Unclosed Canon

In our course so far, we have studied parabiblical texts and have questioned their purpose and why they were not included in the Canon. We have read texts like the Book of Jubilees and the Protoevangelium of James. After reading Dr. Reed’s text, The Afterlives of New Testament Apocrypha, I wonder even more why these texts were lost, newly found and not included in the Bible. These texts are clearly important because “recent research has emphasized their potential both to shed light on the origins of Christianity and to add to our knowledge of the history of biblical interpretation” (Reed 401). So why were these texts lost or not included in the Canon? I was really intrigued when Dr. Reed mentioned, Bart Ehrman’s 2003 Lost Scriptures: Books That Did Not Make It into the New Testament— so I followed up with more research.

After watching several videos, I came across a video (posted below) that was not merely about lost scripture, but about “Lost Christianities”.  The first religion that was mentioned was the Ebionites—and they were Jewish-Christians who followed Jewish customs but believed that Jesus was the Messiah.  When Bart was speaking about the Ebionites and their “scripture”, he said that they retained the Old Testament as their scripture but had other scriptures that did not later make it in to the canon that were authoritative and inspired. Here we have a devout religion that has a set book of Scripture, but looks to outside authoritative sources as well. So since the time of the Ebionites—thought to be around the description of the Second Temple (70 AD)—people were already reading outside of their Scripture. Therefore, just like Dr. Reed was saying, the Ebionites found beneficial knowledge in these texts or gospels outside of their Scripture.

Watching the video helped me understand that people have been looking outside their Scripture or Canon for a long time and still saw them as authoritative. Because of the research that Dr. Reed points out, we can come to the conclusion that there are more texts outside of the Bible that are or could be authoritative for certain religions. This makes me wonder, has the Canon ever been closed?