributed to nonapostles (e.g., Mark, Luke, Hebrews). The reason these books were also deemed to be authoritative is that they were regarded as having apostolic content even if they were not written by the hand of an apostle. E.g., Justin is willing to call the Gospels “memoirs of the apostles” even though he knows two of them were not written by apostles (1 Apol. 66.3; Dial. 103); Tertullian describes Mark and Luke as “apostolic men” (Marc. 4.2).

A number of scholars have begun to highlight the role physical manuscripts play as visual identity markers for a community: e.g., William A. Johnson, “Towards a Sociology of Reading in Classical Antiquity,” AJP 121 (2000): 593-627; Larry W. Hurtado, “Manuscripts and the Sociology of Early Christian Reading,” in Early Text of the New Testament, pp. 49-62; and Chris Keith, “Prolegomena on the Textualization of Mark’s Gospel: Manuscript Culture, the Extended Situation, and the Emergence of Written Gospels,” in Keys and Frames: Memory and Identity in Ancient Judaism and Early Christianity, ed. Tom Thatcher (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, forthcoming), p. 24. If so, then we must consider the possibility that early Christians textualized their traditions as a means of visually expressing their Jewish/Old Testament identity. Of course, as we shall see in the next chapter, Christians were also keen to provide visual markers (such as the codex and nomina sacra) that would distinguish their books from Jewish books. But the fact that they used books at all (at least for their religious texts) may have been due to their desire to identify with the God of Israel. For more on the role of visual identity markers, see Jan Assmann, “Form as a Mnemonic Device: Cultural Texts and Cultural Memory,” in Performing the Gospel, pp. 67-82.

Moule, Birth of the New Testament, p. 239; cf. Martin, “Authority in Light of the Apostolate,” p. 76.

For an overview of the relationship between Greco-Roman historiography and the Gospels, see Craig S. Keener, The Historical Jesus of the Gospels (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2009), pp. 71-125; Paul R. Eddy and Gregory A. Boyd, The Jesus Legend: A Case for the Historical Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus Tradition (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2007), pp. 309-61. For particular discussion of historiography and Luke–Acts, see Loveday Alexander, The Preface to Luke’s Gospel: Literary Convention and Social Context in Luke 1:1-4 and Acts 1:1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993); and Joel B. Green and Michael C. McKeever, Luke-Acts and New Testament Historiography (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 1994).

Polybius, Histories IV.2.1-2; Galen, Temp. med. 6 pref. (Kühn XI.796-97); Thucydides, I.22.1-2, V.26.5; Tacitus, Hist. 4.81, Ann. 3.16; Papias cited in Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 3.39.3-4. For discussion of Papias as a source see Byrskog, Story as History, pp. 272-92; Robert H. Gundry, Matthew: A Commentary on His Handbook for a Mixed Church Under Persecution (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), pp. 1026-45; and Martin Hengel, Studies in the Gospel of Mark (London: SCM, 1985), pp. 47-53.

For a general overview of the use of “living voice,” see Loveday Alexander, “The Living Voice: Skepticism Toward the Written Word in Early Christian and Graeco-Roman Texts,” in The Bible in Three Dimensions, ed. David J. A. Clines, Stephen E. Fowl and Stanley E. Porter (Sheffield: JSOT, 1990), pp. 221-47; and Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, pp. 21-29.

E.g., Herodotus, 1.1; Thucydides, 1.22.4.

Byrskog, Story as History, pp. 122-23.

A helpful collection of essays that apply social/cultural memory theory to early Christianity can be found in: Alan Kirk and Tom Thatcher, eds., Memory, Tradition, and Text: Uses of the Past in Early Christianity (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2005).

Jan Assmann, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis: Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulteren (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1992), p. 165; idem, Religion and Cultural Memory, trans. Rodney Livingstone (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006), pp. 68-70.

Alan Kirk, “Social and Cultural Memory,” in Memory, Tradition, and Text, pp. 1-24, at p. 6.

Assmann, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis, p. 218.

Ibid., Religion and Cultural Memory, p. 69.

Keith, in “Prolegomena to the Textualization of Mark’s Gospel,” p. 17, rightly recognizes that the Traditionsbruch does not inevitably and automatically lead to the textualization of the tradition; it can be preserved in other ways (such as ritual). While this is true, the Traditionsbruch caused by the absence of the apostles should be seen in light of the textual-covenantal disposition of Christianity’s Jewish heritage. That disposition makes textualization the more likely option (this topic will be addressed more in the next chapter).

The standard dating for Mark’s Gospel is around A.D. 70; e.g., see arguments in Martin Hengel, Studies in the Gospel of Mark, pp. 28-30. But many scholars have argued for an earlier date, such as Bo Reicke, The Roots of the Synoptic Gospels (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1986), pp. 177-80; Christopher S. Mann, Mark (Anchor Bible; New York: Doubleday, 1986), pp. 72-83.

There is widespread patristic evidence that the Gospel of Mark was viewed as the embodiment of Peter’s teaching: e.g., Justin, Dial. 106; Irenaeus, Haer. 3.10.5; Tertullian, Marc. 4.5.3; Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 2.15; 6.14.6 (attributed to Clement of Alexandria). However, there are different patristic testimonies about whether Mark wrote before Peter died (Clement, Eusebius) or after Peter died (Irenaeus). Either way, it is clear that these patristic writers understood Mark’s Gospel to be motivated by Peter’s absence.

For broad overviews of this genre, see Eckhard von Nordheim, Die Lehre Der Alten. Vol 1, Das Testamente als Literaturgattung im Judentum der hellenistische-romischen Zeit (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1980); and Otto Knoch, Die “Testamente” des Petrus und Paulus (Stuttgart: KBW, 1973). See also discussion in Richard Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter (Waco, TX: Word, 1983), pp. 131-35, 158-62.

E.g., Testament of Moses, Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, Testament of Job. Parts/sections of writings can also be considered testamental in nature: 1 Enoch 91–107; 4 Ezra 14:28-36; 2 Baruch 77–86; Jub 21:1–23:7; Josephus, Ant. 4.309-319.

Hill, “God’s Speech in These Last Days,” p. 242.

Richard Bauckham, “Pseudo-Apostolic Letters,” JBL 107 (1988): 469-94.

Anitra B. Kolenkow, “The Genre Testament and Forecasts of the Future in the Hellenistic Jewish Milieu,” JSJ 6 (1975): 66-67.

Peter H. Davids, The Letters of 2 Peter and Jude (PNTC; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006), p. 148.

The book of 2 Baruch seems to share this combination, but it was written in the second century A.D. and could not have been the prototype for 2 Peter.

Gene L. Green, Jude and 2 Peter (BECNT; Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008), p. 167.

Assmann, “Form as a Mnemonic Device,” pp. 73-77; cf. Assmann, Religion and Cultural Memory, p. 103. On this point, see the excellent discussion (and interaction with Assmann) in Chris Keith, “A Performance of the Text: The Adulteress’s Entrance into John’s Gospel,” in The Fourth Gospel and Ancient Media Culture, ed. Anthony LeDonne and Tom Thatcher (London: T & T Clark, 2011), pp. 49-69.

Assmann, “Form as a Mnemonic Device,” p. 76.

Assmann, Religion and Cultural Memory, p. 103; cf. Assmann, “Form as a Mnemonic Device,” p. 75. Assmann recognizes that oral tradition can also, to some extent, be used to create an “extended situation,” but it still has significant limitations that writing does not have because it “must depend on time and place, on temporal reoccurrence” (p. 77).

Keith, “A Performance of the Text,” pp. 65-66.

The global-universal focus of the apostolic mission is spread throughout the entire New Testament corpus, showing that it was entrenched part of early Christian understanding (e.g., Mk 13:10; Lk 24:47; Acts 1:7-8; Rom 1:5; 1 Cor 16:5-6; Gal 3:7-9; Eph 2:11-22; Col 1:7; 1 Tim 2:1-7; 3:16; 2 Tim 4:17; Rev 7:9; 14:6; 15:4).

Hans-Josef Klauck, Ancient Letters and the New Testament: A Guide to Context and Exegesis (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2006), pp. 188-93, surveys historical evidence that shows that ancient writers regarded epistles as a sufficient substitute for personal presence. See also Robert W. Funk, “The Apostolic Parousia: Form and Significance,” in Christian History and Interpretation: Studies Presented to John Knox, ed. W. R. Farmer, C. F. D. Moule and Reinhold R. Niebuhr (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), pp. 249-68.

Hillers, Covenant, p. 145.

Gamble, New Testament Canon, p. 12.

Paul J. Achtemeier, Joel B. Green and Marianne Meye Thompson, eds., Introducing the New Testament and Its Literature (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2001), p. 589 (emphasis mine).

Chapter 3

A key example of this approach is Werner Kelber, The Oral and the Written Gospel: The Hermeneutics of Speaking and Writing in the Synoptic Tradition, Mark, Paul, and Q (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983). Kelber argues that the Gospel of Mark was a revolutionary document designed to undercut the dominant orality of early Christianity and replace it with written texts. Other general treatments of oral tradition in early Christianity (not necessarily sharing Kelber’s approach) include: Samuel Byrskog, Story as History—History as Story: The Gospel Tradition in the Context of Ancient Oral History (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2002); Richard Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006); James D. G. Dunn, Jesus Remembered (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003); Henry Wansbrough, ed., Jesus and The Oral Gospel Tradition (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 2004); Birger Gerhardsson, Memory and Manuscript with Tradition and Transmission in Early Christianity, rev. ed. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998); Kenneth E. Bailey, “Informal Controlled Oral Tradition and the Synoptic Gospels,” Them 20 (1995): 4-11; Jan M. Vansina, Oral Tradition as History (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1985); Richard A. Horsley, Jonathan A. Draper and John Miles Foley, eds., Performing the Gospel: Orality, Memory, and Mark (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2006); and, most recently, Werner Kelber and Samuel Byrskog, eds., Jesus in Memory: Traditions in Oral and Scribal Perspectives (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2009). For a helpful overview of recent research on orality in early Christianity, see Kelly R. Iverson, “Orality and the Gospels: A Survey of Recent Research,” CBR 8 (2009): 71-206.

James Barr, Holy Scripture: Canon, Authority and Criticism (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1983), p. 12.

Robert W. Funk, “The Once and Future New Testament,” in The Canon Debate, ed. Lee M. McDonald and James A. Sanders (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2002), p. 544.

Tom Thatcher, “Beyond Texts and Traditions: Werner Kelber’s Media History of Christian Origins,” in Jesus, the Voice, and the Text: Beyond the Oral and the Written Gospel, ed. Tom Thatcher (Waco, TX: Baylor University Press, 2008), p. 16. Thatcher is describing Werner Kelber’s view in this passage, so it is unclear whether he shares Kelber’s view. For more on Paul’s view of his letters, see Robert W. Funk, “The Apostolic Parousia: Form and Significance,” in Christian History and Interpretation: Studies Presented to John Knox, ed. W. R. Farmer, C. F. D. Moule and R. R. Niebuhr (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1967), pp. 249-68.

For a summary of this approach, see C. F. Evans, “The New Testament in the Making,” in The Cambridge History of the Bible: From the Beginnings to Jerome, ed. P. R. Ackroyd and C. F. Evans (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), pp. 232-83, at pp. 233-34. See similar statements in Eric F. Osborn, “Teaching and Writing in the First Chapter of the Stromateis of Clement of Alexandria,” JTS 10 (1959): 335-43.

David M. Carr, Writing on the Tablet of the Heart: Origins of Scripture and Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), p. 283.

Joanna Dewey, “Textuality in an Oral Culture: A Survey of the Pauline Traditions,” in Orality and Textuality in Early Christian Literature, ed. Joanna Dewey (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1995), pp. 37-65, at p. 60.

Dewey, “Textuality in an Oral Culture,” p. 59.

F. C. Baur as cited in Hans von Campenhausen, The Formation of the Christian Bible (London: Adam & Charles Black, 1972), p. 135.

Kelber, Oral and the Written Gospel, p. 158.

Ibid.

Funk, “Once and Future New Testament,” p. 544.

Kelber, Oral and the Written Gospel, pp. 18-20.

Anthony E. Harvey, “Review of Midrash and Lection in Matthew by M. G. Goulder,” JTS 27 (1976): 188-95, at p. 189.

Harry Y. Gamble, Books and Readers in the Early Church (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995), pp. 11-13.

Franz Overbeck, “Über die Anfänge der partristischen Literatur,” Historische Zeitschrift 48 (1882): 417-72.

Ibid., pp. 436-38.

Gamble, Books and Readers, pp. 14-15. Even when the oral message was eventually put into written form, the form critics still did not regard this as real literature (Hochliteratur) but as popular literature (Kleinliteratur). Thus, according to form criticism, these were not writings that would have borne any real authority.

Martin Dibelius, From Tradition to Gospel (Cambridge: J. Clarke, 1971), p. 9. Overbeck’s influence can be clearly seen in the first chapter, pp. 1-8.

Francis Watson, Text and Truth: Redefining Biblical Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), p. 130. The antitextual posture of the existentialists is not a new phenomenon. Even during the Reformation, John Calvin recognized the tendency in his day to separate the Word from the experience of the Spirit: “For of late, certain giddy men have arisen who, with great haughtiness exalting the teaching office of the Spirit, despise all reading and laugh at the simplicity of those who, as they express it, still follow the dead and killing letter” (Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill, trans. Ford Lewis Battles [Philadelphia: Westminster, 1960], 1.9.1).

Watson, Text and Truth, p. 135.

Ibid.

Rudolf Bultmann, “The Significance of the Old Testament for the Christian Faith,” in The Old Testament and the Christian Faith: Essays by Rudolf Bultmann and Others, ed. Bernhard W. Anderson (London: SCM, 1964), pp. 8-35.

William V. Harris, Ancient Literacy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989). Harris’s work rightly corrects some overly optimistic assessments of literacy in the ancient world: e.g., Colin H. Roberts, “Books in the Greco-Roman World and in the New Testament,” in Cambridge History of the Bible, p. 48; and Oswyn Murray, Early Greece (London: Fontana, 1993), pp. 94-96.

Meir Bar-Ilan, “Illiteracy in the Land of Israel in the First Centuries C.E.,” in Essays in the Social Scientific Study of Judaism and Jewish Society, ed. Simcha Fishbane, Stuart Schoenfeld and Alain Goldschläger (Hoboken: KTAV, 1992), pp. 46-61; and Catherine Hezser, Jewish Literacy in Roman Palestine (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2001).

Gamble, Books and Readers, pp. 9-10. Of course, this does not imply that all Christians outside of formal leadership were illiterate, nor does it imply that every church leader was literate without exception.

Of course, it should be acknowledged that there are ranges of “literacy.” A helpful overview of the different gradations of literacy can be found in Chris Keith, Jesus’ Literacy: Scribal Culture and the Teacher from Galilee (London: T & T Clark, 2011), pp. 89-116.

Lucian, Peregr. 11; Minucius Felix, Oct. 5.2-4; Origen, Cels. 3.44, 56. For more on pagan criticism of early Christianity, see Robert L. Wilken, “Pagan Criticism of Christianity: Greek Religions and Christian Faith,” in Early Christian Literature and the Classical Intellectual Tradition: In Honorem Robert M. Grant (Paris: Editions Beauchesne, 1979), pp. 117-34; Stephen Benko, “Pagan Criticism of Christianity During the First Two Centuries A.D.,” ANRW II.23.2 (1980): 1055-1118; Wayne C. Kannaday, Apologetic Discourse and the Scribal Tradition: Evidence of the Influence of Apologetic Interests on the Text of the Canonical Gospels (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2004), esp. pp. 24-56.

Cels. 3.44, 56; 1.62.

Tim Cornell, “The Tyranny of the Evidence: A Discussion of the Possible Uses of Literacy in Etruria and Latium in the Archaic Age,” in Literacy in the Roman World, ed. Mary Beard (Ann Arbor, MI: Journal of Roman Archaeology, 1991), p. 7.

Stephen E. Young, Jesus Tradition in the Apostolic Fathers (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2011), p. 77.

Kelber, Oral and the Written Gospel, p. 21.

Ibid., p. 23.

Ibid., p. 50.

Walter J. Ong, The Presence of the Word: Some Prolegomena for Cultural and Religious History (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1967); Eric Havelock, Preface to Plato (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1963); Albert Lord, The Singer of Tales (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1960); idem, “The Gospels as Oral Traditional Literature,” in The Relationships Among the Gospels: An Interdisciplinary Dialogue, ed. William O. Walker Jr. (San Antonio: Trinity University Press, 1978), pp. 33-91. A collection of Parry’s essays can be found in Adam M. Parry, ed., The Making of Homeric Verse: The Collected Papers of Milman Parry (Oxford: Clarendon, 1971).

Kelber, Oral and the Written Gospel, p. 17.

Ibid., p. 93. By way of clarification, this study will not be challenging the characteristics of oral cultures given by Kelber, Ong, Parry, Lord and others. The question before us is not whether oral cultures exhibit such characteristics (such as hostility to written texts), but whether early Christianity is just such a culture.

Ibid.

The main critiques of Harris can be found in Roger S. Bagnall, Everyday Writing in the Graeco-Roman East (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2011); H. Gregory Snyder, “Review of Jewish Literacy in Roman Palestine, by C. Hezser,” RBL 8 (2002): 4 (Hezser’s volume follows the methodology of Harris); Alan Millard, Reading and Writing in the Time of Jesus (New York: New York University Press, 2000), pp. 154-84; and the numerous essays in Mary Beard, ed., Literacy in the Roman World.

Origen rightly responds to Celsus by agreeing that “many” Christians were uneducated (Cels. 3.44), but also reminds him that some Christians were educated (Cels. 3.48). In this way, the social makeup of Christianity was basically average—it was a mix of different classes and different levels of literacy. Thus, scholars overstate the situation when they describe the earliest followers of Christ as “simple peasants”; e.g., Bart D. Ehrman, Misquoting Jesus (San Francisco: HarperCollins, 2005), p. 39. For more on the social makeup of early Christianity, see Wayne A. Meeks, The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1983); Abraham J. Malherbe, Social Aspects of Early Christianity (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1983); Edwin A. Judge, The Social Pattern of Christian Groups in the First Century (London: Tyndale, 1960); Robert M. Grant, Early Christianity and Society: Seven Studies (New York: Harper & Row, 1977); and Floyd V. Filson, “The Significance of the Early House Churches,” JBL 58 (1939): 109-12.

While there is wide agreement that at some point the Christian message was delivered orally, there is significant disagreement over the way it was delivered. For an assessment of competing theories, see the discussion in Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, 240-318; and Dunn, Jesus Remembered, 172-254.

Standard form-critical works include Rudolf Bultmann, The History of the Synoptic Tradition (Oxford: Blackwell, 1968); Dibelius, From Tradition to Gospel; and Karl Ludwig Schmidt, Der Rahmen Der Geschichte Jesu: Literarkritische Untersuchungen Zur Ältesten Jesusüberlieferung (Berlin: Trowitzsch, 1919). Although the oral transmission of Jesus tradition is not in doubt, many specifics of form criticism have come under scrutiny in recent years; see Christopher M. Tuckett, “Form Criticism,” in Jesus in Memory, pp. 21-38; Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewtinesses, pp. 240-63; Birger Gerhardsson, The Reliability of Gospel Tradition (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2001); E. P. Sanders, The Tendencies of the Synoptic Tradition (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1969); Graham N. Stanton, “Form Criticism Revisited,” in What About the New Testament?, ed. Morna D. Hooker and Colin J. A. Hickling (London: SCM, 1975), pp. 13-27.

1 Cor 11:2; 2 Thess 2:15; 3:6. Josephus also provides a similar example of this sort of tradition when he refers to the παράδοσιν he set down in writing (C. Ap. 1.49-50; cf. Ant. 13.297). For more on the role of tradition in early Christianity, see Oscar Cullmann, “The Tradition,” in The Early Church, ed. A. J. B. Higgins (London: SCM, 1956), pp. 59-99; F. F. Bruce, Tradition: Old and New (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1970), pp. 29-38; idem, “Tradition and the Canon of Scripture,” in The Authoritative Word: Essays on the Nature of Scripture, ed. D. K. McKim (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1983), pp. 59-84; E. Earle Ellis, The Making of the New Testament Documents (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2002), pp. 49-142; and G. W. H. Lampe, “Scripture and Tradition in the Early Church,” in Scripture and Tradition, ed. Frederick W. Dillistone (London: Lutterworth Press, 1955), pp. 21-52.

Rom 6:17; 1 Cor 11:23; 15:3-5; Gal 1:9; Phil 4:9; Col 2:6-8; 1 Thess 2:13; 2 Pet 2:21; Jude 3 (cf. 1 Tim 6:20; 2 Tim 1:14). The structure of 1 Cor 15:3-5 in particular suggests that Paul is passing along a standardized apostolic tradition about the resurrection of Jesus; see John S. Kloppenborg, “An Analysis of the Pre-Pauline Formula in 1 Cor 15:3b-5,” CBQ 40 (1978): 351-67; Ulrich Wilckens, Die Missionsreden der Apostelgeschichte, 3rd ed. (Neukirchen-Vluyn: Neukirchener Verlag, 1974), pp. 190-223; and Hans Conzelmann, “On the Analysis of the Confessional Formula in 1 Cor 15:3-5,” Int 20 (1966): 15-25. For discussion of Jesus tradition in Paul, see T. Holtz, “Paul and Oral Gospel Tradition,” in Jesus and the Oral Gospel Tradition, pp. 380-93.

Kelber, Oral and the Written Gospel, p. 23.

Ibid., p. 21.

Keith, Jesus’ Literacy, p. 87. Vernon K. Robbins, “Interfaces of Orality and Literature in the Gospel of Mark,” in Performing the Gospel, pp. 125-46, refers to this same type of culture as a “rhetorical” culture (p. 127).

Mary Beard, “Writing and Religion: Ancient Literacy and the Function of the Written Word in Roman Religion,” in Literacy in the Roman World, p. 39; see also John Halverson, “Oral and Written Gospel: A Critique of Werner Kelber,” NTS 40 (1994): 182; Michael C. A. Macdonald, “Literacy in an Oral Environment,” in Writing and Ancient Near Eastern Society: Papers in Honour of Alan R. Millard, ed. P. Bienkowski, C. B. Mee and A. E. Slater (London: T & T Clark, 2005), pp. 49-118, esp. p. 49; and Chris Keith, “A Performance of the Text: The Adulteress’s Entrance into John’s Gospel,” in The Fourth Gospel and Ancient Media Culture, ed. Anthony LeDonne and Tom Thatcher (London: T & T Clark, 2011), pp. 49-69, esp. pp. 59-60.

Gamble, Books and Readers, pp. 8-9.

David E. Aune, “Prolegomena to the Study of Oral Tradition in the Hellenistic World,” in Jesus and the Oral Gospel Tradition, pp. 59-196; Whitney Shiner, Proclaiming the Gospel: First Century Performance of Mark (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2003), pp. 39-40; and Eugene Bahn, “Interpretive Reading in Ancient Greece,” QJS 18 (1932): 432-40.

2 Cor 10:9; Col 4:16; 1 Thess 5:27; cf. Rev 1:3. For more on the public reading of Paul’s letters, see Richard F. Ward, “Pauline Voice and Presence as Strategic Communication,” in Orality and Textuality in Early Christian Literature, pp. 95-107.

George D. Kilpatrick, The Origins of the Gospel According to St. Matthew (Oxford: Clarendon, 1950), pp. 72-100; Michael D. Goulder, Midrash and Lection in Matthew (London: SPCK, 1974), pp. 182-83; Phillip Carrington, The Primitive Christian Calendar: A Study in the Making of the Marcan Gospel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1952). See discussion of this phenomena in D. Moody Smith, “When Did the Gospels Become Scripture?,” JBL 119 (2000): 3-20.

1 Apol. 67.3. Harry Y. Gamble, “Literacy, Liturgy, and the Shaping of the New Testament Canon,” in The Earliest Gospels, ed. Charles Horton (London: T & T Clark, 2004), refers to Justin’s account of public reading and says “there is every reason to think that this sort of assembly for worship goes back to the very earliest days of the church” (p. 33).

Nicholas Horsfall, “Statistics or States of Mind?,” in Literacy in the Roman World, pp. 73-74.

Dibelius, From Tradition to Gospel, pp. 37, 39.

Loveday Alexander, “Memory and Tradition in the Hellenistic Schools,” in Jesus in Memory, pp. 113-53. See also Shemaryahu Talmon, “Oral Tradition and Written Transmission, or the Heard and the Seen Word in Judaism of the Second Temple Period,” in Jesus and the Oral Gospel Tradition, pp. 121-58; and Paul J. Achtemeier, “Omne Verbum Sonat: The New Testament and the Oral Environment of Late Western Antiquity,” JBL 109 (1990): 3-27. It should be noted that one reason why written texts were performed orally is that they were not always readily available—they had to be recalled from memory. Performing texts from memory was a key part of the transmission process of early Christianity. For more on this point, see Alan Kirk, “Manuscript Tradition as a Tertium Quid: Orality and Memory in Scribal Practices,” in Jesus, the Voice, and the Text, pp. 215-34.

Talmon, “Oral Tradition and Written Transmission,” p. 154.

Written documents that are dependent on oral tradition are also common in the Greco-Roman world. See numerous examples in Aune, “Prolegomena to the Study of Oral Tradition in the Hellenistic World,” pp. 59-196.

Joanna Dewey, “Oral Methods of Structuring Narrative in Mark,” Int 43 (1989): 32-44, at p. 43. See also Joanna Dewey, “The Gospel of Mark as Oral Hermeneutic,” in Jesus, the Voice, and the Text, pp. 71-87. Similar arguments that Mark was an oral composition that was written down can be found in Whitney Shiner, “Memory Technology and the Composition of Mark,” in Performing the Gospel, 147-65; and Pieter J. J. Botha, “Mark’s Story as Oral Traditional Literature: Rethinking the Transmission of Some Traditions About Jesus,” Hervormde Teologiese Studies 47 (1991): 304-31.

Alexander, “Memory and Tradition,” p. 149.

Terence C. Mournet, “The Jesus Tradition as Oral Tradition,” in Jesus in Memory, p. 51. See also Terence C. Mournet, Oral Tradition and Literary Dependency (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2005).

Holly Hearon, “Implications of Orality for the Study of the Biblical Text,” in Performing the Gospel, p. 9; Gerhardsson, Reliability of Gospel Tradition, pp. 110-23; James F. McGrath, “Written Islands in an Oral Stream: Gospel and Oral Traditions,” in Jesus and Paul: Global Perspectives in Honor of James D .G. Dunn (London: T & T Clark, 2009), pp. 3-12; Alan Kirk, “Memory, Scribal Media, and the Synoptic Problem,” in New Studies in the Synoptic Problem: Oxford Conference, April 2008, ed. Paul Foster et al. (Leuven: Peeters, 2011), pp. 459-82; and John Miles Foley, Homer’s Traditional Art (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1999), p. 9.

At points, Kelber seems to recognize that oral and written modes are not mutually exclusive (e.g., Oral and the Written Gospel, pp. 17, 23, 91), but this never seems to affect the sharp dichotomy he has created between orality and textuality. In more recent works, Kelber has backed away from this sharp dichotomy (what he calls the “Great Divide”); e.g., see the interview with Werner Kelber in Tom Thatcher, ed., Jesus, the Voice, and the Text, pp. 27-43.

Joanna Dewey, “Textuality in an Oral Culture,” p. 51 (emphasis in original).

Øvivind Anderson, “Oral Tradition,” in Jesus and the Oral Gospel Tradition, rightly observes that “in a largely oral culture you do not simply ‘check’ tradition by consulting the written text, for the written text is not yet considered a ‘source’” (p. 51). But Anderson is careful to note that this only applies to a “largely oral culture” which lacks a “document-mindedness” (p. 52)—traits which do not accurately describe early Christianity (more on this below).

Jan Assmann, Das kulturelle Gedächtnis: Schrift, Erinnerung und politische Identität in frühen Hochkulteren (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1992), p. 165.

Alexander, “Memory and Tradition,” p. 151.

Holt N. Parker, “Books and Reading Latin Poetry,” in Ancient Literacies: The Culture of Reading in Greece and Rome, ed. William H. Johnson and Holt N. Parker (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 194 (emphasis mine).

Ibid.

Tusc. 5.116.

Ep. 7.17.7.

A number of critical scholars are convinced that some New Testament writings are pseudonymous, including the Pastoral Epistles, Colossians, Ephesians, 2 Peter, Jude and others. As a result, some of these books are dated to the second century. For general discussions of the critical positions, see Robert A. Spivey and D. Moody Smith, Anatomy of the New Testament (New York: McMillan, 1989); and Bart D. Ehrman, The New Testament: A Historical Introduction to the Early Christian Writings (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).

There is debate over the precise dating of Galatians; e.g., Ronald Y. K. Fung, The Epistle to the Galatians (NICNT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1988), pp. 9-28, adopts the earlier date for Galatians (ca. 48), while John Drane, Introducing the New Testament, 3rd ed. (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2010), p. 288, adopts a later date (ca. 56–58).

A number of scholars have suggested James is a late pseudonymous work; e.g., David R. Nienhuis, Not by Paul Alone: The Formation of the Catholic Epistle Collection and the Christian Canon (Waco: Baylor University Press, 2007); and Werner G. Kümmel, Introduction to the New Testament (London: SCM Press, 1975), pp. 411-14. However, an early date has been defended by others; e.g., Luke Timothy Johnson, The Letter of James (Anchor Biblical Commentary; New York: Doubleday, 1995), pp. 111-21; James B. Adamson, James: The Man and His Message (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1989), pp. 3-52; and Joseph B. Mayor, The Epistle of St. James (London: Macmillan, 1892), pp. cxxi-cliii.

Adolf Deissmann, Light from the Ancient East (New York: George H. Doran, 1927).

Nigel Turner, “The Literary Charcter of New Testament Greek,” NTS 20 (1974): 107-14; Gamble, Books and Readers, pp. 32-35.

Gamble, Books and Readers, p. 34.

Loveday Alexander, The Preface to Luke’s Gospel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).

George A. Kennedy, A New Testament Interpretation Through Rhetorical Criticism (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina, 1984); Burton L. Mack, What Is Rhetorical Criticism? (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1990); Stanley E. Porter, Handbook of Classical Rhetoric in the Hellenistic Period (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1997).

Wilhelm Wuellner, “Greek Rhetoric and Pauline Argumentation,” in Early Christian Literature and the Classical Intellectual Tradition, pp. 177-88.

George A. Kennedy, “An Introduction to the Rhetoric of the Gospels,” Rhetoric 1 (1983): 17-31.

David A. deSilva, An Introduction to the New Testament: Contexts, Methods, and Ministry Formation (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2004), pp. 380-85.

deSilva, Introduction to the New Testament, pp. 781-87.

E.g., 1 Cor 5:9; Phil 3:1; Col 4:16. On the latter text, J. B. Lightfoot, St. Paul’s Epistle to the Philippians (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1995), has a brief discussion on this passage titled, “Lost Epistle to the Philippians?,” pp. 138-42.

See discussion in Joel B. Green, The Gospel of Luke (NICNT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), pp. 37-38.

For a general overview of Q, see John S. Kloppenborg, The Formation of Q (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1987). Although not opposed to Q per se, Dunn has argued that oral tradition should also be considered as an explanation of the similarities amongst the Synoptic gospels; see James D. G. Dunn, “Altering the Default Setting: Re-envisaging the Early Transmission of the Jesus Tradition,” NTS 49 (2003): 139-75. Kelber, Oral and the Written Gospel, p. 201, avoids the implications of Q by insisting that it had an “oral disposition.” However, even if Q does exhibit a structure dependent on oral discourse, one must still reckon with the fact that it is a written document; cf. Harry T. Fledderman, Mark and Q: A Study of the Overlap Texts (Leuven: Peeters, 1995), p. 20. The existence of Q is further evidence of how oral and written modes of discourse often overlapped.

That such notebooks were used to record Jesus traditions has been argued by Colin H. Roberts and T. C. Skeat, The Birth of the Codex (London: Oxford University Press, 1987), p. 59; Saul Lie­berman, Hellenism in Jewish Palestine, 2nd ed. (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1962), p. 203; and Birger Gerhardsson, Memory and Manuscript, pp. 157-63.

Inst. Or. 10.3.31-32. Quintilian states: Scribi optime ceris, in quibus facillima est ratio delendi, nisi forte visus infirmior membranarum potius usum exiget. The reference to the wax tablet (ceris) here makes it evident that the codex form is in question. Thus, the advice to use membranarum can mean nothing other than a vellum codex. See Roberts and Skeat, Birth of the Codex, p. 21, and Gamble, Books and Readers, p. 50.

Epigr. 1.2: quos arat brevibus membrana tabellis. Full discussion in Roberts and Skeat, Birth of the Codex, pp. 24-29.

T. C. Skeat, “‘Especially the Parchments’: A Note on 2 Timothy iv.13,” JTS 30 (1979): 173-77, argues for an alternative translation of this verse where he equates the books and the parchments, but it has not been widely adopted.

Gottlob Schrenk, “βίβλος, βιβλίον,” TDNT 1:615-20; Luke 4:20; Galatians 3:10; Hebrews 9:19; Josephus, Ant. 3.74; 2 Clem. 14:2; Graham N. Stanton, “Why Were Early Christians Addicted to the Codex?,” in Jesus and Gospel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), p. 177.

One must at least consider the possibility that Gospel material may have been contained within these codices. This early Christian practice would have parallels with rabbinic practices where various sorts of notebooks (wax, wood, papyrus) were used to facilitate knowledge of the oral torah (m. Kelim 24.7). See Gerhardsson, Memory and Manuscript, pp. 157-63; and Lieberman, Hellenism in Jewish Palestine, p. 203.

Martin C. Albl, And Scripture Cannot Be Broken: The Form and Function of the Early Christian Testimonia Collections (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1999). For further discussion, see Stanton, “Why Were Early Christians Addicted to the Codex?,” pp. 182-85.

E. Randolph Richards, “The Codex and the Early Collection of Paul’s Letters,” BBR 8 (1998): 151-66; David Trobisch, Paul’s Letter Collection: Tracing the Origins (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1994); Gamble, Books and Readers, pp. 100-101.

For a detailed examination of the way Paul engages deeply in the exegesis of Old Testament texts, see Francis Watson, Paul and the Hermeneutics of Faith (London: T & T Clark, 2004); and Richard B. Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1989).

Judith Lieu, Christian Identity in the Jewish and Graeco-Roman World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), pp. 36-37; Frances M. Young, Biblical Exegesis and the Formation of Christian Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).

Millard, Reading and Writing, pp. 210-29, appeals to the Qumran community as an example of a first-century Jewish group with an ability and propensity to write, thus forming a possible parallel with the earliest Christian movement. Gamble, Books and Readers, p. 24, agrees that there is a similarity between the exegetical methods of Qumran and early Christianity.

In particular, see discussions of the creedal formula in 1 Cor 15:3-4 noted above in n44.

Gamble, Books and Readers, p. 24.

Stanton, “Why Were Early Christians Addicted to the Codex?,” p. 182.

Joseph A. Fitzmyer, “‘4Q Testimonia’ and the New Testament,” TS 18 (1957): 513-37.

John M. Allegro, “Further Messianic References in Qumran Literature,” JBL 75 (1956): 182-87.

Christopher D. Stanley, “The Importance of 4QTanhumim (4Q176),” RevQ 60 (1992): 569-82.

Colin H. Roberts, “Two Biblical Papyri in the John Rylands Library, Manchester,” BJRL 20 (1936): 219-44, esp. pp. 241-44.

Albl, Scripture Cannot Be Broken, p. 66; Timothy H. Lim, Holy Scripture in the Qumran Commentaries and Pauline Letters (Clarendon: Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 55.

Watson, Text and Truth, p. 128.

New Testament manuscripts dated to the second century (or to ca. 200) include P52, P4–64–67, P66, P77, P75, P90, P103 and P104.

For more on book production within early Christianity, see Michael J. Kruger, “Manuscripts, Scribes, and Book Production within Early Christianity,” in Christian Origins and Classical Culture: Social and Literary Contexts for the New Testament, ed. S. E. Porter and A. W. Pitts (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2012), pp. 15-40; David Trobisch, The First Edition of the New Testament (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); Kim Haines-Eitzen, Guardians of Letters: Literacy, Power, and the Transmitters of Early Christian Literature (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000); Larry W. Hurtado, The Earliest Christian Artifacts: Manuscripts and Christian Origins (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006); and Thomas J. Kraus and Tobias Nicklas, eds., New Testament Manuscripts: Their Texts and Their World (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2006). Standard treatments of the Greco-Roman book include Wilhelm Schubart, Das Buch bei den Griechen und Römern, ed. E. Paul, 2nd ed. (Heidelberg: Schneider, 1962); Frederic G. Kenyon, Books and Readers in Ancient Greece and Rome, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Clarendon, 1932); and Horst Blanck, Das Buch in der Antike (Munich: Beck, 1992).

Loveday Alexander, “Ancient Book Production and the Circulation of the Gospels,” in The Gospels for All Christians: Rethinking the Gospel Audiences, ed. Richard Bauckham (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), p. 85.

Currently, there are over 5,500 New Testament manuscripts in Greek alone. The official numbers are kept at the Institut für neutestamentliche Textforschung (Institute for New Testament Textual Research) in Münster, Germany.

Hurtado, Earliest Christian Artifacts, pp. 20-21. For the sake of this discussion, we will generally follow the dates indicated by Hurtado. Other listings of New Testament manuscripts can be found primarily in Kurt Aland, Repertorium der griechischen christlichen Papyri, I, Biblische Papyri (Berlin: de Gruyter, 1976); and Joseph van Haelst, Catalogue des Papyrus Littéraires Juifs et Chrétiens (Paris: Publications de la Sorbonne, 1976). Of course, some manuscripts, such as P46 (Paul’s epistles), P45 (four Gospels plus Acts), and P75 (Luke and John), contain multiple books. Recently, Roger S. Bagnall, Early Christian Books in Egypt (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2009) has challenged the early dating of some of these papyri. While such challenges are welcome, in a brief volume such as this we can only go with the general consensus of scholars up to this point.

Hurtado, Earliest Christian Artifacts, p. 20, notes sixteen manuscripts of John, but two more from the third century have been discovered since then: P119 (P.Oxy. 4803) and P121 (P.Oxy. 4805). For an updated analysis of John’s manuscripts (and text) see Juan Chapa, “The Early Text of the Gospel of John,” in The Early Text of the New Testament, ed. Charles E. Hill and Michael J. Kruger (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 140-56.

On P52, see Colin H. Roberts, “An Unpublished Fragment of the Fourth Gospel in the John Rylands Library,” BJRL 20 (1936): 45-55. This early date for P52 has been challenged by Brent Nongbri, “The Use and Abuse of P52: Papyrological Pitfalls in the Dating of the Fourth Gospel,” HTR 98 (2005): 23-48. An updated analysis of P90 can be found in Peter Rodgers, “The Text of the New Testament and Its Witnesses Before 200 A.D.: Observations on P90 (P.Oxy. 3523),” in The New Testament Text in Early Christianity: Proceedings of the Lille Colloquium, July 2000, ed. Christian-Bernard Amphoux and J. Keith Elliott (Lausanne: Éditions Du Zèbre, 2003), pp. 83-91. P66 is typically dated ca. 200. For a full-scale analysis of this manuscript, see Gordon D. Fee, Papyrus Bodmer II (p66): Its Textual Relationships and Scribal Characteristics (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press, 1968). The original editors of P75 proposed a date between 175 and 225; see Victor Martin and Rodolphe Kasser, Papyrus Bodmer XIV-XV (Geneva: Bibliotheca Bodmeriana, 1961), 1:13.

For more on Matthew’s reception in early Christianity, see W.-D. Köhler, Die Rezeption des Matthäusevangeliums in der Zeit vor Irenäus (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1987); and Massaux, Influence de L’Évangile de Saint Matthieu sur la littérature chrétienne avant Saint Irénée.

On P64–67, see Colin H. Roberts, “An Early Papyrus of the First Gospel,” HTR 46 (1953): 233-37. P64–67, and possibly P4, are commonly dated ca. 200. Some have attempted an earlier date for these manuscripts; e.g., Carsten Peter Thiede, “Papyrus Magdalen Greek 17 (Gregory-Aland P64): A Reappraisal,” ZPE 105 (1995): 13-20. But this has been rightly rejected in favor of Roberts’s original dating; see Klaus Wachtel, “‘P64/67: Fragmente des Matthäusevangeliums aus dem 1. Jahrhundert?,” ZPE 107 (1995): 73-80. For discussion of P4–64–67 as a possible four-Gospel codex, see T. C. Skeat, “The Oldest Manuscripts of the Four Gospels?,” NTS 43 (1997): 1-34; Peter M. Head, “Is P4, P64, and P67 the Oldest Manuscript of the Four Gospels? A Response to T. C. Skeat,” NTS 51 (2005): 450-57; Scott Charlesworth, “T. C. Skeat, P64+67 and P4, and the Problem of Fibre Orientation in Codicological Reconstruction,” NTS (2007): 582-604; and Charles E. Hill, “Intersection of Jewish and Christian Scribal Culture: The Original Codex Containing P4, P64, and P67, and Its Implications,” in Among Jews, Gentiles, and Christians in Antiquity and the Middle Ages, ed. Reidar Hvalvik and John Kaufman (Trondheim: Tapir Academic Press, 2011), pp. 75-91. It is possible that P77 (P.Oxy 2683 + P.Oxy. 4405) is part of the same codex as P103 (P.Oxy. 4403). On P103, see Eric W. Handley et al., eds., The Oxyrhynchus Papyri (London: Egypt Exploration Society, 1997), 64:5-7; discussion also in Peter M. Head, “Some Recently Published NT Papyri from Oxyrhynchus: An Overview and Preliminary Assessment,” TynBul 51 (2000): 1-16, esp. p. 8. P104 (P.Oxy. 4404) is one of the earliest New Testament manuscripts we possess, dating to the middle or late second century; see again Thomas in Oxyrynchus Papyri, 64:7-9.

Eldon Jay Epp, “Textual Criticism,” in The New Testament and Its Modern Interpreters, ed. Eldon Jay Epp and George W. MacRae (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989), p. 91.

We possess approximately eleven manuscripts of the Shepherd from the second and third centuries.

We possess three manuscripts of Thomas from the second and third centuries: P.Oxy. 1, P.Oxy. 654, and P.Oxy. 655. For a general introduction to the Nag Hammadi material see Christopher M. Tuckett, Nag Hammadi and the Gospel Tradition (Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1986). For recent discussions of Thomas, see April DeConick, Recovering the Original Gospel of Thomas: A History of the Gospel and Its Growth (London: T & T Clark, 2005); Mark S. Goodacre, Thomas and the Gospels: The Case for Thomas’s Familiarity with the Synoptics (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2012); and Simon Gathercole, The Composition of the Gospel of Thomas: Original Language and Influences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).

Gamble, Books and Readers, p. 18. For arguments that Greco-Roman religions still valued the written text to some degree, see Beard, “Writing and Religion,” pp. 35-58.

Colin H. Roberts, Manuscript, Society and Belief in Early Christian Egypt (London: Oxford University Press, 1979), p. 14.

Turner, Typology, p. 37; Roberts, Manuscript, p. 25; Bart D. Ehrman, “The Text as Window: New Testament Manuscripts and the Social History of Early Christianity,” in The Text of the New Testament in Contemporary Research: Essays on the Status Quaestionis, ed. Bart D. Ehrman and Michael W. Holmes (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1995), pp. 372-75.

E.g., P37, P45, P69, P106, P107.

It is important to note that some literary papyri of classical works were also written in a rather plain, unadorned and noncallographic hand (e.g., P.Oxy. 1809, 2076, 2288). However, E. G. Turner does not necessarily consider this an indication of low scribal quality; indeed, he declares that “‘calligraphic’ hands are suspect. . . . It is not uncommon for the finest looking hands to be marred by gross carelessness in transcription” (“Scribes and Scholars,” in Oxyrhynchus: A City and Its Texts, ed. A. K. Bowman et al. [London: Egypt Exploration Society, 2007], pp. 258-59).

E.g., P.Mich. 130 (Shepherd of Hermas; third century) and P.Ryl. 1.1 (Deuteronomy; third/fourth century) contain a surprising number of accents and other lectional aids. Such features indicate that many early Christian books were written for public reading; for more on this see Gamble, Books and Readers, pp. 203-30; Scott Charlesworth, “Public and Private—Second- and Third-Century Gospel Manuscripts,” in Jewish and Christian Scripture as Artifact and Canon, ed. Craig A. Evans and H. Daniel Zacharias (London: T & T Clark, 2009), pp. 148-75; and Hill and Kruger, eds., Early Text of the New Testament, pp. 15-18.

Roberts, Manuscript, p. 23.

Ibid. Another fragment of this same page was discovered in 1997 (P.Oxy. 4405).

F. G. Kenyon, The Chester Beatty Biblical Papyri: Descriptions and Texts of Twelve Manuscripts on Papyrus of the Greek Bible, vol. 3/1 (London: Emery Walker, 1933), p. ix.

Roberts, Manuscript, p. 23. For a discussion on dating these fragments see Skeat, “Oldest Manuscript of the Four Gospels,” pp. 26-31.

Fee, Papyrus Bodmer II (p66), p. 82n20.

Graham N. Stanton, “What Are the Gospels? New Evidence from Papyri,” in Jesus and Gospel, p. 206. Of course, it should also be acknowledged that Christian manuscripts were often intentionally written in a more plain and less calligraphic fashion due to the diverse sociological makeup of its intended audience; see Larry W. Hurtado, “Manuscripts and the Sociology of Early Christian Reading,” in Early Text of the New Testament, pp. 49-62.

Relevant works on the codex include: Alain Blanchard, ed., Les débuts du codex (Turnhout: Brepols, 1989); Roberts and Skeat, Birth of the Codex; Eric G. Turner, The Typology of the Early Codex (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1977); T. C. Skeat, “The Origin of the Christian Codex,” ZPE 102 (1994): 263-68; Henry A. Sanders, “The Beginnings of the Modern Book,” University of Michigan Quarterly Review 44, no. 15 (1938): 95-111; C. C. McCown, “Codex and Roll in the New Testament,” HTR 34 (1941): 219-50; Larry W. Hurtado, “The Earliest Evidence of an Emerging Christian Material and Visual Culture: The Codex, the Nomina Sacra, and the Staurogram,” in Text and Artifact in the Religions of Mediterranean Antiquity: Essays in Honour of Peter Richardson, ed. Stephen G. Wilson and Michael Desjardins (Waterloo: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 2000), pp. 271-88; S. R. Llewelyn, “The Development of the Codex,” in New Documents Illustrating Early Christianity, Vol. 7: A Review of the Greek Inscriptions and Papyri Published in 1982-83, ed. S. R. Llewelyn and R. A. Kearsley (North Ryde, NSW: Macquarie University Ancient History Documentary Research Center, 1994), pp. 249-56; Stanton, “Why Were Early Christians Addicted to the Codex?,” pp. 165-91; Eldon J. Epp, “The Codex and Literacy in Early Christianity at Oxyrhynchus: Issues Raised by Harry Y. Gamble’s Books and Readers in the Early Church,” in Critical Review of Books in Religion 1997, ed. Charles Prebish (Atlanta: American Academy of Religion and Society of Biblical Literature, 1997), pp. 15-37.

Studies on the nomina sacra include: Ludwig Traube, Nomina Sacra: Versuch einer Geschichte der christlichen Kürzung (Munich: Beck, 1907); A. H. R. E. Paap, Nomina Sacra in the Greek Papyri of the First Five Centuries (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1959); Jose O’Callaghan, Nomina Sacra in Papyrus Graecis Saeculi III Neotestamentariis (Rome: Biblical Institute Press, 1970); Schuyler Brown, “Concerning the Origin of the Nomina Sacra,” SPap 9 (1970): 7-19; George Howard, “The Tetragram and the New Testament,” JBL 96 (1977): 63-83; Roberts, Manuscript, pp. 26-48; and Larry W. Hurtado, “The Origin of the Nomina Sacra: A Proposal,” JBL 117 (1998): 655-73.

Skeat, “Early Christian Book Production,” p. 68. See discussion in McCown, “Codex and Roll in the New Testament,” pp. 219-21. Of course, now it is well-accepted that the codex was likely a Roman invention (see Roberts and Skeat, Birth of the Codex, pp. 15-23).

For statistics regarding the adoption of the codex by Christians and non-Christians, see Hurtado, Earliest Christian Artifacts, pp. 44-61. A helpful discussion of scrolls is found in Gamble, Books and Readers, pp. 43-48; and more recently in William A. Johnson, Bookrolls and Scribes in Oxyrhynchus (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2004).

E.g., during the second century we have only the following Christian scriptural books not on codices: P.IFAO (Revelation); P.Oxy. 4443 (Esther); and P.Barc.inv. 2 (Psalms). However, it should be noted that the manuscript of Revelation is simply a reused roll (opisthograph) and therefore does not represent a conscious decision to use a roll. Moreover, it is uncertain whether the manuscripts of Esther and Psalms derive from a Christian or Jewish provenance. For more discussion see Hurtado, Earliest Christian Artifacts, pp. 54-56.

Although these four words were abbreviated most consistently, scribes expanded the nomina sacra over time. For other examples of variants of nomina sacra see Aland, Repertorium der griechischen christlichen Papyri, pp. 420-28, and Bruce M. Metzger, Manuscripts of the Bible: An Introduction to Greek Palaeography (New York: Oxford University Press, 1981), pp. 36-37.

Nomina sacra are found not only in Greek manuscripts, but also in Latin, Coptic, Slavonic and Armenian. The rare exceptions occur in private documents, magical texts (e.g., P.Oxy. 407), or from oversights of a careless scribe (e.g., P.Oxy. 656; Traube, Nomina Sacra, p. 90). For more detail see Roberts, Manuscript, p. 27.

A. Luijendijk, Greetings in the Lord: Early Christians in the Oxyrhynchus Papyri (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2008), pp. 57-78.

Skeat, “Early Christian Book-Production,” p. 73.

John Barton, The Spirit and the Letter: Studies in the Biblical Canon (London: SPCK, 1997), p. 121.

Hurtado, “Earliest Evidence of an Emerging Christian Material and Visual Culture: The Codex, the Nomina Sacra, and the Staurogram,” pp. 271-88.

For a discussion of the variety of ways that the divine name was abbreviated in the Old Testament, see Emanuel Tov, Scribal Practices and Approaches Reflected in the Texts Found in the Judean Desert (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 2004), pp. 218-19; and Emanuel Tov, “Scribal Features of Early Witnesses of Greek Scripture,” in The Old Greek Psalter: Studies in Honour of Albert Pietersma, ed. Robert J. V. Hiebert, Claude E. Cox and Peter J. Gentry (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 2001), pp. 125-48.

By suggesting that the nomina sacra and the Tetragrammaton performed similar functions, I am not suggesting that the latter is the explanation of the origins of the former (as originally argued by Traube, Nomina Sacra, p. 36). There are many competing theories for the specific form of the nomina sacra; for discussion see Hurtado, Earliest Christian Artifacts, pp. 95-134.

Barton, Spirit and the Letter, p. 123. Barton’s suggestion that the nomina sacra mark a book as sacred is not necessarily incompatible with the fact that the nomina sacra also occur in writings outside the New Testament; e.g., P.Egerton 2, Gospel of Thomas, P.Oxy. 840, and even amulets (see Campbell Bonner, Studies in Magical Amulets [Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 1950], pp. 185, 223). For one, some early Christians may have regarded some of these apocryphal books as sacred. In addition, there are good reasons to think that apocryphal books were constructed to reflect the standard features of the Christian “Scripture” that was already being used by the church, and thereby would have included the nomina sacra.

Barton, Spirit and the Letter, p. 123. Christopher M. Tuckett, “‘Nomina Sacra’: Yes and No?,” in The Biblical Canons, ed. J.-M. Auwers and H. J. de Jonge (Leuven: Leuven University Press, 2003), pp. 431-58; Kurt Treu, “Die Bedeutung des Griechischen für die Juden im römischen Reich,” Kairos 15 (1973): 123-44; and Robert A. Kraft, “The ‘Textual Mechanics’ of Early Jewish LXX/OG Papyri and Fragments,” in The Bible as Book: The Transmission of the Greek Text, ed. Scot McKendrick and Orlaith O’Sullivan (London: British Library, 2003), pp. 51-72, have all argued that the nomina sacra might not be a Christian invention at all. See response from Hurtado, Earliest Christian Artifacts, pp. 99-110.

Hurtado, “Origin of the Nomina Sacra,” argues for a date “no later than the first century” (p. 660) and even suggests a pre-70 date is likely (p. 672). Roberts, Manuscript, p. 37, put its origins “at least the turn of the century,” implying the date could be even earlier. The early date of the nomina sacra is confirmed by their inclusion in two manuscripts from the early second century, P52 (Gospel of John) and the Chester Beatty Numbers and Deuteronomy (P.Beatty VI). For the convention to be this widespread by the early second century suggests it likely began even earlier. The inclusion of the nomina sacra in P52 has been contested by Christopher M. Tuckett, “P52 and the Nomina Sacra,” NTS 47 (2001): 544-48. See responses from Larry W. Hurtado, “P52 (P.Rylands Gk. 457) and the Nomina Sacra: Method and Probability,” TynBul 54 (2003): 1-14; and Charles E. Hill, “Did the Scribe of P52 Use the Nomina Sacra? Another Look,” NTS 48 (2002): 587-92.

Kelber, Oral and the Written Gospel, p. 23.

Talmon, “Oral Tradition and Written Transmission,” p. 149. See also Andrew Gregory, “What Is Literary Dependence?,” in New Studies in the Synoptic Problem, pp. 87-114, esp. p. 91.

Of course, scholars have suggested other (more subtle) examples; e.g., Philip F. Esler, “Collective Memory and Hebrews 11: Outlining a New Investigative Framework,” in Memory, Tradition, and Text: Uses of the Past in Early Christianity, ed. Alan Kirk and Tom Thatcher (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2005), pp. 151-71, makes an argument that the author of Hebrews is attempting to “detextualize” Old Testament traditions due to his oral environment. While Esler makes some helpful observations about how Hebrews would have been heard orally by its first-century audience, his argument that the author has a broad antitextual agenda seems unproven, particularly given the fact that the author is writing a book to make his point (!). In contrast to Esler, see David M. Allen, Deuteronomy & Exhortation in Hebrews: A Study in Re-presentation (Mohr Siebeck, 2008), who argues that Hebrews is being presented as a new Deuteronomy.

Scholars are divided over the precise date when Papias wrote. Some have argued for a later date ca. 140; e.g., Brooke F. Westcott, A General Survey of the History of the Canon of the New Testament (London: Macmillan, 1889), p. 70; and J. B. Lightfoot, Essays on the Work Entitled Supernatural Religion (London: MacMillan & Co., 1889), pp. 147-50. Others argue for an even earlier date ca. 110; see J. Vernon Bartlet, “Papias’s ‘Exposition’: Its Date and Contents,” in Amicitiae Corolla, ed. H. G. Wood (London: University of London Press, 1933), pp. 16-22; Robert W. Yarbrough, “The Date of Papias: A Reassessment,” JETS 26 (1983): 181-91.

For discussion of Papias as a source see Samuel Byrskog, Story as History, pp. 272-92; Robert H. Gundry, Matthew: A Commentary on His Handbook for a Mixed Church Under Persecution (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), pp. 609-22; Theo K. Heckel, Vom Evangelium des Markus zum viergestaltigen Evangelium (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1999), pp. 219-22; W. D. Davies and Dale C. Allison, The Gospel According to Saint Matthew (ICC; Edinburgh: T & T Clark, 1997), pp. 7-17; Martin M. Hengel, Studies in the Gospel of Mark (London: SCM, 1985), pp. 47-53; and R. T. France, Matthew: Evangelist and Teacher (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1989), pp. 53-60.

Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 3.39.4.

As cited in Campenhausen, Formation of the Christian Bible, p. 135.

Geoffrey M. Hahneman, The Muratorian Fragment and the Development of the Canon (Oxford: Clarendon, 1992), pp. 95-96.

Lee M. McDonald, The Biblical Canon: Its Origin, Transmission, and Authority (Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2007), pp. 246-47.

Shiner, Proclaiming the Gospel, pp. 18-19.

Ron Cameron, Sayings Traditions in the Apocryphon of James (Philadelphia: Fortress, 1984), pp. 93-100.

Evans, “New Testament in the Making,” p. 234.

Campenhausen, Formation of the Christian Bible, p. 135.

Ibid., p. 134.

Byrskog, Story as History, pp. 48-65.

Ibid., p. 60.

E.g., Polybius criticized Timaeus for relying too much on written sources (12.27.1-3).

Hist. eccl. 3.39.4.

12.27.3 (Polybius uses the noun form of this word); cf. Lucian, Hist. Conscr. 47.

Hist. eccl. 3.39.3.

Lucian, Hist. Conscr. 47; see Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, p. 26.

Hist. eccl. 3.39.3. The term “certifies” comes from Bart D. Ehrman, The Apostolic Fathers (2 vols.; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003), 2:99.

Lucian, Hist. Conscr. 39–40.

Byrskog, Story as History, pp. 26-40.

Bauckham, Jesus and the Eyewitnesses, p. 27; cf. Gamble, Books and Readers, pp. 30-31.

Hist. eccl. 3.39.1.

Byrskog, Story as History, pp. 122-23. Charles E. Hill, “What Papias Said About John (and Luke): A New Papias Fragment,” JTS 49 (1998): 582-629, at pp. 622-24, helpfully reminds us that Papias was not collecting sayings of Jesus to compete with the canonical Gospels, but as aid to interpreting the canonical Gospels. Cf. Lightfoot, Supernatural Religion, pp. 158-60.

Herodotus, 1.1. English translation from Alfred D. Godley, Herodotus (Loeb; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1920).

Thucydides, 1.22.4. English translation from Charles Foster Smith, Thucydides (Loeb; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1980).

Byrskog, Story as History, p. 245.

Loveday Alexander, “The Living Voice: Skepticism Toward the Written Word in Early Christian and Graeco-Roman Texts,” in The Bible in Three Dimensions, ed. David J. A. Clines, Stephen E. Fowl and Stanley E. Porter (Sheffield: JSOT, 1990), pp. 226-37.

Gerhardsson, Memory and Manuscript, p. 157.

Pieter J. J. Botha, “Living Voice and Lifeless Letters: Reserve Towards Writing in the Graeco-Roman World,” HvTSt 49 (1993): 742-59.

Byrskog, Story as History, p. 109 (emphasis mine).

E.g., Quintilian, Inst. 2.2.8; Pliny, Ep. 2.3.

Alexander, “Living Voice,” p. 227. See further discussion of how rhetoric interplays with written texts in Simon Goldhill, “The Anecdote: Exploring Boundaries Between Oral and Literate Performances in the Second Sophistic,” in Ancient Literacies, pp. 96-113, esp. p. 98.

Alexander, “Living Voice,” pp. 228-29.

Galen, De libr. propr. 5, Kühn 19.33.

Ep. 6.5; cf. Galen, De venae sect. 5, Kühn 11.221. Another well-known example of such concerns among philosophers is Plato’s complaint about writing in Phaedrus, 274c-275c. However, it seems that Plato is not opposed to writing in principle, but that “Plato’s real concern is with the difference between oral and written teaching” (Botha, “Living Voice,” p. 749; emphasis his). Botha notes again: “What Plato is rejecting is the belief that a book can be a passport to a kind of ‘instant’ skill” (p. 750). While at times Plato’s criticism of writing seems more fundamental (Seventh Letter 342-43), at other times Plato seems quite positive toward writing. Similarly, the comments on writing by Clement of Alexandria in the first chapter of his Stromateis (1.1) should also be understood within the context of Hellenistic philosophical schools (which have a bent toward secrecy and, for that reason, keep certain teachings oral). Clement was not opposed to the written word in principle, as is seen by his robust commitment to the written books of the New Testament (see discussion below in chapter five). For more discussion of Clement, see Osborn, “Teaching and Writing,” pp. 335-43; Botha, “Living Voice and Lifeless Letters,” pp. 753-55; and Gamble, Books and Readers, pp. 32, 259n109.

Alexander, “Living Voice,” pp. 230-37.

Ironically, Seneca actually downplays the importance of the living voice in other places (Ep. 33.9).

Millard, Reading and Writing, p. 203.

Alexander, “Living Voice,” p. 231.

See also Andrew F. Walls, “Papias and Oral Tradition,” VC 21 (1967): 137-40.

Roberts, “Books in the Greco-Roman World and in the New Testament,” p. 51.

Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 3.39.15-17; Andrew of Caesarea, On the Apocalypse 34.12. For Papias’s opinion of these documents, see further discussion below in chapter five.

Walls, “Papias and Oral Tradition,” pp. 138-39.

E.g., Barr, Holy Scripture, p. 12; Kelber, Oral and the Written Gospel, pp. 155-59; Robert P. Carroll, “Inscribing the Covenant: Writing and the Written in Jeremiah,” in Understanding Poets and Prophets: Essays in Honour of George Wishart Anderson, ed. A. Graeme Auld (Sheffield: Sheffield Academic Press, 1993), pp. 61-76; and Mark D. Given, “Paul and Writing,” in As It Is Written: Studying Paul’s Use of Scripture, ed. Stanley E. Porter and Christopher D. Stanley (Atlanta: Society of Biblical Literature, 2008), pp. 237-59.

Kelber, Oral and the Written Gospel, p. 158.

Ibid.

For a full-length work on this passage, see Scott J. Hafemann, Paul, Moses, and the History of Israel: The Letter/Spirit Contrast and the Argument from Scripture in 2 Corinthians 3 (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1995). Sigurd Grindheim, “The Law Kills but the Gospel Gives Life: The Letter-Spirit Dualism in 2 Cor 3:5-18,” JSNT 84 (2001): pp. 97-115, agrees with Hafemann that the text contrasts two covenants but disagrees about the nature of the contrast. Bernardin Schneider, “The Meaning of St. Paul’s Antithesis ‘The Letter and the Spirit,’” CBQ 15 (1953): 163-207, provides a helpful survey of the historical views of this passage and demonstrates that the most common view is that Paul is contrasting the old and new covenants (though, again, there are minor disagreements about the nature of that contrast). For a survey of modern views, see Randall C. Gleason, “Paul’s Covenantal Contrasts in 2 Corinthians 3:1-11,” BSac 154 (1997): 61-79.

It is noteworthy that in the immediate context Paul describes his own role/calling in similar terms to that of Moses (2 Cor 2:16; cf. Ex 4:10). For more on Paul and Moses, see Karl Olav Sandnes, Paul—One of the Prophets? A Contribution to the Apostle’s Self-Understanding (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1997); and Peter R. Jones, “The Apostle Paul: Second Moses to the New Covenant Community. A Study in Pauline Apostolic Authority,” in God’s Inerrant Word, ed. John Warwick Montgomery (Minneapolis: Bethany Fellowship, 1974), pp. 219-41.

Philip E. Hughes, Paul’s Second Epistle to the Corinthians (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1962), pp. 89-90.

Scott J. Hafemann, 2 Corinthians (NIVAC; Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2000), pp. 132-33.

For more, see Herman Ridderbos, Paul: An Outline of His Theology (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1975), pp. 218-19.

Hafemann, Paul, Moses and the History of Israel, p. 168 (emphasis his); cf. Hughes, The Second Epistle to the Corinthians, pp. 99-100; and Thomas Schreiner, Paul: Apostle of God’s Glory in Christ (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2001), pp. 134-35. Hays, Echoes of Scripture in the Letters of Paul, p. 131, appears to affirm Kelber’s interpretation when he declares, “for Paul the problem with the old covenant lies precisely in its character as a written thing.” However, at a later point he clarifies by saying, “The problem with this old covenant is precisely that it is (only) written, lacking the power to effect the obedience that it demands” (p. 131; emphasis mine). Thus, Hays offers a view similar to the one we are advocating here.

Gottlob Schrenk, “γράφω,” TDNT 1:768, makes it clear that “the antithesis [between letter and Spirit] is not directed absolutely against γραφή as such. We have seen that Paul affirms the lasting significance of Scripture and he does not intend in any way to weaken its authority.” He goes on to say that Paul’s contrast “is not meant in such a way that the supersession of the γράμμα involves that of the γραφή. On the contrary, the latter becomes an authority regulated by Christ and His Spirit.”

Of course, the believing remnant within Old Testament Israel would have had the Spirit in some measure. Thus the contrast between the covenant at Sinai and the new covenant is not absolute.

Dibelius, From Tradition to Gospel, p. 9.

William Barclay, The First Three Gospels (London: SCM, 1966), p. 45. Other scholars who have made similar statements include: Raymond E. Brown, An Introduction to the New Testament (New York: Doubleday, 1997), p. 5; and Willi Marxsen, Introduction to the New Testament: An Approach to Its Problems (Philadelphia: Westminster, 1968), p. 23. Harry Y. Gamble, “Christianity: Scripture and Canon,” in The Holy Book in Comparative Perspective, ed. Frederick M. Denny and Rodney L. Taylor (Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1985), p. 56n6, argues that the eschatological nature of Christianity “militated against the composition of Christian literature.” However, he says nearly the opposite in Books and Readers, p. 20. So, it appears his position may have changed.

Evans, “New Testament in the Making,” p. 233.

Albert Schweitzer, The Quest of the Historical Jesus (New York: Macmillan, 1968), pp. 358-77.

Bart D. Ehrman, Jesus: Apocalyptic Prophet of the New Millennium (New York: Oxford University Press, 1999). Ehrman’s approach to the historical Jesus is quite similar to that of Schweitzer.

For a helpful rebuttal of such claims see discussion in Thomas Schreiner, New Testament Theology: Magnifying God in Christ (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2008), pp. 803-16; N. T. Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God (Minneapolis: Fortress, 1996), pp. 329-65; and Ben Witherington III, Jesus, Paul and the End of the World (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 1992), pp. 23-44.

Wright, Jesus and the Victory of God, p. 365.

For fuller discussion on this point, see again George Eldon Ladd, Jesus and the Kingdom: The Eschatology of Biblical Realism (New York: Harper & Row, 1964); and Schreiner, New Testament Theology, pp. 41-79.

Richard Bauckham, “The Delay of the Parousia,” TynBul 31 (1980): 3-36, demonstrates that the struggle with God’s delay was not a uniquely Christian phenomenon but one that also existed within the Jewish apocalyptic background of the first century.

Dale C. Allison, Constructing Jesus: Memory, Imagination, and History (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2010), pp. 144-53, argues that even if Jesus were mistaken about his return, we would not necessarily expect early Christians to abandon their faith. Allison raises some good points, but if Jesus were mistaken surely we would expect a larger amount of “eschatological disillusionment” in early Christianity than we actually find.

Leslie W. Barnard, “Justin Martyr’s Eschatology,” VC 19 (1965): 86-98. Barnard observes that if the church had anxiety over the delay of the parousia, “[It] seems to have left little trace in early Christian literature” (p. 89).

Richard Bauckham, Jude, 2 Peter (Waco, TX: Word, 1983), p. 293.

The issue of eschatological delay is present in only a few other early texts (1 Clem. 23:2-5; 2 Clem. 11:1-7; Herm. Vis. 3.4.3; 3.5.1; 3.8.9) and does not present itself as a significant crisis in early Christianity.

Witherington, Jesus, Paul and the End of the World, pp. 23-24, argues that the New Testament uses the language of imminence to speak of the second coming, but this does not require that Jesus return in the first generation.

Schreiner, New Testament Theology, p. 805.

Ernest Best, A Commentary on the First and Second Epistles to the Thessalonians (New York: Harper & Row, 1972), pp. 194-96. For a response to Best’s understanding of this passage, see G. K. Beale, 1-2 Thessalonians (IVPNTC; Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2003), pp. 140-41.

For more on Paul’s understanding of his writings, see chapter four.

E. Earle Ellis, “New Directions in the History of Early Christianity,” in Ancient History in a Modern University: Early Christianity, Late Antiquity and Beyond, ed. T. W. Hillard, et al. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997), 1:75-76.

John J. Collins, Apocalypticism in the Dead Sea Scrolls (London: Routledge, 1997); James C. VanderKam, “Apocalyptic Tradition in the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Religion of Qumran,” in Religion in the Dead Sea Scrolls, ed. John J. Collins and Robert A. Kulger (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000), pp. 113-34; Emile Puech, “Messianism, Resurrection, and Eschatology at Qumran and in the New Testament,” in The Community of the Renewed Covenant: The Notre Dame Symposium on the Dead Sea Scrolls, ed. Eugene Ulrich and James C. VanderKam (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1994), pp. 235-56; James H. Charlesworth, Hermann Lichtenberger and Gerbern S. Oegema, eds., Qumran-Messianism: Studies on the Messianic Expectations in the Dead Sea Scrolls (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1998); Israel Knohl, The Messiah Before Jesus: The Suffering Servant of the Dead Sea Scrolls (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000).

E. P. Sanders, Judaism: Practice and Belief 63BCE–66CE (London: SCM, 1992), pp. 368-69; cf. 1QM and 11QTa.

E.g., 1QS 6.2-8; 1QSa 2.3-10; 1QM 7.4-6; 11QTa 45.12-14. For more on purity at Qumran, see Michael Newton, The Concept of Purity at Qumran and in the Letters of Paul (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985); Jacob Neusner, “History and Purity in First-Century Judaism,” HR 18 (1978): 1-17; Lawrence H. Schiffman, “Communal Meals at Qumran,” RQ 10 (1979–81): 45-56.

Annette Steudel, “‭םימיה תירחא in the Texts from Qumran,” RevQ 16 (1993): 225-46; cf. Albert I. Baumgarten, The Flourishing of Jewish Sects in the Maccabean Era: An Interpretation (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1997), pp. 176-77; and John J. Collins, “Teacher and Messiah? The One Who Will Teach Righteousness at the End of Days,” in Community of the Renewed Covenant, pp. 193-210. Puech, “Messianism,” p. 246, declares, “We find in both the Qumran literature and the NT very similar messianic ideas.”

1QS 6.6-7; CD 9.8. For more on Qumran exegesis, see F. F. Bruce, Biblical Exegesis in the Qumran Texts (London: Tyndale, 1959).

CDa 10.10-14; 10.21–12.2; 4QMMT; see discussion in Talmon, “Oral Tradition and Written Transmission,” pp. 146-47. Talmon also points out that the Qumran community would have likely recorded in writing the words of the Teacher of Righteousness “almost simultaneously with their oral delivery” (p. 158). This is at least suggestive that the earliest Christians may have done something similar with the teachings of Jesus.

David Meade, “Ancient Near Eastern Apocalypticism and the Origins of the New Testament Canon of Scripture,” in The Bible as a Human Witness: Hearing the Word of God Through Historically Dissimilar Traditions, ed. Randall Heskett and Brian Irwin (London: T & T Clark, 2010), pp. 302-21, at p. 308 (emphasis his).

Gerd Theissen, The New Testament: A Literary History (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2012), p. 10.

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