The Question of Canon: Challenging The Status Quo In The New Testament Debate

 

The Question of Canon: Challenging The Status Quo In The New Testament Debate by Michael J. Kruger

The problem when you read 500 books over the period of a decade is that you tend to forget what you’ve already read. Many times I’ve spotted a book in a used book store, happily snagged it at a reduced price, and then realized that I had already read the book several years prior on my Kindle. Yes, that’s happened.

I mention this because while reading this book, I kept thinking about a book I read some time ago and how similar the two were. Sadly, I didn’t think that this book was as good as that other one.  Imagine my surprise when I dug up that old book to realize that it had been written by the very same author – Michael J. Kruger.  That book “Christianity at the Crossroads” was quite good, and actually much better than this one, so I honestly felt a bit gypped. I’m not sure if I would have ever picked this one up had I been cognizant of this fact.  Overall, I felt the author was writing much of the same book over again, and didn’t enjoy this effort as much as the first book by him that I read.

The thought process behind this book seems to be that just because the Bible wasn’t canonized until the 4^th century by the church, this doesn’t mean we should dismiss scripture as some sort of “latter addition”.  The author seems to insinuate that opponents of the Bible use the canonization date as a weapon to somehow disprove the Bible.  So Kruger walks us through “5 Pillars” to disprove this.  Whereas I don’t disagree with most of his points, I didn’t really think this was that well written of a book. And, as mentioned, the more interesting “pillars” were addressed in his other book that I enjoyed better.

He does pack this book with references. In fact, the end notes at the end of each chapter are actually longer than the chapters themselves. I found this a bit pointless.  Maybe there are readers, however, who would actually plod through all of this. He also quotes people ad nauseum throughout the chapters.  It almost seems like he’s duplicating his work.  If you’re going to include such exhaustive end notes, do you really have to name every single person you’re referring to in every chapter?  I did, however, admire the fact that the author admits that he doesn’t have all the answers and he might not be correct on many points. In other words, this didn’t feel like an “In Your Face! It’s My Way or the Highway!” book. I actually deeply respect that when one writes about what many consider a sensitive topic.

Even though the book was relatively short, it felt like a slog getting through a lot of it.  One example: One of the chapters focuses on the conflict between “written” and “oral” recordings of history. Apparently it wasn’t very common to have “written” records of history during this early time, so this is why many skeptics discount scripture.  I’ll admit that I was unaware of this factoid, but didn’t really think it was necessary for the author to devote an entire chapter to such a topic. It felt as though he was trying to pad the book.  I was also less than enthralled when at times he used the Bible to justify the Bible itself. In other words: The Bible is true because the Bible says it’s true. He didn’t use that specific statement, but that was my impression while reading through many of his points.

The last pillar focuses on the early church history, and that was what I enjoyed the most (this was the main focus of his other book that I referenced).  So I agree with his conclusions, but didn’t really feel that this book was very good reading.   I must say that I LOVED “Christianity and the Crossroads” and would highly recommend that one.  This one, not so much.