The Reception of the New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers is an important volume for all those who are interested in Christian origins, development of the NT canon, and the development of the early church and its ministry. While many within today’s church think of Christianity in terms of the NT alone, the documents that follow the NT, known as the Apostolic Fathers, have much to tell about the formation of the canon of the NT, what Christian beliefs became prominent, and how Christian beliefs were transmitted in the church.
The Reception of the New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers and its companion volume, Trajectories through the New Testament and the Apostolic Fathers, are academic volumes devoted to such issues. Both were printed in commemoration of the 1905 publication by the Oxford Society of Historical Theology entitled The New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers. One hundred years later Andrew Gregory and Christopher Tuckett have edited a series of essays in two volumes in commemoration of the publication of the landmark work. These two volumes “are intended to update, develop, and widen the scope of the issues” considered in the book published in 1905 (p. v).
Four essays preface the reconsideration of the 1905 findings. Bart Ehrman’s article “Textual Traditions Compared: The New Testament and the Apostolic Fathers” engages in a comparative analysis of textual variations. Ehrman examines how the NT and the Apostolic Fathers were transmitted, seeking to draw comparisons from the text criticism of both sets of documents. He concludes, “there appears to be no noticeable difference in the kinds of alteration one finds made by scribes in New Testament writings, on the one hand, and writings of the Apostolic Fathers, on the other” (p. 11). The one difference that he finds is that none of the texts from the Apostolic Fathers was copied as frequently as the NT writings. The patterns of accidental and intentional changes are the same as those of the NT writings.
William Petersen’s “Textual Traditions Examined: What the Text of the Apostolic Fathers tells us about the Text of the New Testament in the Second Century” attempts to draw conclusions about the wording of the NT. He states that the conclusion from the 1905 volume is “in the overwhelming majority of cases, those passages in the Apostolic Fathers which offer recognizable parallels with our present-day New Testament display a text that is very different from what we now find in our modern critical editions of the New Testament” (p. 34). It is unfortunate that this is the basis for Petersen’s article as it discounts that the Apostolic Fathers may have quoted from memory, perhaps altering the wording by mistake, a conclusion at which a number of contributors from the 1905 volume arrived.
Petersen then goes on to conclude that instead of asking questions about which books of the NT are evidenced in the Apostolic Fathers, the question should be “what textual parallels are there for recognizable patterns within the Apostolic Fathers, and what do these parallels tell us about the textual complexion of the documents—whatever they may have been—that were known to the Apostolic Fathers?” (p. 45). Such a conclusion reflects an unfortunate bias to a fluid and evolving text of the NT in the second century.
J. Keith Elliot’s “Absent Witnesses? The Critical Apparatus to the Greek New Testament and the Apostolic Fathers” wishes to promote a greater use of the Apostolic Fathers for the text criticism of the NT. He proposes twenty places where evidence from the Apostolic Fathers should be included in the textual apparatus. Whether every case is worth adding or not, Elliot provides a convincing case for a greater use of the Apostolic Fathers in text critical decisions. Such a viewpoint receives support from a number of other scholars such as S. R. Pickering, Stanley Porter, and Tjitze Baarda.
The editors, Andrew Gregory and Christopher Tuckett, also provide a challenging introductory essay entitled “Reflections on Method: What Constitutes the Use of the Writings That Later Formed the New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers?” They address questions such as: what constitutes the use of one text in another, what constitutes an allusion instead of a deliberate quotation, when can one determine whether there is deliberate dependence, and how should certainty be assessed? Methodology for determining what a citation, allusion, echo, or theme in the NT has been an important topic in modern scholarship and one largely neglected in the 1905 volume. Gregory and Tuckett question the surety of the 1905 findings, which classified appearances of the NT in the Apostolic Fathers by labeling them A for “no reasonable doubt,” B for “high probability,” C for “lower probability,” and D for “some possibility.” While Gregory and Tuckett rightly challenge the uniformity of the 1905 volume, it is unfortunate that they do not provide any clearer method for determining the presence of the NT in the Apostolic Fathers.
Following these introductory essays, The Reception of the New Testament in the Apostolic Fathersconsiders each of the writings from the Apostolic Fathers individually in each chapter. Established scholars examine each of the Apostolic Fathers—Didache (Christopher Tuckett), First Clement (Andrew Gregory), Epistles of Ignatius (Paul Foster), Polycarp’s Letter to the Philippians (Michael W. Holmes), Epistle of Barnabas (James Carleton-Pagett), 2 Clement (Andrew Gregory and Christopher Tuckett), and the Shepherd of Hermas (Joseph Verheyden). As would be expected, they generally find fewer certain references of the NT in the Apostolic Fathers.
The manner of presentation and investigation of NT sources in the Apostolic Fathers in this volume has advantages and drawbacks. The Greek text of the NT and Apostolic Fathers are listed side by side. There is also extensive commenting following each reference that interacts with the latest secondary literature. Unfortunately, there is no summary table of references like the 1905 edition. Those who cannot follow Greek will be at a disadvantage in assessing the results.
This volume is an important addition to those interested in the presence of the NT in the Apostolic Fathers. It is of importance to those interested in Christian origins, but it is likely beyond the undergraduate student. Due to manner of presentation, the 1905 edition, The New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers, still is the primary reference for investigation into this important field of study. The Reception of the New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers is an important supplement.
