In contemporary canon studies there is a well-developed focus on the historical question of how the canon came to be. Often overlooked in this field is the prior question of why the canon came to be in the first place. In this substantive volume, Levi Baker takes up this issue of the impetus for the composition of apostolic writings and the formation of a New Testament collection. His overall thesis is straightforward: “Since earliest Christians believed that Jesus had inaugurated the promised new covenant, they understood some early writings as the documents of that covenant, to be held alongside the documents of the old covenant” (p. 274). This theological framework held by the early Christian community can thus provide a sufficient answer to the question of why the New Testament canon came to be.
In terms of the debates within academic discussions of early Christianity, Baker writes to refute two underlying assumptions. First, that the New Testament was not solidified as a collection until well into the fourth century. Second, that there was nothing internal to the early Christian community that drove the canon formation process. In other words, the development of the New Testament canon was late and arbitrary. With ample attention to the scholarship involved in these discussions, Baker makes the case that the development of the New Testament was rather early and inevitable. For Baker, “evidence of an early ‘canon consciousness’ cautions against moving too quickly from a legitimate observation about the historical development of the canon to a questionable judgment about the lack of a necessary impetus for the NT canon” (p. 1).
In his survey of alternative proposals, Baker critiques explanations that attribute the creation of the New Testament primarily to second-century controversies (such as the sectarian teachings of Marcion or the interpretive methods of Gnosticism) or to fourth-century ecclesiastical decisions. In their place, he argues that the decisive catalyst came from the preaching of the apostles and the theology of the early church. Specifically, because the Hebrew Bible consistently associates covenants with covenant documents, the earliest Christians naturally expected that the inauguration of the promised new covenant through Jesus would also be accompanied by new covenant documents. This covenant-to-document pattern supplied the conceptual framework by which Christian writings could be received as Scripture alongside the texts of the Hebrew Bible.
Baker develops this thesis by tracing the relationship between covenant and Scripture across several historical corpora. He first demonstrates that the Hebrew Bible establishes a recurring connection between covenant-making and written covenant documents (chapter two). Next, he argues that Second Temple Jewish literature and the Dead Sea Scrolls preserve and extend this expectation, including evidence that new covenant communities could receive new authoritative texts (chapter three). He subsequently examines the New Testament, focusing especially on passages such as 2 Corinthians 3 and the Gospel of Matthew with its Sermon on the Mount, to argue that early Christians understood Jesus’s ministry in explicitly new covenant terms and regarded certain apostolic writings as covenantal documents with scriptural authority (chapter four).
Finally, he surveys second-century Christian literature to show continuity with this first-century pattern rather than the creation of a fundamentally new concept of Scripture (chapter five). Baker concludes that the New Testament canon emerged primarily as the literary expression of the new covenant inaugurated by Christ, making the reception of Christian writings as Scripture a natural theological development rather than a later institutional innovation.
An important strength of this work is its broad range and narrow focus. By homing in on the specific question of the impetus for a New Testament canon, Baker is able to provide a mini-biblical theology of the conceptual link between covenants and covenant documents. Rather than drawing on comparative historical investigation into the social dynamics of communities in the Ancient Near East and Greco-Roman context (like many studies of biblical covenants), he focuses on the textual portrayal of God’s covenant(s) with his people.
This orientation allows Baker to examine the source of early Christian theology in the Hebrew Bible, the conceptual environment of Second Temple Judaism, a potential parallel with early Christianity in the Dead Sea Scrolls, key examples from the New Testament itself, and finally a snapshot of the earliest reception of the New Testament as the literary form of the new covenant (see pp. 57–60; pp. 274–80).
Baker’s work also provides a fresh articulation and defense of the position that the formation of the New Testament as a coherent collection was a tangible reality in the life of the earliest churches. While recognizing that discussions about specific writings continued in various regions long after the time of the apostles, Baker contends that what is later solidified in the second and fourth centuries was already operative in the early days of the Christian movement. For Baker, “the connection between ‘scripture’ and ‘new covenant’ is not something novel that emerges within the second century, but rather it is a part of the fabric of first-century Christian theology” (p. 57). In this way, “it is appropriate to speak of a functional canon within the first century and that this canon was the natural result of Christian theology” (p. 57).
One particularly valuable feature of Baker’s study is the way he deploys and builds upon the notion of canon-consciousness. The idea that the concept of canon was operative for biblical authors and those receiving these writings is not new, yet Baker demonstrates that this reality has theological and historical implications for how we understand how and why the New Testament formed. He first shows that certain New Testament texts exhibit a form of canon-consciousness in relation to both the Jewish Scriptures and also written apostolic texts (i.e., 1 Tim 5:18 and 2 Pet 3:15–16). If this is true, Baker reasons, it raises the question of a catalyst for this powerful theological belief. Baker’s work thus advances this facet of a canonical approach to the New Testament.
This volume represents an important contribution to contemporary canon studies. Whether readers ultimately accept every aspect of his thesis or not, they will have to reckon with his central claim that the conceptual link between the reality of the covenant and the writings of the covenant supplied an intrinsic rationale for the emergence of a new collection of Scripture. By shifting attention from the mechanics of canon formation to the theological logic that made such a development intelligible, this volume opens a productive line of inquiry that deserves sustained engagement. Baker’s study will thus be of interest to students and scholars working in New Testament, biblical theology, and the formation of the biblical canon.
- See further details about this volume. Cf. my other academic reviews and my goodreads
- Read about my latest book, One Grand Story: How the Bible Tells its Story and Why it Matters
