The Cradle, the Cross, and the Crown (15 page)

⁴⁷
E.g., Allert,
A High View of Scripture
, 141; Barton,
Holy Writing, Sacred Text
, 10; and Metzger,
Canon
, 212.

⁴⁸
Gamble,
New Testament Canon
, 17.

⁴⁹
E.g., M. G. Kline,
The Structure of Biblical Authority
, 2d ed. (Eugene: Wipf & Stock, 1997 [1987]), 75, who suggests that the covenantal nature of the canon led the early church writers to employ the term “covenantal” rather than “canon.”

⁵⁰
E.g., E. Evanson attempted to reduce the Christian canon for theological reasons (
Dissonance of the Four Generally Received Evangelists and the Evidence of Their Respective Authenticity, Examined with That of Some Other Scriptures Deemed Canonical
[Gloucester: Walker, 1805], 340–41).

⁵¹
See C. E. Hill, “The New Testament Canon:
Deconstrucio ad absurdum?
”
JETS
52 (2009): forthcoming.

⁵²
J. D. G. Dunn, “How the New Testament Began,” in
From Biblical Criticism to Biblical Faith: Essays in Honor of Lee Martin McDonald
, ed. W. Brackney and C. Evans (Macon: Mercer Univ. Press, 2007), 128. See also id.,
Jesus Remembered
, Christianity in the Making 1 (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2003).

⁵³
Dunn, “How the New Testament Began,” 127.

⁵⁴
Ibid., 128.

⁵⁵
If limited to the first few centuries of the Christian era, the number is even smaller. B. D. Ehrman,
Lost Scriptures: Books That Did Not Make It into the New Testament
(New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 2003), includes only 17 noncanonical Gospels, including the disputed Secret Gospel of Mark (see chap. 3 below). J. K. Elliott (
The Apocryphal New Testament
[Oxford: Clarendon, 1993]) provided a fuller listing, but a perusal of the Gospels featured in his book shows that many of these Gospels (1) are fragmentary, late, and dependent on the canonical Gospels; (2) include dubious content; or (3) are otherwise transparently inferior to the canonical Gospels.

⁵⁶
The manuscript evidence alone suggests that the four canonical Gospels were far more popular than the rest.
Gospel of Thomas
has one whole manuscript (and three small fragments); the
Gospel of Peter
survives in only three small fragments; the
Egerton Gospel
in two small fragments; the
Gospel of the Hebrews
only in quotations (G. Stanton,
The Gospels and Jesus
, 2d ed. [Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 2002], 122–35).

⁵⁷
See Eusebius,
Eccl. Hist.
6.12.

⁵⁸
See especially R. Bauckham,
Jesus and the Eyewitnesses: The Gospels as Eyewitness Testimony
(Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2006). He stressed the eyewitness character of the Gospels and argues that the Twelve served as an “authoritative collegium” in the Gospels' preservation of eyewitness testimony regarding Jesus in the Gospels.

⁵⁹
See A. von Harnack,
Marcion: Das Evangelium vom fremden Gott: Eine Monographie zur Geschichte der Grundlegung der katholischen Kirche
, Bibliothek klassischer Texte (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1996; repr. of 1924 ed.), 357; H. von Campenhausen,
The Formation of the Christian Bible
(Philadelphia: Fortress, 1972), 148; and J. Knox,
Marcion and the New Testament
(Chicago: University Press, 1942), 31, who wrote that “Marcion is primarily responsible for the idea of the New Testament.”

⁶⁰
See the discussion of stimuli for canonization above. See Metzger,
Canon
, 99; and T. von Zahn,
Geschichte des neutestamentlichen Kanons I
(Erlangen/Leipzig: A. Deichert, 1888), 586.

⁶¹
Tertullian's remark that Marcion had “gnawed the Gospels to pieces” suggests that Marcion's separation of Luke from the rest of the Gospels was a disruption of an already existing collection (
Against Marcion
, in
The Ante-Nicene Fathers
, vol. III:
Latin Christianity: Its Founder, Tertullian
, ed. A. Roberts and J. Donaldson [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1986], 272). Tertullian further noted that Marcion's rejection of the other Gospels was purely an innovation, not a restoration movement, indicating that Marcion surely knew the other Gospels (
Against Marcion
, Book IV, chaps. III–IV, in ibid., 348–49).

⁶²
E. Ferguson, “Factors Leading to the Selection and Closure of the New Testament Canon,” in
Canon Debate
, 313.

⁶³
See Justin,
1 Apol.
67: “And on the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits; then, when the reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs, and exhorts to the the imitation of these good things” (
The Ante-Nicene Fathers
, vol. I:
The Apostolic Fathers—Justin Martyr—Irenaeus
, ed. A. Roberts and J. Donaldson [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987], 186).

⁶⁴
Against von Campenhausen (
Formation of the Christian Bible
, 103), who maintained, “It is customary to talk of a ‘canon of the Four Gospels,’ a ‘canon’ of the Pauline Epistles, and an ‘apocalyptic’ canon even before the time of Marcion. Our sources certainly do nothing to justify such ideas.”

⁶⁵
Justin's student Tatian created the
Diatessaron
(“through four”), a continuous Gospel harmony.

⁶⁶
G. N. Stanton, “The Fourfold Gospel,”
NTS
43 (1997): 316–46.

⁶⁷
M. Hengel,
The Four Gospels and One Gospel of Jesus Christ
(Harrisburg: Trinity International, 2000), 10.

⁶⁸
E.g., McDonald (
Biblical Canon
, 290) argued that Irenaeus was an innovator here.

⁶⁹
T. C. Skeat, “Irenaeus and the Four-Gospel Canon,”
NovT
34 (1992): 198–99.

⁷⁰
Irenaeus,
Against Heresies
3.11.8 (Migne,
PG
7.1, 889). Irenaeus's argument is that the
one
gospel is, literally, “four-formed” (
tetramorphē
).

⁷¹
idean tou euangeliou
(emphasis added).

⁷²
Emphasis added;
prosōpon
, Lat.
personas
; lit. “face” or “mask.” Irenaeus,
Against Heresies
3.11.9 (Migne,
PG
7.1, 890).

⁷³
Note also Irenaeus's final words, “Since God made all things orderly and neatly, it was also fitting for the outward appearance of the Gospel to be well arranged [Lat.
bene compositam
] and well connected [Lat.
bene compaginatam
]. Therefore, having examined the opinion of those men
who handed the Gospel down to us
, from their very beginnings, let us go also to the remaining apostles” (
Against Heresies
3.11.9 [
PG
71, 894]).

⁷⁴
The earliest mss. are p45, containing all four Gospels and Acts (third cent.); P
⁷⁵
, which contains Luke and John, making it likely that it originally included all four Gospels (c. 200); possibly p53 (including all four Gospels and Acts; c. 260); and Uncial 0171 (c. 300). See Metzger and Ehrman,
Text of the New Testament
, 53–61.

⁷⁵
Ferguson, “Factors Leading to the Selection and Closure of the New Testament Canon,” 303.

⁷⁶
T. C. Skeat, “The Oldest Manuscript of the Four Gospels?”
NTS
43 (1997): 1–34. See also P. W. Comfort, “Exploring the Common Identification of Three New Testament Manuscripts: P
⁴
, P
⁶⁴
, and P
⁶⁷
,”
TynBul
46 (1995): 43–54. This identification has recently been questioned by P. M. Head, “Is P
⁴
, P
⁶⁴
, and P
⁶⁷
the Oldest Manuscript of the Four Gospels? A Response to T. C. Skeat,”
NTS
51 (2005): 450–57. Although C. P. Thiede has claimed a date near the year 100 for P
⁶⁷
, he has garnered few followers (“Papyrus Magdalen Greek 17 [Gregory-Aland P
⁶⁴
]: A Reappraisal,”
TynBul
46 [1995]: 29–42).

⁷⁷
C. H. Roberts and T. C. Skeat,
The Birth of the Codex
(London: British Academy, 1983), 65.

⁷⁸
J. K. Elliott, “Manuscripts, the Codex, and the Canon,”
JSNT
63 (1996): 107.

⁷⁹
W. G. Kümmel, P. Fein, and J. Behm,
Introduction to the New Testament
(Nashville: Abingdon, 1966), 480–81. See also Aland and Aland,
Text of the New Testament
, 49.

⁸⁰
S. E. Porter, “When and How was the Pauline Canon Compiled? An Assessment of Theories,” in
The Pauline Canon
, ed. S. E. Porter (Boston: Brill, 2004), 103.

⁸¹
Some suggest that there was a long period of neglect of Paul because the antecedent judgment about the date of the earliest Gospels—post-70—meant that these Gospels had no knowledge of Paul. Thus, someone—perhaps reading the stirring account of Acts—was motivated to collect the letters some 30 years after Paul's death (see E. J. Goodspeed,
How Came the Bible?
[Nashville: Cokesbury, 1940], 59–63); Goodspeed elsewhere suggested that the person responsible was Onesimus, the runaway slave mentioned in the book of Philemon. See id.,
New Solutions to New Testament Problems
[Chicago: University Press, 1927], 1–64; and his student J. Knox,
Philemon Among the Letters of Paul
[London: Collins, 1960]). However, Dunn (“How the New Testament Began,” 133) rightly noted that “[t]hose [letters] which have been preserved were so because they were prized, read often, copied and circulated.”

⁸²
Porter, “When and How Was the Pauline Canon Compiled,” 109–13.

⁸³
For Cicero, see
Att.
1.17; 3.9; for Ignatius's letters, see
Pol.
13:1 (Polycarp's letter is in answer to the Philippians' request for Ignatius's letters). E. R. Richards (
Paul and First-Century Letter Writing: Secretaries, Composition and Collection
[Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 2004], 156) cited Cicero and a papyrus find (PZen 10) and rightly concluded that this was “a common enough practice.”

⁸⁴
H. Gamble,
Books and Readers in the Early Church: A History of Early Christian Texts
(New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1995), 100–1.

⁸⁵
D. Trobisch,
Paul's Letter Collection: Tracing the Origins
(Minneapolis: Fortress, 2000 [1994]), 50. First, the author himself prepared some letters for publication (Trobisch argued for Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, and Galatians as this first level). Second, after the author's death these editions were expanded, and other editions were published from known letters of the author. Third, eventually all the editions were combined into a comprehensive edition. One of the reasons for this separation is that Galatians is shorter than Ephesians yet before it in the canonical arrangement. Trobisch saw this as evidence of the end of the original letter collection. But J. Murphy-O'Connor (
Paul the Letter Writer: His World, His Options, His Skills
[Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1995], 120–30) rightly noted that there were ways of measurement available to scribes other than the number of characters (such as the number of lines) that show very similar lengths for Galatians and Ephesians, and Colossians and Philippians, respectively.

⁸⁶
Porter,
Pauline Canon
, 115–21.

⁸⁷
Gamble,
Books and Readers
, 51–52.

⁸⁸
Gamble (ibid., 62–65) has even promoted the idea that the Pauline letter collection actually occasioned the Christian preference for the codex format. He is followed to some extent by Richards (
Paul and First-Century Letter Writing
, 223).

⁸⁹
Trobisch,
Paul's Letter Collection
, 22–24.

⁹⁰
Dunn, “How the New Testament Began,” 137: “The
de facto
canon of Jesus and Paul, gospel and epistle, was already functioning with effect within the first thirty years of Christianity's existence.”

⁹¹
John, it is stated, knew the other Gospels. See Eusebius (
Eccl. Hist
. 3.24.7)—identified by C. E. Hill (“What Papias Said About John (and Luke): A ‘New’ Papian Fragment,”
JTS
2 [1998]: 582–629) as a fragment of Papias—who wrote, “John welcomed the three previous Gospels, which had been distributed to all, including himself, and testified to their truth, noting they omitted the first ministry.” Another legend regarding John is found in a fragment of Origen that he claimed came from an “old writing.” Commenting on the preface to Luke, he reports that “John collected the written Gospels in his own lifetime in the reign of Nero and approved of and recognized those of which the deceit of the devil had not taken possession; but refused and rejected those which he perceived were not truthful” (Origen,
Hom. Luke
1 fr. 9).

⁹²
Ferguson, “Factors Leading to the Selection and Closure of the New Testament Canon,” 304.

⁹³
Trobisch,
First Edition
, 103. Others include C. R. Gregory,
Canon and Text of the New Testament
(New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1907), 467–68.

⁹⁴
This order is essentially found in the Muratorian Canon and Eusebius. See R. Bauckham,
James: Wisdom of James, Disciple of Jesus the Sage
, New Testament Readings (London/New York: Routledge, 1999), 115–16.

⁹⁵
Bruce,
Canon
, 243–46.

⁹⁶
The International Bible Society has issued a version of the TNIV called “the books of the Bible” that radically rearranges the NT. In a bold move the committee removed the chapter and verse divisions of Robert Estienne (a.k.a. Stephanus) who introduced them in the fourth edition of his Greek NT in 1551 (see P. D. Wegner,
The Journey from Texts to Translations: The Origin and Development of the Bible
[Grand Rapids: Baker, 1999], 269). Only the range is indicated at the bottom of the page. The NT begins with Luke-Acts, followed by a somewhat curious arrangement of Paul's letters; Matthew is next, and then Hebrews and James; Mark is followed by 1–2 Peter and Jude; and John by 1–3 John and Revelation.