Misquoting Jesus by Bart D. Ehrman Read Free Book Online

that Paul’s letters are here being understood as scripture.
    Soon after the New Testament period, certain Christian writings were being quoted as authoritative texts for the life and beliefs of the church. An outstanding example is a letter written by Polycarp, the previously mentioned bishop of Smyrna, in the early second century. Polycarp was asked by the church at Philippi to advise them, particularly with respect to a case involving one of the leaders who had evidently engaged in some form of financial mismanagement within the church (possibly embezzling church funds). Polycarp’s letter to thePhilippians, which still survives, is intriguing for a number of reasons, not the least of which is its propensity to quote earlier writings of the Christians. In just fourteen brief chapters, Polycarp quotes more than a hundred passages known from these earlier writings, asserting their authority for the situation the Philippians were facing (in contrast to just a dozen quotations from the Jewish scriptures); in one place he appears to call Paul’s letter to the Ephesians scripture. More commonly, he simply quotes or alludes to earlier writings, assuming their authoritative status for the community. 11
    The Role of Christian Liturgy in the Formation of the Canon
    Some time before the letter of Polycarp, we know that Christians were hearing the Jewish scriptures read during their worship services. The author of 1 Timothy, for example, urges that the letter’s recipient “pay close attention to [public] reading, to exhortation, and to teaching” (4:13). As we saw in the case of the letter to the Colossians, it appears that letters by Christians were being read to the gathered community as well. And we know that by the middle of the second century, a good portion of the Christian worship services involved the public reading of scripture. In a much discussed passage from the writings of the Christian intellectual and apologist Justin Martyr, for example, we get a glimpse of what a church service involved in his home city of Rome:
    On the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits; then, when the reader has ceased, the president verbally instructs, and exhorts to the imitation of these good things…(1 Apol. 67)
    It seems likely that the liturgical use of some Christian texts—for example, “the memoirs of the apostles,” which are usually understood to be the Gospels—elevated their status for most Christians so that they, as much as the Jewish scriptures (“the writings of the prophets”), were considered to be authoritative.
    The Role of Marcion in the Formation of the Canon
    We can trace the formation of the Christian canon of scripture a bit more closely still, from the surviving evidence. At the same time that Justin was writing in the mid second century, another prominent Christian was also active in Rome, the philosopher-teacher Marcion, later declared a heretic. 12 Marcion is an intriguing figure in many ways. He had come to Rome from Asia Minor, having already made a fortune in what was evidently a shipbuilding business. Upon arriving in the Rome, he made an enormous donation to the Roman church, probably, in part, to get in its good favor. For five years he stayed in Rome, spending much of his time teaching his understanding of the Christian faith and working out its details in several writings. Arguably his most influential literary production was not something he wrote but something he edited. Marcion was the first Christian that we know of who produced an actual “canon” of scripture—that is, a collection of books that, he argued, constituted the sacred texts of the faith.
    To make sense of this initial attempt to establish the canon, we need to know a bit about Marcion’s distinctive teaching. Marcion was