Simon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ, To those who through the righteousness of our God and Savior Jesus Christ have received a faith as precious as ours: … 2 Peter 1:1

Today’s Scripture Reading (March 28, 2018): 2 Peter 1

If we are to believe the critics of the Bible, like the author Dan Brown (The Da Vinci Code), the decision of which books to accept and reject as biblical canon was made in a small, smoke-filled (probably not) room filled with insiders of the Christian Church. These men shaped the course of the Christian Church because only they possessed the power to choose which books would be accepted and which would be rejected. Ever since then, the Church has followed their theology and has rejected the theology of many other learned men who taught in the early days of the church. According to Brown, this discussion happened at the First Council of Nicaea in 325. Of course, Dan Brown is a writer of fiction (and just as a disclaimer, while I reject Dan Brown’s picture of early church history, his books are very entertaining).

As far as we know, The Council of Nicaea never discussed the issue of biblical canon. But that does not mean that there was not an intense discussion around the issue during the first three centuries of the Christian Church. But the argument was not, as Dan Brown argues, around the kind of church that would emerge as a result of the picking of the canon. As far as we can tell, theology was not a consideration in choosing the canonical books; the deciding factor was authorship. The early church fathers were willing to accept any books that were written by someone who had walked with Jesus. They did not seem to care about the theology of those who had not known him during his time on the earth. And so much of the discussion around the selection of canon was focused on who wrote the book. The first time a list of canonical books appeared that included all of the books that we now consider to be canonical and none of the ones that have been excluded was in an Easter Letter written by Bishop Athanasius in 367 C.E.

So, of the twenty-seven canonical books, the traditional understanding of authorship breaks down this way.

            Paul – 13 books

            John – 5 books (The Gospel of John, the three letters of John, and Revelation)

            Luke – 2 books (The Gospel of Luke and Acts)

            James (the brother of Jesus) – 1 book

            Jude (the brother of Jesus) – 1 book

            Matthew the disciple – 1 book (the Gospel of Matthew)

            Mark – 1 book (the Gospel of Mark)

            Peter – 2 books (the letters of Peter)

Hebrews – the only anonymous book of the Christian Testament. Originally Paul was thought to be the author, but that appears to have been a ploy to get a much-loved book of Jesus into the canon. We really don’t know who wrote it. I believe that it might have been written by Prisca or Priscilla, but admittedly that is more of an emotional choice rather than one based on any empirical evidence. (Athanasius lists Hebrews as a letter belonging to Paul.)

Over the intervening centuries, the choices of the early church in choosing the canon have been re-examined from every angle, but no changes have been made. All of the books in consideration for the canon that were left out of the canon by the early church, and this was very much a church conversation, were omitted over issues of authorship.

We still argue over the authorship of many of the books in the Christian Testament. And one of the weakest books according to modern experts is Second Peter. The problem is that the letter does not sound anything like First Peter. But there is also possibly a very good reason for this. It is likely that Peter used a secretary to write the letter, and it is also possible that he gave this secretary great latitude over the final form of the letter.  This would result in a very different sounding letter.

But while the argument for the Petrine authorship of Second Peter is among the weakest of the canonical books, it is important to note that the argument supporting Peter as the author of the letter is incredibly stronger than that of any of the excluded books. If Peter wrote the letter, as is traditionally assumed, then he wrote it close to 68 C.E., the year that Peter was likely executed for his faith by Emperor Nero. (Nero committed suicide on June 9, 68 C.E.) Peter seemed to understand that his end was coming, and he needed to get one last message out to the Church of Jesus Christ.    

Tomorrow’s Scripture Reading: 2 Peter 2