Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 1158. Petrine authorship of Second Peter has taken more scholarly fire than almost any other claim in the New Testament, and I think the letter deserves better than the suspicion it usually receives. The letter opens in the plainest possible terms, naming Simeon Peter as its author, an eyewitness of the Lord’s majesty who…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1175. The Muratorian fragment is one of the earliest surviving pieces of direct evidence for how the church recognised the New Testament canon, and it answers a question I am asked often, sometimes by sincere believers who have absorbed a popular but mistaken idea from films and bestselling novels: was the list of New…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1184. What is the book of Enoch, and is it Scripture? This question comes up more often than you might expect, usually prompted by the fact that Jude actually quotes it directly in his New Testament letter, which understandably makes people wonder whether the book itself deserves a place in the canon. It does…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1185. What is the book of Jasher mentioned in Joshua and 2 Samuel, and should its brief, tantalising appearances in Scripture make us curious about a lost inspired text? The book of Jasher is referenced twice in the Old Testament, in Joshua 10:13 and 2 Samuel 1:18, as a source the biblical writers themselves…
Reading Time: 9 minutesQuestion 1204. The faith once delivered to the saints is the phrase Jude reaches for when he explains why his short, urgent letter changed direction partway through the opening line. He had wanted to write about their common salvation, but found it necessary instead to appeal to his readers to contend for this same faith….
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1197. The authorship of Hebrews is the oldest literary puzzle in the New Testament, and honesty requires me to say at the outset that nobody can answer it with certainty. The book itself is anonymous. Unlike Paul’s letters, which open by naming their author, Hebrews simply begins with a majestic statement about God speaking…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1183. Is the book of Esdras a book we should read, and does it belong anywhere near our study of Scripture? People find the name confusing before they even reach the content, since several ancient books share it, and I want to sort out both the confusion and the underlying canonical question clearly. The…
Reading Time: 6 minutesQuestion 1080. Have we lost books of the Bible? I get asked this more often than you might expect, usually by someone who has just read a footnote mentioning the Book of Jashar, or heard a documentary claim that whole gospels were suppressed by a jealous church hierarchy centuries ago. It is a fair question,…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 1076. The Gnostic gospels turn up every few years in a documentary or a bestselling novel, usually with the claim that the church suppressed a truer, more mystical version of Jesus that these texts supposedly preserve. It is a compelling story, and I understand why it sells books. It is also, on the actual…
Reading Time: 5 minutesQuestion 1075. The Old Testament Apocrypha sits quietly on the shelf of most study Bibles that include it, and I get asked about it more often than you might expect, usually by someone who has just noticed that a Catholic or Orthodox friend’s Bible is a good deal thicker than their own. The question behind…