Does the History of the Canon Matter? Contextualizing the Debate over the Authority of the New Testament Canon

Abstract

The Da Vinci Code created a great popular interest in the question of the history of the canon of the New Testament, arguing for a late date for the establishment of canon, with a suppression of apocryphal gospels. This position has become popular among many scholars, but has been met by protests from Protestant evangelical scholars. The positions on both sides appear to be constrained to a religious context; therefore an attempt is made to place the discussion in a broader context by comparing it to the discussion of the canon in American literature. In that discussion, the issue of the content of the canon could not be separated from the question of the interpretation of canonical literature. I argue in this article that also regarding the New Testament the canon has been challenged by the development of interpretations with focus on e.g. minorities, women and post-colonial situations. The conclusion is that how we read texts, both canonical and extra-canonical ones, is more important than how the canon came into being.