Noncanonical Writings and New Testament Interpretation

There is a lot of hype right now about the writings of early Christianity that did not make it into the canon of Scripture. You have the recent disclosure of the Gnostic Gospel of Judas, along with revisionist scholars who are painting a portrait of an early Christianity far more diverse and divided that what history was thought to have revealed. But in this book, we have a sane survey of the Old and New Testament Pseudepigraphal literature, the Old Testament and New Testament Apocrypha, and the Jewish targums of second temple Judaism. There are also interesting discussions of the Babylonian and Jerusalem Talmuds and the Dead Sea Scrolls. All of this literature is surveyed with an eye toward how it helps us understand the New Testament world and New Testament interpretation. Evans clearly explains why some of these books are more historically reliable than others. For example, he shows how and why 1 Maccabees is generally regarded as more historically accurate than the later 2 Maccabees. He also exposes how different the world view of the Gnostics is compared to the worldview of the early Christians, and this is presented as a reason why these books were never considered for inclusion into the Bible. This book is 14 years old (as of this review in May 2006), but it is a very good time to read it in light of the current release of the Davinci Code movie and with the current interest in early Christianity. I recommend this book with one caveat: You'll need your thinking cap for this book: It is accessible, yet scholarly.

This hard to get book is very useful as an introduction to noncanonical texts. The author is a high credible scholar and prolific author. This is must for anyone wanting to learn about the books outside of the NT.