Very good article on the early recognition of the New Testament Canon! Also worth reading is Kruger’s “Canon Revisited”
Michael J. Kruger (former PhD student) contributes a significant study on the question of how early we have lists of NT writings treated as scripture: “Origin’s List of New Testament Books in Homilliae in Josuam 7.1: A Fresh Look,” in Mark, Manuscripts, and Monotheism, ed. Chris Keith & Dieter Roth (London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark, 2014), 99-117.
There are two sides of opinion on the question of when we find our earliest lists of NT writings. The one view (championed by Sundberg and Hahneman) is that these appear initially in the fourth century CE. The other view (defended by others, including Kruger) is that we have evidence of such lists from the early third century (and these may have had earlier precedents).
The debate has focused much on when to date the so-called “Muratorian Fragment,” a portion of what was apparently a list of Christian writings that were coming to be…
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