Tuesday, August 18, 2009

The New Testament documents

Justin Taylor provides a link to "How Did We Get Our Bible and Has It Been Changed?" by Dr. Matthew S. Harmon of Grace College and Theological Seminary, Winona Lake, Indiana. Taylor calls it "a good introductory answer" to the question of the origin of the biblical documents and he would know much better than I, although based on my limited knowledge, I very much agree. The pdf is twelve pages [although page nine is blank in my copy] and deals exclusively with the New Testament documents.

Dr. Harmon states his purpose in the introduction:
.... Assaults on the Bible are nothing new, but there seems to be a new twist over the past decade. Two objections against the Bible have become more prominent. The first charge is that the various books in our Bible were chosen hundreds of years after they were written, and the choice was made by shady church leaders with ulterior motives. The second charge is that we cannot trust our Bibles because what we have is not really what the authors actually wrote.

In the brief time I have today I want to provide the beginnings of an answer to these two objections. .... [more]
"How Did We Get Our Bible and Has It Been Changed?"

2 comments:

  1. I'd recommend as well the book by John Behr The Road to Nicea on the formation of the canon and the early church disputes. This is followed by the two volume The Nicene Faith which I have not yet gotten around to reading but which look good as well. You can get them from SVS Press or Amazon.

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  2. Thanks, Mark. Of course the classics are F.F. Bruce, The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable? and The Canon of Scripture - no doubt somewhat dated by now. I also like Mark D. Roberts's Can We trust the Gospels?. I'll look at your suggestions.

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