NT Canon | Canon Fodder

Ten Basic Facts about the NT Canon that Every Christian Should Memorize: #6: “At the End of the Second Century, the Muratorian Fragment lists 22 of our 27 NT books”

Posted on May 6, 2013 by Michael Kruger

Note: See the full blog series here.

This series is designed to introduce lay Christians to the basic facts of how the New Testament canon developed. One of the key data points in any discussion of canon is something called the Muratorian fragment (also known as the Muratorian canon). This fragment, named after its discoverer Ludovico Antonio Muratori, contains our earliest list of the books in the New Testament. While the fragment itself dates from the 7th or 8th century, the list it contains was originally written in Greek and dates back to the end of the second century (c.180).

Some have argued that the list …

The Formation of the Biblical Canon: My Review of Lee McDonald’s Latest Book

Posted on April 30, 2013 by Michael Kruger

Note: The review below was just published in the latest issue of Themelios.

I have enjoyed reading Lee McDonald’s many works on the NT canon. He has established himself as one of the leading voices in this area through his numerous books and articles. So I was pleased to see this latest volume, Formation of the Bible: The Story of the Church’s Canon (Hendrickson, 2012), which is intended to be a lay-level introduction to the origins of the Bible. There are very few introductory works on this subject matter (a point McDonald makes in the preface), so it is good to see something written for the person in the …

Why is There a New Testament at All? My New Book with IVP-Academic

Posted on April 24, 2013 by Michael Kruger

For most of us, the key question about the NT canon is “Why these books and no others?” But, I think there is another, more foundational question (that is asked much less frequently), and that is, “Why is there a New Testament at all?”

The answer, according to some scholars, is not to be found in the first-century—there was nothing about earliest Christianity (or the books themselves) that would naturally lead to the development of a canon. Instead, we are told, the answer is to be found in the later Christian church. The canon was an ecclesiastical product that was designed to meet ecclesiastical needs. Sure, the books themselves were …

Ten Basic Facts about the NT Canon that Every Christian Should Memorize: #5: “The Four Gospels are Well Established by the End of the Second Century”

Posted on April 4, 2013 by Michael Kruger

Note: This is the fifth installment of a blog series announced here.

When it comes to basic facts about the NT canon that Christians should memorize, one of the most critical is the statement by Irenaeus, bishop of Lyons, around A.D. 180: “It is not possible that the gospels can be either more or fewer than the number they are. For, since there are four zones of the world in which we live and four principle winds… [and] the cherubim, too, were four-faced.”[1]

Here Irenaeus not only affirms the canonicity the four gospels, but is keen to point out that only these four gospels are recognized by the …

Canon Fodder

Exploring the Origins of the New Testament Canon — And Other Biblical and Theological Issues

Tag Archives: NT Canon

Ten Basic Facts about the NT Canon that Every Christian Should Memorize: #6: “At the End of the Second Century, the Muratorian Fragment lists 22 of our 27 NT books”

The Formation of the Biblical Canon: My Review of Lee McDonald’s Latest Book

Why is There a New Testament at All? My New Book with IVP-Academic

Ten Basic Facts about the NT Canon that Every Christian Should Memorize: #5: “The Four Gospels are Well Established by the End of the Second Century”