from IV - THE NEW TESTAMENT
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 March 2008
The Canon of the New Testament was the result of a long and gradual process in the course of which the books regarded as authoritative, inspired, and apostolic were selected out of a much larger body of literature. Such a process of selection necessarily involved both selectors and grounds on which the selection would be made. As far as we know, the early selectors were anonymous. We may suppose that they were leaders in the Christian churches, but we do not know their names or the dates at which selections were made. Only in the late second century does it become clear that such leaders as Irenaeus of Lyons and Serapion of Antioch are consciously discussing questions of canon, and when they do so they are relying primarily on older Church traditions. This is not to say that such individuals lacked influence upon the process of selection; it is to say that their influence was exerted in favour of prior views and contemporary consensus. When we speak of selection it is clear that the process involves comparison between one book and another or among collections of books. The fact that the gnostic ‘library’ at Nag Hammadi includes books which may not have been gnostic in origin probably means that non-gnostic books were interpreted in gnostic ways by those who collected them. Similarly, the early Christian canonical collection implies that those who assembled or accepted it understood all the books as conveying essentially the same message.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.