Why Did We Get a New Testament?

In my past couple of posts I’ve talked about how the canon of the Hebrew Bible was formed.  That raises the obvious corollary of how the canon of the New Testament was formed.  Who decided we should have the twenty-seven books we do?  Why these books and not others?  Why were any books chosen at all?  When were these decisions made?  And what criteria were used to make the decisions?

To my surprise, I haven’t talked much about the process on ...

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5
JAN
2017
52

Heresy and Orthodoxy, History of Christianity (100-300CE), Proto-Orthodox Writers, Public Forum

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Did Ancient Secretaries Actually Compose Writings? A Blast from the Past

Here is the third (and last) post on the use of secretaries in the ancient world, in which I discuss the issue of whether illiterate people (like Simon Peter, or John the son of Zebedee) could have had someone else write their books for them – so that 1 Peter *could* in some sense actually be by Peter if he couldn’t write, or the Revelation of John be by John.  These three posts are all blasts from the past, reruns ...

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8
AUG
2016
31

Bart's Reflections, History of Christianity (100-300CE)

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How Did Ancient Writers Use Secretaries? A Blast from the Past

Here is the second of a series of three blasts from the past — from four years ago when I was dealing with how secretaries were and, especially, were not used in the ancient world by authors when producing their work.  Did authors (such as John for the book of Revelation, or Peter for either 1 or 2 Peter) use a secretary to write their books for them?  To answer the question with something other than common sense (that is, ...

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5
AUG
2016
9

Acts & Catholic Epistles, Paul and His Churches, Public Forum

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On Falsification and Forgery

On Friday I will be giving a talk at a symposium at York University in Toronto that will be focusing on the use of forgery in the early Christian apocrypha, sponsored by Tony Burke of York U. and Brent Landau at the University of Texas.  Website is here: http://tonyburke.ca/conference/  I thought it might be interesting to excerpt a portion of my talk here, as it covers some ground that I recently have gone over on the blog, but from ...

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22
SEP
2015
17

History of Christianity (100-300CE), NT Text and Manuscripts

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