Five Influential Primary Sources

Brandon Wasson tagged me for the latest meme floating around.  Here are the rules:

1. List the 5 primary sources that have most affected your scholarship, thoughts about antiquity, and/or understanding of the NT/OT.
2. Books from the Bible are off limits unless you really want to list one, I certainly will not chastise you for it.
3. Finally, choose individual works if you can. This will be more interesting than listing the entire corpus of Cicero as one of your choices.

This one is difficult because rules 1 & 2 conflict with each other to a certain degree.  When I think of ancient documents that have affected my reading of the OT/NT then I’m thinking of ‘secondary’ sources since I’d consider the OT/NT to be the ‘primary’ sources in those cases.  I will not be listing deuterocanonical writings because I recognize that they are part of the OT even if as a Pentecostal they’re not in canon that I’m expected to recognize as authoritative.  So without further ado the five ancient documents that have had an affect on my understanding of Scripture are (in no particular order):

1 Clement – Written around the same time as the book of Revelation 1 Clement gave me insight into the thoughts of late first century Christians living in the Greco-Roman world.  It’s a great accompaniment to Paul’s epistles and helps to trace some of the continuities and discontinuities between the Corinthian Christians of Paul’s day and those of Clement’s. 

The Didache – I’d describe this as the earliest Christan rule book.  This moreso than the NT itself is deserving of this title because this seems to be its intended purpose, that is, to offer specific instruction for the Church’s practices.  Bruce Metzger said that “Eusebius and Athanasius even considered it to be on the fringe of the New Testament canon” and that it “was used both by Clement of Alexandria and by Origen as Scripture.” (The Canon of the New Testament, 49; 187).

Adversus Haereses* – Irenaeus was a master apologist/polemicist who wove a wonderful tapestry of arguments together against the various heresies of his Gnostic opponents.  So much of Adversus Haereses focuses on faulty interpretations of Scripture which Irenaeus then responds to with what he believes to be the proper interpretation; for this reason alone it is has had a great impact on my understanding of early Christianity and the way they read Scripture.

Antiquitates Judaicae* – Josephus’ work was the first ‘commentary’ on the OT that I had ever read.  It was eye-opening to see the little bits of added information that Josephus provided in his recounting of Israel’s history.  This was also the first book to make me realize the importance of extra-biblical literature for the study of the Bible in that it could relay traditions that were perhaps taken for granted and so unmentioned in Scripture.  Keep in mind I don’t buy everything that he said, but it got me thinking nonetheless.

Quelle – ‘Q’ was highly influential in the sense that it showed me just how speculative and creative scholars could be.  I mean c’mon, a critical edition of a ‘document’ (?) no one in the history of the world has ever seen?  That’s ingenious!  Talk about your conjectural emendations!  And don’t get me started on these fanciful ‘Q community’ reconstructions; Galilean village scribes, really?!!  Gimme a break!

I’d love to say all of Ignatius’ letters but I had to limit it to individual works and I refuse to choose any one over the other.  Honestly though, all of the Apostolic Fathers have had an impact on my understanding of early Christianity and the manner in which early Christians read and understood the Bible.  Justin Martyr, Tertullian, and Athanasius are all worthy of mention.  But alas, I’ll have to expand upon this list at a later date in time. 

I’d be quite interested to see Kevin Edgecomb, Matthew Burgess, Chris Heard, Rick Brannan, and James Spinti‘s picks.  I’m sure they’d all be very different than my own and possibly lead me to a plethora of sources I’ve yet to look into.

B”H

*NB that Irenaeus and Josephus both authored multivolumed works but I am counting them as a single work each.