The Biblical Canon Lists Reviewed by Lee Martin McDonald in RBL

Reviews of The Biblical Canon Lists from Early Christianity keep coming out. See the earlier ones from Reading Religion and JETS
respectively. Last week, Review of Biblical Literature published Lee Martin McDonald’s (long-time canon scholar and recent author of The Formation of the Biblical Canon) musings on the book.

He provides a great summary of the work, a few items for Ed and me to think about in the event of expanding the work in the future (e.g. more comment about the texts of the books in these lists such as forms of Mark’s gospel or forms of Jeremiah et al.), a few disagreements with us  (e.g. whether Melito refers to Wisdom or not), and a strong recommendation for the book. You can read the whole review here [PDF]. McDonald concludes his review as follows:

Gallagher and Meade are also to be commended for their frequent use of the words “possibly” and “may be” when the evidence in their sources is not as clear as they would hope. I also want to commend them for their irenic position toward all those with whom they disagree without demeaning either the scholars or their positions. They have produced a superb volume with a wealth of information about canon formation that cannot be ignored in all future investigations of this topic. They have produced what I think may well remain the standard volume on canon lists that scholars and students alike will appreciate for years to come. I heartily recommend this impressive volume.

Thanks for a gracious and helpful review, Professor McDonald!

On the Relationship of Inspiration to Canon in the Church Fathers

Today, there is a renewed focus on the primary sources pertaining to the New Testament text (just peruse most of the posts on this blog) and its canon. Some of our source material is relatively new (MS finds, whole works of church fathers rediscovered etc.), but with regard to canon, the relevant sources have been at our fingertips for a long time. In any case, all of this evidence is under great scrutiny now, and this development is welcomed, for returning to the primary sources is the surest way forward in our current discussions.

One particular area under scrutiny is how to describe the nature of early Christian writings. Did early Christians think only the eventual NT books were inspired or did they view inspired literature as a wider category of books than what eventually became recognized as the canon of authoritative-for-doctrine Scripture? Michael Kruger has brought this issue to the fore in a recent blogpost and it is worth presenting his view along side of Lee McDonald’s, whose view he mentions in the post, in short order without attempting to resolve the differences between the two. Both views affirm the inspiration of the NT books. Both views affirm that early Christians thought their works were inspired in some sense. Both views affirm that early Christians recognized (at least eventually) the NT books as unique revelation. The disagreement is over why early Christians saw these NT books as unique, not whether they saw them as unique.

It’s important to remember that this is a blog exchange and that Kruger has written whole books and articles on the topic of canon. He didn’t say everything in his post. I bet Lee McDonald would even say he didn’t write everything in his most recent two volume tome on the biblical canon. I will include these works along with a few others in the Further Reading section below.

2017 HBU Theology Conference

This year’s Houston Baptist University Theology Conference is March 2–4 on the topic “How the Bible Came into Being.”

From the website:

The Department of Theology at HBU, in conjunction with Lanier Theological Library, is please to host the conference How the Bible Came into Being. The conference will consider the formation of the biblical canon, the literature included and excluded, and its theological significance. Our keynote speakers are James Charlesworth (Princeton Theological Seminary) and Lee McDonald (formerly of Acadia Divinity College). The plenary talks are free and open to the public.

The plenaries are:

James Charlesworth
“New Ways of Looking at Sacred Texts Regarded as ‘Apocryphal’ or ‘Pseudepigraphical’”
“The Theological Value of the ‘Rejected Texts’ and Dead Sea Scrolls for Understanding Jesus”

Lee M. McDonald 
“Why and When Was Scripture Written? Looking at the Old Testament Writings”
“Why and When Was Scripture Written? Looking at the New Testament Writings”

The ETC blog’s own John Meade will be presenting on “‘Canon’ Terminology of Epiphanius of Salamis” on Mar 3.

JETS Reviews of Recent TC/Canon Volumes

JETS Vol 56, No. 1 (March 2013):

1. Review of M.J. Kruger's CANON REVISITED: ESTABLISHING THE ORIGINS AND AUTHORITY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT BOOKS (Benjamin Laird); 
2. Review of L.M. McDonald's FORMATION OF THE BIBLE: THE STORY OF THE CHURCH'S CANON (Ryan J. Cook); 
3. Review of Nestle-Aland 28th by Dan Wallace.

Bonus: vigorous discussion between Dan Wallace and Stanley Porter on Granville Sharp.

JML

How Many TC Errors in This Statement?

We’ve played this game before. Someone submits a statement about TC from the BBC or some other news media, and we count how many errors are contained therein. But this time, it comes from a Hendrickson publication entitled, Formation of the Bible: The Story of the Church’s Canon  (Lee Martin McDonald). Extra credit points if anyone can help me understand how the statements could possibly be right,

As a result of the more recent discovery of many more ancient biblical manuscripts, all early translations, namely those produced before 1993, are essentially out of date—an unfortunate consequece of reassembling a text closer to the biblical original than was possible earlier. With the publication of the most recent editions of critical scholarly texts of the New Testament—the United Bible Society’s 5th Edition of the Greek New Testament  (2013) and the soon to be published Nestle/Aland 28th edition (2012) of the Greek Testament—we draw closer yet to the original text of the New Testament, but it would be a mistake to believe that we have reached that goal. There are some challenging and difficult passages to unravel, to which biblical scholars can offer very tenuous, possible solutions, but certainty is not yet available.

Since almost all modern translations of the New Testament depend on these two modern texts of the Greek New Testament, translations dating before these editions are not as reliable or as accurate and do not accurately reflect the latest understanding of what the biblical writers wrote....  p. 134.

JML