Dr. Michael Kruger, who is Professor of New Testament at Reformed Theological Seminary, Charlotte, NC, and co-author (with Andreas Kostenberger) of the work The Heresy of Orthodoxy (among other things) has a fairly new blog entitled Canon Fodder, and he's already promising to make it interesting with an upcoming series entitled 10 Common Misconceptions About the NT Canon.
Here are the 10 Misconceptions:
The Term “Canon” Can Only Refer to a Fixed, Closed List of Books
Nothing in Early Christianity Dictated That There Would be a Canon
The New Testament Authors Did Not Think They Were Writing Scripture
New Testament Books Were Not Regarded as Scriptural Until Around 200 A.D.
Early Christians Disagreed Widely over the Books Which Made It into the Canon
In the Early Stages, Apocryphal Books Were as Popular as the Canonical Books
Christians Had No Basis to Distinguish Heresy from Orthodoxy Until the Fourth Century
Early Christianity was an Oral Religion and Therefore Would Have Resisted Writing Things Down
The Canonical Gospels Were Certainly Not Written by the Individuals Named in Their Titles
Athanasius’ Festal Letter (367 A.D.) is the First Complete List of New Testament Books
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Michael Kruger and Andreas Kostenberger make a lot of good points about the canon in their book that you refer to above. Kruger's book on the canon, which is due out next month, is one of the books I'm most looking forward to this year. I'm especially interested in his material on the twenty-seven-book canon before Athanasius. I expect him to further develop the argument for the twenty-seven-book canon in Origen. It's a subject that hasn't received nearly as much attention as it deserves.
ReplyDeleteKruger's book can be pre-ordered here. The "search inside" feature seems already to be enabled. It certainly will be a good and clarifying work to have.
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