New Book on the Authority of Scripture
If we learn anything from church history, its that the church fights the same battles over and over again. Until Christ returns and redeems His church, this reality is, to some degree, inevitable. And one of those reoccurring battles is the issue of biblical authority. For a variety of reasons, this topic continues to pop up again and again.
In the last 50 years, one of the key issues related to biblical authority is the issue of inerrancy. Is inerrancy a recent, post-enlightenment, rationalistic (and largely American) invention as so many maintain? While one most always be careful to explain and nuance the meaning of the term, I don’t … Continue reading...
What is the Earliest Complete List of the Canon of the New Testament?
In the study of the New Testament canon, scholars like to highlight the first time we see a complete list of 27 books. Inevitably, the list contained in Athanasius’ famous Festal Letter (c.367) is mentioned as the first time this happened.
As a result, it is often claimed that the New Testament was a late phenomenon. We didn’t have a New Testament, according to Athanasius, until the end of the fourth century.
But, this sort of reasoning is problematic on a number of levels. First, we don’t measure the existence of the New Testament just by the existence of lists. When we examine the way certain books were used by … Continue reading...
New Book on Early Christian Apocrypha
Over the last number of years, scholarly (as well as popular) interest in Christian apocryphal works has continued to grow. Folks just can’t seem to get enough of “lost” Gospels and other books that did not make it into the New Testament.
My own interest in this area goes back to my thesis at the University of Edinburgh under Larry Hurtado on the apocryphal gospel fragment P.Oxy. 840. That was published later as The Gospel of the Savior: An Analysis of P.Oxy. 840 and its Place in the Gospel Traditions of Early Christianity (Brill, 2005).
Because of my own interest in the subject, I was pleased that yesterday in the … Continue reading...
Tomas Bokedal Reviews “The Question of Canon”
Tomas Bokedal, Lecturer in New Testament at King’s College, University of Aberdeen, has recently reviewed my book The Question of Canon (IVP Academic, 2013) in the latest issue of the journal Theology (118:65-66).
I have only briefly met Tomas on few prior occasions, but I know through his publications that he is a bright scholar who himself has done some very solid work in the area of the NT canon. You can see his list of publications here.
Given Tomas’ own good work on canon, I was grateful for what was a very positive review. He writes:
…This second full-length monograph on the New Testament canon by Michael Kruger
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Rethinking the Canon of Scripture: My Interview with Credo Magazine
I was recently interviewed on the topic of the NT Canon by Matthew Barrett, editor of Credo Magazine. This magazine is excellent resource, committed to Christ, the authority of Scripture and the fundamental tenets of the Reformation. Here is their own description:
…At its core, Credo Magazine strives to be centered on the gospel, confessing the substitutionary death and historical resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ for the salvation of sinners. In doing so, Credo Magazine not only draws upon the historic creeds and confessions of the faith, but especially the great pillars of the Reformation: sola scriptura, solus Christus, sola gratia, sola fide, and soli Deo gloria.
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