NT Reliability: Class 2 Recap

Our second class was another great meeting with lots of good conversation. We started out with a short quiz on the topic of the date and attestation of the NT then discussed  two questions. One question was on clarifying the notion that a historian should not analyze the NT differently than she would any other historical document. The idea is that the historian should go into the analysis the same but will obviously encounter parts of the NT that will draw special attention (e.g. miracles). The second question was about how we know what the original NT said. A short answer is because we have a lot of quotations from early church fathers and also have a lot of manuscripts. (Check this article for more). But as Daniel Wallace says,  "...classical scholars do not ‘know exactly’ what these classical authors wrote. This is what I have said regarding the New Testament, too! We may have a high level of confidence, but it never rises to the point where we know exactly with absolute confidence what the text said. Absolute certainty concerning historical documents is a myth. I’ve not said otherwise. But for [Ehrman] to continue to cast the debate in terms of absolute certainty is neither helpful nor accurate."

Then we hit some highlights on the topic of "The Canon" (chapter 3). Here are a couple. It is not true that there was never any doubt about any NT book. Some of the shorter epistles and books at the end of our NT took longer to be accepted. But books like the four Gospels, Acts, ten of Paul's letters, 1 John, and 1 Peter were unquestionably canon from very early on. The oldest mention of the books of canon is from the Muratorian Fragment from AD 170. Aside from the natural formation of canon, the church was motivated to establish canon for at least three reasons: to counter heresy (like those of Marcion), to choose books to read during services, and to know what books to protect during persecution. It was in AD 397 that canon was officially decided upon at the Synod of Carthage. But it's critical to remember that the church chose the books because she already established them as divinely inspired, not the other way around. (Here is the video of Mike Licona's presentation that we briefly watched) For next time (Thursday October 8, 7pm in rooms 13, 14, & 15 at Mt. Zion UMC): Read Chapter 4. Study the content from Chapters 3 for a quiz. Take up F.F. Bruce's offer to compare NT apocryphal writings to our NT books. Bill: check out the Gospel of Barnabas Debi: check out the Gospel of Mary Look up why/how/when the extra books in the Catholic NT came to be. Research why there were so many councils in such a short time in the 4th century.