Canon

Daily Gleanings about the Muratorian fragment and the expansion of one’s English vocabulary through reading German texts.

Mike Aubrey points to a full set of video recordings of lectures from the recent SEBTS conference on linguistics and NT Greek. I’ve included this playlist below as well. The “hamburger” button in the upper left-hand corner will expand the playlist contents with a list of speakers and their topics.

Larry Hurtado reviews Michael Dormandy’s recent TC essay, “How the Books Became the Bible:  The Evidence for Canon Formation From Work-Combination in Manuscripts.”

Daily Gleanings about the “Text and Canon Institute” and improving performance by minimizing distractions.

Gleanings about expanding your research materials with “Library Extension” and the possibility of 1 Timothy’s quoting Luke.

Bulletin for Biblical Research 24, no. 4 contains five articles on various topics in Biblical Studies.

Christian Askeland highlights four PhD studentships available at the University of Aberdeen set to engage the topic of “Authority and Texts: Concepts and Use,” considering questions like:

What constitutes authority and provides authenticity to texts and what is the role of textual criticism? How should authoritative texts (including religious, legal, and other texts), be used and interpreted, and how is this issue determined? Is investigation of the contextual meaning of texts at their time of composition necessary to understanding and respecting their authority, or do different criteria exist which influence readings of texts?

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In yesterday’s mail arrived Daniel Driver’s Brevard Childs, Biblical Theologian: For the Church’s One Bible (Baker). The volume is a corrected, North American edition of Driver’s previous volume under the same title from Mohr Siebeck (2010; ix), which was itself a “thorough revision and updating” of Driver’s PhD thesis ( Brevard Childs: The Logic of Scripture’s Textual Authority in the Mystery of Christ, St. Andrews, 2008; xi). This North American edition was just released in August, and Baker’s description of it is as follows:

Asking whether the New Testament specifically or the biblical literature generally has a divine or human origin and a divine or human nature imports a dichotomy that literature itself does not reflect. From this literature’s own perspective, the literature is not viewed as always either human or divine in origin and nature, nor is it sometimes human in origin and nature and sometimes divine. Rather, this literature and several significant figures in early Christianity represent the biblical literature as having both a human and a divine origin simultaneously (see 1 Tim 5:18; 2 Tim 3:16; 2 Pet 1:21; 3:15–16; Ferguson 2:5–6).

The Muratorian fragment curiously includes a book named “Wisdom” in the middle of its discussion of New Testament literature (see Westcott 562). The standard interpretation of this reference appears to be that the fragment refers here to the well-known Wisdom of Solomon (e.g., Carson, Moo, and Morris 492; Ehrman 241).

The relevant sentence from the fragment itself reads, “Moreover, the epistle of Jude and two of the above-mentioned (or, bearing the name of) John are counted (or, used) in the catholic [Church]; and [the book of] Wisdom, . . . written by the friends of Solomon in his honour [ sapientia ab amicis Salomonis in honorem ipsius scripts]” ( Metzger 307; Westcott 562). B. F. Westcott, however, in his Survey of the History of the Canon of the New Testament, considers the phrase ab amicis Salomonis (by the friends of Solomon) to refer to Proverbs as a figurative designation for Hebrews ( Westcott 245). This interpretation is prompted by the tension Westcott feels at having a document by this title listed with New Testament literature.

In the third book of his work, Against Heresies, Irenaeus takes up a defense of the fourfold Gospel tradition.

In his second plenary address at the eastern regional meeting of the Evangelical Theological Society last spring, Stephen Chapman, Assistant Professor of Old Testament at Duke Divinity School, suggested some ways to navigate some of the pitfalls of current canon debates. In his closing remarks, Chapman emphasized the statement of the First Vatican Council (1868) that:

The complete books of the old and the new Testament with all their parts . . . the church holds to be sacred and canonical not because she subsequently approved them by her authority after they had been composed by unaided human skill, nor simply because they contain revelation without error, but because, being written under the inspiration of the holy Spirit, they have God as their author, and were as such committed to the church” ( Tanner 806; emphasis added).

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