Were the New Testament Authors Aware of Their Own Authority?

Sometimes, even in the academic world, things get said so many times that people assume they are true.   And when that happens, no one bothers to look at the historical evidence in a fresh way.

One example, which is fairly routine these days, is to assert that the New Testament authors certainly did not think they were writing Scripture, nor had any awareness of their own authority. Mark Allan Powell, in his New Testament introduction, affirms this view plainly, “The authors of our New Testament books did not know that they were writing scripture.”[1]  Gamble takes the same approach, “None of the writings which belong to the NT was …

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