Of Books and Bishops: The Second Century as a Key to the Processes that Led to a New Testament Canon
This contribution aims at stressing some aspects of the trend toward the gradual formation of a canon of Christian writings. The first Christian writings were meant to make Jesus’ authority work on through the mediation of his apostles in different situations, but they were not intended to form an a...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Diagonal-Verlag
2012
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| In: |
Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft
Year: 2010, Volume: 18, Issue: 2, Pages: 179-198 |
| Online Access: |
Volltext (Verlag) |
| Parallel Edition: | Non-electronic
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| Summary: | This contribution aims at stressing some aspects of the trend toward the gradual formation of a canon of Christian writings. The first Christian writings were meant to make Jesus’ authority work on through the mediation of his apostles in different situations, but they were not intended to form an authoritative written collection. When the authority of Jesus’ disciples became an entity belonging to the past, the tendency to collect their (real or alleged) writings and to give them a special status became strong. The author suggests that in the 2nd century, carriers of different roles in Christian communities developed different attitudes to the formation of an authoritative collection of Gospels. Christian teachers as Justin Martyr, Tatian or Clement of Alexandria were less interested in its delimitation and in excluding all other Gospels; the case of Marcion is here discussed at some length. As for bishops, if at the beginning of the 2nd century Papias of Hierapolis explicitly preferred oral tradition, toward the end of the same span of time Irenaeus of Lyons affirmed that there could be neither more nor less than four Gospels. Irenaeus’ position was not yet the final word, because still some years later, bishop Serapion of Antioch allowed a community to read the Gospel of Peter and Tatian’s Diatessaron dominated in Syria until the beginning of the 5th century; but the position held by Irenaeus in his quality as bishop was promised to a much better future than the one held by the Alexandrine teacher Clement still several years later. |
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| ISSN: | 2194-508X |
| Contains: | In: Zeitschrift für Religionswissenschaft
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1515/zfr.2010.18.2.179 |