The New Testament Canon and Manuscripts

UPDATE: Michael Kruger responds to my post on his own blog here.

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In this post, I briefly lay out some of Michael Kruger’s argument for the NT canon from the MSS to evaluate its worth for determining early canonicity of NT books. This is a pilot post, not finished research. I welcome your feedback in the comments.

In Canon Revisited, ch. 7, Kruger treats the “potentially fruitful” but often overlooked “study of the New Testament manuscripts themselves” (233) to discern what they might tell us about the formation of the NT canon. This chapter is divided into (1) The Quantity of Early Manuscripts, (2) Early Manuscript Collections with subsections treating the Gospels, Pauline Epistles, Catholic Epistles/Acts, Revelation, (3) The Early Christian Use of the Codex, and (4) Public and Private Manuscripts. Kruger notes that the first three areas focus on the broad features, while the last area treats internal features of early Christian MSS, noting the difficulty in attempting to separate public from private use (254).

I want to focus my comments on the first and third areas and leave to others to talk about the second and fourth. First, Kruger states that there are over sixty extant MSS (in whole or in part) of the NT from this [2nd–3rd] period (234). “The sheer quantity of these New Testament texts is impressive” (235) and that most ancient MSS end up in garbage dumps or are damaged etc. These sixty MSS are then contrasted with the seventeen MSS of the Christian “Apocrypha,” noting three MSS of the Gospel of Thomas (236). On page 239, Kruger notes the problem with this argument, “Of course, it is important to remember that the relative popularity of books (on the basis of extant manuscripts) is not the whole story. The above evidence is offered only as a general confirmation of the trend we have seen in the prior chapter [a review of the early Christian testimonia relevant to canon], not as definitive in and of itself” (239). He notes that there is only one early copy of Mark (P45), but at this point, he should contrast the one MS of Mark with the three of the Gospel of Thomas, but he does not do so. However, he does note the eleven extant MSS of the Shepherd of Hermas showing its relative popularity within early Christianity. Interestingly and rightly, Kruger argues for the early canonicity of Mark and the noncanonical status of Thomas and the Shepherd on the basis of the other criteria he presented earlier in his book. This then raises the question in my mind: what is the value of the quantity of MSS in determining canonicity (N.B. the problem is also inherent in Dead Sea Scrolls research as well)? It seems to me, this evidence should normally be filtered through testimonia, but if that is the case, then how valuable are the MSS for determining canonicity? They may demonstrate relative popularity, but this conclusion leads to pitfall when describing an ancient’s canon as the example of the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel according to Mark shows.

Second, early Christians almost exclusively used the codex, not the roll (247–54). Kruger asks, “Why did Christians prefer the Codex?” They did so for many practical reasons, but “A more foundational and influential cause is needed to explain the transition” (249). He concludes that the most plausible cause is the link between the codex and the early development of the NT canon. He cites Elliott approvingly, “Canon and codex go hand in hand in the sense that the adoption of a fixed canon could be more easily controlled and promulgated when the codex was the means of gathering together originally separate compositions” (250). Thus, the codex is a “symptom” of the early development of the canon; “[I]t is a sign that Christians were already linking some books together and excluding others” (250). So the codex form was important. Kruger then turns to ask, “What books did Christians put into codex form?” The answer: all books that became part of the NT were copied onto the codex form (250–1). But Christians still used the roll format on occasion for other kinds of books (e.g. Irenaeus’s Against Heresies; Shepherd of Hermas; Gospel of Thomas; the Fayûm Gospel Fragment). And furthermore, this pattern does not suggest that any book copied onto a codex was considered scriptural by early Christians, since there are numerous extrabiblical books copied onto codices (e.g. Shepherd of Hermas; Gospel of Mary; Gospel of Thomas) (251).

In the case of the Shepherd, at least, this might be problematic, for Kruger has already told us “some early Christians appeared to give the Shepherd scriptural status” (239n34). Later in the book, Kruger will mention that the Shepherd is found at the end of Codex Sinaiticus, but “we should remember our discussion above that it was common practice to place either disputed books or books found generally useful (though not canonical) at the back of such lists” (276; citing Horbury on the Muratorian Fragment). I don’t want to be overly critical on this point, but here, I would have to think that many will cry foul, for Kruger has shifted ground significantly. If my summary of ch. 7 is correct and the codex is as significant as Kruger argues, then the presence of the Shepherd in a NT codex would have to be significant on the basis of Kruger’s own argument. But Kruger shifts to the Muratorian Fragment, a different evidence set altogether. But J.K. Elliott in the same article in the very next paragraph to the one that Kruger cited approvingly above says, “We must assume that the authorities behind Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Alexandrinus considered these works canonical [the Shepherd; Barnabas; 1–2 Clement] and wished to promote them as such. Certainly the user of these codices would have accepted all the texts in their Bible codex as having equal status” (111).

My conclusion from all this is that the material evidence is conflicting. True, the sheer quantity of NT MSS is impressive, and yes, that these same documents were always copied onto the codex is interesting. But the Gospel of Thomas has more early evidence than the Gospel according to Mark and many other books were written onto the codex form, and yet, early Christians do not describe these other books as canonical. Kruger goes on to describe how books at the boundaries were used and described in ch. 8. But my critique is that he and others should describe what early Christians actually thought about these books according to their clearest statements on the subject before turning to material evidence, which is not self-interpreting. That way, there appears to be no discord in the argument over a book like the Shepherd when arguing that it was an important book to early Christians, maybe even considered scriptural, but was never considered to be part of the NT canon.