In my previous blogging about sola scriptura, one of my fellow parishioners emailed me about David Trobisch's The First Edition of the New Testament (Oxford: 2000). I was intrigued. He offered it to me as a gift. And I am extremely grateful. I present here something of a summary and review of Trobisch's argument.
First, a resume of the conventional “conservative” understanding of the formation of the canonical New Testament. Each individual book that would later form the canon was inspired from the moment of its writing. The canonization process was primarily a matter of the Church's recognition of that divine origin and authority. Over the period of about two and a half centuries from the consensus date of the composition of the last of the New Testament books, the early Church sifted through various early documents purporting to be divinely authoritative, eventually settling on the 27 we now recognize. There was no ecumenical council who declared these books to be canon, but a grassroots recognition as exemplified in the “Muratorian canon,” in the works used by early Christians such as Origen in their own writings, and St. Athanasios' festal letter (though this was later recognized by local councils in Rome, Hippo and Carthage), so that by A.D. 400, the canon of the New Testament was recognized universally.
Trobisch, however, wants to call this “consensus view” into question.
The thesis of this study is that the New Testament, in the form that achieved canonical status, is not the result of a lengthy and complicated collecting process that lasted for several centuries. The history of the New Testament is the history of an edition, a book that has been published and edited by a specific group of editors, at a specific place, and at a specific time. (6)
I have restrained myself from advancing a theory about where and when and who published the Canonical Edition. However, I hope this study will serve as an important step toward finding valid answers to these questions. In addition, I do not intend to challenge the current consensus that none of the writings included in the New Testament originated significantly later than 150 C. E. (7)
Indeed, this canonical edition was in place early and used widely.
At the end of the second century and in the beginning of the third, Irenaeus was reading this edition in Lyons; Tertullian read it in Carthage and Asia Minor; Clement had it in Alexandria, and Origen in Palestine. This particular edition, in other wor