The Synoptic Gospels and the Noncanonical Acts of the Apostles

Abstract

At the end of the second century, four gospels became canonical. Today they are present everywhere in the world at the beginning of the New Testament and at the heart of the Christian Bible, side by side and in the same order, endowed with the same authority. The text of these four gospels has been fixed for a long time, notwithstanding the existence of thousands of textual variants which have troubled European scholars since the eighteenth century. Today no one dreams of publishing interpolated versions of these gospels or of doctoring our holy books. Biblical scholarship devoted to the study of these gospels now occupies a firm place in the programs of numerous theological faculties and departments of religious studies.

The Multivalence of the Term “Original Text” in New Testament Textual Criticism

“…A decade ago François Bovon warned that "[s]pecialization is already revealing its limitations. Textual critics should reach back into the discipline of codicology and forward into the field of hermeneutics," 109 and Martin Hengel, in his 1993 presidential address before the Studiorum Novi Testamenti Societas, also regretted that New Testament textual criticism has become highly specialized and insisted that "it must again become a shared task, especially since burning theological and historical issues lurk behind it." 110 Though not all will agree, it appears to me that promising avenues of cooperative research have been opened by these recent and current viewpoints and that New Testament textual criticism now is poised to contribute to the understanding of early Christianity more broadly and more richly than ever before.…”