Thursday, 16 July 2015

Canon & Community: A Guide to Canonical Criticism,
James A. Sanders, Wipf and Stock, 2000, page 24

Sanders takes a refreshing look at dating and transmission:

Paul's letters were clearly written, each of them, to very particukar situations in the middle third of the first century. But we can be sure we would simply not have inherited them in the manner we have, by tradition in the churches through the centuries instead of discovery by archaeology, had other early churches not found value in them for themselves in different times and contexts. Ecce! Churches in the twentieth century continue to find value in them.