Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Finding all the earliest christian texts in one place, by Bart D. Ehrman, read by John Paul Middlesworth how does one decide which books should belong to a collection of all the surviving early christian writings of the first hundred years of the church? Here I explain my procedure when producing my set of translations with introductions entitled the New Testament and other early christian writings. A reader, second edition, 2004, Oxford University Press, and I explain other features of the book. This follows on my earlier posts and again is taken from the introduction to the volume.
[00:00:39] In sum, it is important for modern readers to realize that the book we call the New Testament is actually a collection of books put together by persons living much later than the actual authors. When, quote unquote, Matthew wrote his gospel, he had no idea that someone would eventually combine his book with three others that were more or less like it to form the first section of a canon of scripture, a canon that was to include a history of the christian movement, personal letters sent by other early christians, and an apocalyptic narrative of the end time.
[00:01:13] The New Testament, in other words, is a historical construct, not a given. It comprises 27 diverse books brought together under one cover for particular religious reasons and under specific historical circumstances, and it is not fully representative of the views and writings of the early Christians.
[00:01:33] On the other hand, and somewhat unfortunately, no collection of christian books can be fully representative of these early christians precisely because so much of their literature has been lost. The present collection at least provides the best cross sampling possible, in that it gives all of the earliest christian literature that has come down to us both the books that came to form part of the New Testament and those that did not.
[00:01:57] By way of conclusion, it may be worthwhile to say a brief word concerning the present collection itself.
[00:02:03] Limitations of the collection this collection includes the early christian writings that appear to have been composed by the first third of the second century. These writings survive either in manuscript form, that is, as copied by scribes or indirect quotations by other authors. The collection does not include texts that do not actually survive, such as the cue source of Jesus sayings that appears to lie behind Matthew and Luke. Nor does it include paraphrases of early christian writings found in later sources.
[00:02:35] As a matter of convenience, several highly fragmentary texts have been excluded, such as the one sentence statement drawn from the apology of quadratus by the fourth century church, Father Eusebius ecclesiastical history 4.3 there are some texts that other scholars would include among the literature of this period, such as the apocryphon of James and the Gospel of the Egyptians, that have been excluded here simply because in the opinion of the present editor, they cannot be reliably dated to the first hundred years of the christian movement 300 130 CE.
[00:03:10] These two particular examples in any event happen to be gospel texts of which enough other samples survive to provide a good sense of the materials that were being produced and read in the period.
[00:03:22] The two exceptions to my self imposed chronological boundaries, the acts of Paul and Thecla and the martyrdom of Polycarp, are explained in their introductions.
[00:03:32] Texts all of the texts are either given in their previously published and well established english translations with full permission of their original publishers, or are my own translations have been chosen on the grounds of accuracy and especially readability. The new revised standard version of the New Testament will be familiar to many readers. The other texts are also readily available. Alterations have been kept to a minimum and made with permission. These involve such things as standardization of spelling, capitalization and punctuation, and the occasional modernization of language, for example, these and thous and jarring instances of non inclusive language.
[00:04:14] Cross references are provided for explicit or clear citations of the Hebrew Bible and other sacred texts, including earlier christian writings cited by later authors. These earlier writings are themselves, of course, also presented in full. No attempt has been made to identify scriptural allusions or distant echoes. The complete text of each book or surviving fragment has been included, except in the cases of the shepherd of Hermas and the apocalypse of Peter. These are unusually long documents. The selections provided here should give an adequate idea of their content and style.
[00:04:50] Structure there is no completely satisfactory way to arrange these materials. It is impossible to give them chronologically, since so many of them can be dated with only proximate accuracy, and because so many of them cover a variety of topics, a thematic arrangement is likewise out of the question. For the sake of convenience, therefore, the collection follows the structure provided by the new testament itself, with books arranged more or less by genre gospels, written accounts of the words and or deeds of Jesus acts, narratives of the history of the church and or the activities of the apostles, Pauline epistles, letters sent by Paul and other early christians in his name other writings a mixture of genres, including other letters, a sermon, a persuasive essay, a church manual, and a martyrology and apocalypses, narrative visions of the heavenly realities that explain earthly existence.
[00:05:49] Introductions each of the texts is provided with a concise introduction that highlights its important features and supplies essential background information.
[00:05:58] The collection as a whole has been designed to accompany the fuller introduction to this literature. In Bart D. Ehrman and Hugo Mendez, the New Testament A historical Introduction to the early Christian Writings, 8th edition, Oxford University Press, 2024.
[00:06:14] Anyone interested in learning more about these texts can turn to that volume or to any other historical introduction to the New Testament and other early christian writings. It.
