At the end of Meade’s piece, he sums up his main complaint: “But my critique is that [Kruger] and others should describe what early Christians actually thought about these books according to their clearest statements on the subject before turning to material evidence, which is not self-interpreting.” In other words, I should have covered patristic evidence first and then looked at the manuscripts. The irony, of course, is that is exactly what I did. 

Over at Evangelical Textual Criticism, John Meade has posted an article reviewing chapter seven of my book, Canon Revisited.  In particular, he challenges a number of the arguments I use to show how NT manuscripts may illumine our understanding of the development of the NT canon.

Meade focuses his comments on two issues, namely the number of manuscripts and the use of the codex.  Before offering a response to those issues below, let me begin by making a simple observation about the purpose of this chapter.  If one understands the flow of the argument in the book, and sets chapter seven in the larger context of the prior chapters, it will become clear that the exploration of these manuscripts is not intended to provide a definitive answer to which books are in the canon. Nowhere do I argue that we know which books are in the canon simply be looking at the features of early Christian manuscripts.

Indeed, the prior six chapters are making a very different argument about how we know which books are in and which books are out (an argument I will not rehearse here).  The discussion of manuscripts, then, is provided simply as something that further illumines the history of the canon.  It provides a general (but not absolute) confirmation of what we see from other kinds of evidence (patristic and otherwise).

Quantity of Manuscripts

There are few things more frustrating for an author than to make an argument, follow it up with an important qualification, and then have someone critique you as if that qualification were never made.

When it comes to the quantity of NT manuscripts, this seems to be what Meade has done. I was very clear in chapter seven that there is not a one-to-one correspondence between the number of manuscripts of a book and that book’s place in the NT canon. Nowhere do I argue that we know which books are in the canon simply by looking at which books left behind the most manuscripts.  Indeed, I expressly state, “the relative popularity of books (on the basis of extant manuscripts) is not the whole story” (239).  And one example is that we have only one copy of Mark from this time period.

Meade acknowledges that I made this qualification but seems unsatisfied. He complains, “[Kruger] should contrast the one MS of Mark with the three of the Gospel of Thomas, but he does not do so.”  I am baffled by this complaint because this is exactly what I was doing!  In this very section of the chapter, just a couple pages before, I mentioned that Thomas had three manuscripts.  And then, at the end of this same section, I expressly point out that this is not the whole story because Mark has only one.  Obviously, I am acknowledging that Mark has less than Thomas. Is it just that Meade wants me to say it in the very same sentence?  It seems any thoughtful reader would easily get my point.

And then again, as if I never made the qualification above, Meade simply repeats his argument at the end: “But the Gospel of Thomas has more early evidence than the Gospel according to Mark and many other books were written onto the codex form, and yet, early Christians do not describe these other books as canonical.”

But this point only holds if I were arguing there is a one-to-one relationship between manuscripts and the canon.  I definitively said I was not making that argument! But Meade just barrels on as if I was.

By focusing solely on exceptions like the Gospel of Mark, Meade seems to be missing the forest for the trees.

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