I have known for years that most books on the development of the canon of scripture need to be read with care as they don't make explicit some basic assumptions. I don't mind - even my favorite resources do it.
- They are not careful to distinguish whether the canon presented is intended to be the Jewish canon or the Christian Old Testament canon.
- They don't mention that the councils are regional and what region they cover.
- They don't mention that the reason books are still being declared non-canonical centuries later is that in some regions they were still being used.
- They don't mention that books agreed to be canonical are centuries later still not being used ... to the point that they aren't even included in many copies of the Bible for a particular region.
The result is that the average Christian is surprised to learn that the Gospel of James was still included in an Irish lectionary circa 1000 AD. Or that Beowulf was influenced by 1 Enoch. This results in unnecessary sensationalist responses to current work being done on Dead Sea Scroll, Nag Hammadi texts, "New New Testaments", ecumenical canons, and lectionaries including "gnostic" materials ... It cascades into misreading of old texts and misunderstanding of the history of doctrine. Fortunately, most of these are relatively harmless. But Philip Jenikins comes through with a great read that will make you think - and as a historian he's not pushing beliefs, simply accurate information for a framework to think about canon.
The Many Faces of Christ: The Thousand-Year Story of the Survival and Influence of the Lost Gospels by Philip Jenkins 978-0465066926
Amazon blurb: The standard account of early Christianity tells us that the first centuries after Jesus' death witnessed an efflorescence of Christian sects, each with its own gospel. We are taught that these alternative scriptures, which represented intoxicating, daring, and often bizarre ideas, were suppressed in the fourth and fifth centuries, when the Church canonized the gospels we know today: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The rest were lost, destroyed, or hidden.
In The Many Faces of Christ, the renowned religious historian Philip Jenkins thoroughly refutes our most basic assumptions about the Lost Gospels. He reveals that dozens of alternative gospels not only survived the canonization process but in many cases remained influential texts within the official Church. Whole new gospels continued to be written and accepted. For a thousand years, these strange stories about the life and death of Jesus were freely admitted onto church premises, approved for liturgical reading, read by ordinary laypeople for instruction and pleasure, and cited as authoritative by scholars and theologians.
The Lost Gospels spread far and wide, crossing geographic and religious borders. The ancient Gospel of Nicodemus penetrated into Southern and Central Asia, while both Muslims and Jews wrote and propagated gospels of their own. In Europe, meanwhile, it was not until the Reformation and Counter-Reformation that the Lost Gospels were effectively driven from churches. But still, many survived, and some continue to shape Christian practice and belief in our own day. Offering a revelatory new perspective on the formation of the biblical canon, the nature of the early Church, and the evolution of Christianity, The Many Faces of Christ restores these Lost Gospels to their central place in Christian history.
Vote at The Many Faces of Christ: The Thousand-Year Story of the Survival and Influence of the Lost Gospels by Philip Jenkins | Logos (corrected)
and if you haven't already, also vote for his history of the Oriental Orthodox churches
The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia-and How It Died | Logos
