Looking for Brief and Accessible Books on the Origins of the Biblical Canon? Here are Two Good Ones
Whenever I speak on the origins of the New Testament canon, I am regularly asked about whether there are brief, accessible books on the subject—the kind that could be given to lay folks in the church. Unfortunately, my books on canon usually don’t qualify (e.g., Canon Revisited clocks in at over 300 pages).
For years, I have been asked to write a shorter version, but just haven’t had the time. Thankfully, others have stepped in to fill that gap. Let me mention two wonderful little books that have just come out in the last few years.
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Just this year, Chuck Hill, professor emeritus of New Testament at RTS Orlando, has …
Jeff Cate Reviews “The Early Text of the New Testament”
One of the classic debates among New Testament scholars pertains to the state of the New Testament text in the earliest centuries (2nd-4th). Was the text transmitted in a “wild” and “uncontrolled” fashion? Or did it exhibit a degree of stability and tenacity (as the Alands would put it)?
My friend Chuck Hill and I engaged this question in 2012 when we edited the volume The Early Text of the New Testament for Oxford University Press. In this volume, we collected together over 20 of the finest textual scholars today to address these important questions. The volume did not answer every issue, nor did all its contributors even agree with … Continue reading...
A Response to David Parker’s Review of The Early Text of the New Testament
In late 2012, Oxford University Press released our co-edited volume, The Early Text of the New Testament (ETNT), a collection of essays from 22 leading scholars in the world of textual criticism. It is gratifying to have David Parker’s review of ETNT (JTS 64 [2013]: 642-645) so relatively soon after publication, yet disappointing that most of the criticisms in his short review seem to have mistaken both the aims and the scope of the book. Here we would like to offer a brief response to some of his comments.
Parker’s criticism can be divided into three main categories: (a) the scope of the project, (b) the nature … Continue reading...