The following partially satisfies the requirements for Dr. Grant Taylor's New Testament Survey class at Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary.
Who
Chose the Gospels? Probing the Great Gospel Conspiracy.
Oxford: Oxford University Press. 2010. 295
pp. Reviewed by Jayson L. Rowe.
Dr. Charles E. Hill received
his Ph.D. from Cambridge University and is currently Professor of New Testament
at Reformed Theological Seminary in Orlando, Florida. Dr. Hill has extensive
research interests in the Johannine Corpus, and has written extensively on
several issues relating to the early church fathers, early Christian views on
the end times, the canon of the New Testament, and the traditions of New
Testament manuscripts. In addition to the work being reviewed here, he is the
author of several books on the New Testament and Early Church including Regnum Caelorum: Patterns of Future Hope in
Early Christianity, The Johannine
Corpus in the Early Church and most recently The Early Text of the New Testament published in 2012 and co-edited
with fellow RTS professor Michael J. Kruger.
In this work Hill presents
his perspective on how and when the four-Gospel collection in the New
Testament canon was formed. He writes in response to those who say the fourfold
Gospel that became the canonical standard was only accepted as such at a later date.
Moreover, these same scholars claim that the four canonical Gospels were simply
four out of many Gospel accounts that were circulating during the time of the
early church. Hill critically examines the scholarship that has been used to
support and promote the popular narrative of how the church ended up with only
four Gospels and also looks at the evidence more liberal scholars use to make
their cases. Hill tests the major arguments from these scholars against the physical
and historical evidence and also examines the writings of Irenaus, Clement of
Rome, Papias and other historical figures to see how the Gospels were viewed in
their day. Ultimately, Hill will be seeking the answer to the question: ‘Who
chose the Gospels?’
In the introduction, Hill begins
by quoting William Petersen, who claims that there was a “sea of multiple Gospels,”
and also said that these “gospels were breeding like rabbits” (Hill, Who Chose the Gospels, p. 2). At the
beginning of Chapter 1, Hill shows that Petersen was exaggerating a bit when he
portrayed the number of Gospels, by showing that Petersen’s own research shows that
the list of Gospels includes just nine
other Gospels which might have sought to compete with the four (Hill, p. 7).
Next, Hill gives a detailed
explanation of the papyrus discoveries and explains that the statistics of these
discoveries are impartial. He points out how writers of the period could be
accused of skewing numbers in favor of the four canonical Gospels, but shows
that by looking at the random and impartial numbers of the papyri discoveries, it
is clear that the canonical Gospels still outnumbered the non-canonical ones by
about three to one (Hill, p. 21). Hill also explains that many of these
discoveries are in Alexandria, in Egypt, which at the time was an area where
many heretical forms of Christianity dominated. If there were any place where
one would expect to find a high concentration of heterodox or non-canonical
texts it would be Egypt. Remarkably, this is not the case and Hill shows that
the non-canonical Gospels were still around a third as popular as the four canonical
Gospels (Hill, pp. 24-25).
Hill then explains how Christians
adopted the much less common codex for sacred writings very early on, and explains
that all of the earliest known copies of the four canonical Gospels are found
in codex form (Hill, p. 26). In addition, Hill demonstrates that out of the non-canonical
Gospels found in codex form, they are all smaller, more compact codices while
“most of the early papyrus copies of the canonical Gospels are from codices
which were suitable for the purpose of public reading in churches, none of our
surviving copies of the Gospel of Peter
or the Gospel of Mary was” (Hill, p.
31).
Chapters 2 and 3 are devoted
to defending Irenaeus. Hill’s argument is that, “by the time Irenaeus wrote
around 180 AD, the fourfold Gospel was very well established” (Hill, p. 37).
Hill contends that Irenaeus was not a pioneer of Gospel selection, but was
simply following a tradition that had already been established since other
writers of the second and third centuries, such as Hippolytus, Dionysius,
Tertullian and others, also viewed only the four canonical Gospels as
authoritative Scripture. Hill points out that a popular view with modern
scholars is that “like an axe-happy frontiersman of bygone days, blind to
ecological realities, Irenaeus destroyed a perfectly good stand of gospel trees
in order to create his four-Gospel canon” (Hill, p. 42). In response to
allegations that Irenaeus instructed Christians to destroy copies of the other
Gospels, Hill asserts that neither Irenaeus’s church in Lyons nor the church in
Rome “had anything resembling the kind of imperial power…to search out private
copies of a detested book, seize them and destroy them” (Hill, p. 62).
Chapter 4 begins by stating,
“if a four-Gospel canon was Irenaeus’s idea…it was an idea which caught on
quickly” (Hill, p. 69). The use of the canonical Gospels is compared to the
non-canonical Gospels in the writings of Clement of Alexandria. Hill reports
that of the canonical Gospels, Clement refers to Matthew 757 times, Luke
402 times, John 331 times and Mark 182 times. The most referenced
non-canonical Gospel is the Gospel of the
Egyptians, which is only referenced 8 times. Referenced 3 times each are
the Gospel to the Hebrews and the Traditions of Matthias. Furthermore, in
the writings of Clement, there are no references to the Gospel of Thomas, the Gospel
of Peter, the Egerton Gospel, the
Gospel of Judas, or the Gospel of Mary. Also, in the early to
mid 190s, Clement refers to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John as ‘the
four Gospels that have been handed down to us’ in his treatise entitled Stromateis. The point made here is that
by referring to only these four Gospels as being ‘handed down’ Clement sounds
very much like Irenaeus who also spoke of the Gospels as being handed down from
the apostles (Hill, pp. 72-73).
Next is a discussion of the
writings of Serapion, the bishop of Antioch who had to deal with an issue regarding
the Gospel of Peter. The congregation
in Rhossus requested permission to read this Gospel in the church. At first,
Serapion granted permission, but changed his mind after reading the work
himself and seeing the heretical content it contained. Hill draws four
conclusions from Serapion’s reaction to this work. First, Serapion knew of a
category of books that were “received by tradition”, and the Gospel of Peter was not among them.
Second, Serapion knew there had been books falsely attributed to the apostles
of Jesus. Third, Serapion placed a high value on apostolic authority, and fourth, Serapion believes that apostolic authority belongs to certain books,
which either the apostles wrote or had apostolic approval to be passed down (Hill,
p.89).
Chapter 5 looks at three
different ways of packaging the Gospels: harmonies, synopses and codices,
explaining that works such as these would have shared the same aim of aiding
Christian teachers who needed easier access to the Scriptures. These were not
intended to be a single replacement of the four-Gospel canon, but were written
to aid Christian teachers and are actually an indication of the authority of the
four as Scripture.
Chapter 6 deals with the
work of Justin Martyr and examines Justin’s references to the ‘Memoirs of the
Apostles’, which are books that Justin knows as ‘Gospels’. It is pointed out,
however, that many have observed that in Justin’s quotations of Jesus that they
often are not reflective of a single one of the fourfold Gospels but rather
look more like a harmonized version. Hill writes, “while it is evident that
Justin…sometimes blended together or harmonized Jesus’s words, his ultimate
authoritative source was what lay at the back of them” (Hill, p. 131). Hill also
notes that in one place, Justin says ‘For the apostles, in the memoirs which
have come about by their agency, which are called Gospels, have thus delivered
unto us’ and in another place Justin writes that the Gospels were composed by
‘Jesus’s apostles and their followers.’ Both of these statements lead to the
conclusion that the Gospels which Justin is referring to, contain “at least two
written by apostles and at least two by followers of apostles” (Hill, p.132).
Hill resolves from the hints left behind by Justin in his work that the
evidence likely proves that Justin had knowledge of the fourfold set of
canonical Gospels, and that he regarded only these for as Scripture.
Chapter 7 looks at how early
opponents of a proto-orthodox Christianity viewed the gospels. Hill looks at
sources from Trypho, The Emperor and Senate, Crescens, and Celcus who according
to Hill, Justin recruited “from the ranks of unbelievers” (Hill, p. 152). It is
shown how Celcus, for example “was responding directly to the challenges posed
in the writings of Justin” in his treatise against Christianity, True Logos, which was written sometime
between 160 and 180 (Hill, p. 155). Hill writes that although it is not known
for sure if Celsus “knew a definite fourfold Gospel collection…his use of the
four Gospels in his broadside against Christianity is apparent” (Hill, p.
156-157). Therefore, even Celsus, an outsider to Christianity, regarded the
fourfold Gospel as authentic Christian writings.
Chapter 8 examines other early
sources such as The Apocryphon of James,
The Epistle of the Apostles, The Infancy Gospel of Thomas, and the
writings of Marcion and Aristides. Hill argues that these early texts indicate the
influence of the four-Gospel collection from both within and outside of the
church (Hill, p. 182). In Chapter 9, Hill deals with the Epistle to Dognetus, the so-called Letter of Barnabas, writings of Polycarp and Ignatius, The Didache, and writings of Clement of
Rome. In each of these cases, Hill notes that each one “knew of at least one of
the four Gospels” (Hill, p. 203) Hill states that ultimately, the last word on
the matter “is found…in the collective, public teaching of Jesus’ authorized
apostles, who received this authority from Jesus to pass on to the church”
(Hill, p. 206)
Chapter 10 focuses on
Papias, the bishop of Hierapolis around A.D. 120. Hill shows that Papias “knew
all four of our Gospels, for there are sound reasons for acknowledging his use
of them in the fragments of his writings that have survived. This would make
Papias the earliest first-hand source for a recognition of all for Gospels”
(Hill, p. 222). Hill argues that Papias followed an earlier tradition and
concludes that one cannot be sure how early this tradition goes, “but a
reasonable assumption is that the information he derived from ‘the elder’ was
learned sometime around the year 100 and in any case not many years thereafter”
(Hill, pp.222-223).
The final chapter finally tackles
the question posed in the title of the book: Who chose the Gospels? Hill writes,
“In short, we have no evidence that the church ever sat down collectively or as
individual churches and composed criteria for judging which Gospels (or other
literature) it thought best suited its needs” (Hill, p. 231). Thus, the
Scriptures proved themselves authoritative simply by being handed down from
apostolic sources and by their unity in content and the message they delivered.
Hill
did an excellent job of laying a solid foundation to help the reader understand
various aspects of textual criticism. The information given about the papyrus
discoveries, as well as the numbering system used to identify various papyri was
helpful. It was also beneficial to see how the papyri discoveries do not
support the claims that are being made by some scholars. The section that
explains how Alexandria, which was an area where Gnostic Christianity was quite
widespread, still had a higher ratio of discoveries supporting the popularity
of the canonical fourfold Gospel collection was very supportive of his argument.
In
Chapter 5, Hill builds on the information learned in the first chapter by
explaining how the codex possibly became more popular than the scroll because
of the ability to bind all four Gospels together. In this section it is explained
how at some point in the second century, multiple Gospels started being bound
together in a single codex. Hill states that while there have been several
discoveries which show the four canonical Gospels bound together, there has yet
to be a discovery where a non-canonical Gospel was bound together with one of
the four Gospels (Hill, p. 116-117). While he does not say that only scriptural
writings are bound in codex form, he does say that only the four canonical
Gospels are found only in codex form, while some of the other Gospels were also
found in scroll form. The explanation that the owners of these scrolls would
not have viewed them as Scripture is helpful for his argument (Hill, pp.
27-28). The explanation of how writings considered authoritative as Scripture
were mostly only found in the larger codices, which would have been suitable
for public reading, as well as numbers cited from the writings of Clement were
also helpful in establishing his case.
Throughout
the book, church history and textual criticism are woven together in a
captivating fashion. Hill does an exceptional job in attempting to defend
Irenaus, who is not always easy to defend, and is not popular with many modern
scholars. The manner in which Hill used the works of Irenaus’s contemporaries
was most helpful in answering his thesis. Although the evidence presented in
the first part of the book is very convincing and clear, in the second half,
Hill’s arguments seem to become more abstract and speculative. One example of
this is the section dealing with the work of Justin Martyr. Justin complicated
matters by not specifically naming the Gospels to which he is referring as he
writes, making Hill’s task more difficult and makes his arguments seem less cut
and dry (Hill, p. 126). Although there is not as much evidence to work with,
Hill does an admirable job in presenting his arguments and it was helpful for
the reader to see how several historical figures from both inside and outside
of the church viewed the Gospel collection.
Throughout the book, Hill tackles
some very technical details. Although he is covering a vast array of historical
details, he writes in such a way that the reader does not get bogged down.
Hill’s style is engaging and easy to follow. Although the subject is academic in
nature, this book could be easily accessible to a more popular audience with an
interest in learning about how the New Testament canon came to be formed. The
book is an excellent resource, and is worthwhile to recommend to anyone with a
desire to dig deeper into the history of the church, the establishment of the
canon or learn more about textual criticism in general.
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