Parchment & Pen Blog

It may surprise you to know that I don’t have much of a problem with the Apocrypha. I enjoy reading them. As well, as a Protestant, accepting or rejecting them does not really affect my standing in my tradition (nor should it). Granted, I don’t know of any magisterial Protestant churches which have ever accepted [...]

Part 1 Part 2 A standard evangelical approach to dealing with the stylistic differences of, say, Ephesians, Colossians, and the Pastorals from the rest of Paul’s letters, is to argue that the penman or secretary of these letters may have had a larger role than merely copying down via dictation what Paul said. Ehrman, however, [...]

Part 2: Statistics on Writing Styles So, how does Ehrman attempt to prove forgery in the NT? He uses the traditional arguments that have been debated for centuries: differences in style, conceptual/theological differences, and historical discrepancies from known facts. Arguments on both sides have been made, and continue to be made, in the scholarly literature. [...]

Part 1 of 3 The James A. Gray Distinguished Professor of Religious Studies at North Carolina Chapel Hill, Dr. Bart Ehrman, is the most recognized evangelical-turned-agnostic in the world today. He has written more than twenty books, though in recent years he has focused on popular writing more than academic. This is a strategy that [...]

Theology in three minutes.

I am not a charismatic.  It is hard for me to describe myself as a traditional cessationist either. I refer to myself as a “de facto” cessationist. What does this mean? Essentially, when it comes to the so-called supernatural sign gifts such as gifts of tongues, prophecy, workers of miracles, etc, I have never seen [...]

The term “canon” refers to the accepted books of the Scriptures. The Protestant canon contains 66 books, while other Christian traditions will vary, adding a few books often referred to as the Deuterocanonical books (“second canon”) or the “Apocrypha.” A commonly accepted understanding among most Christians of all traditions is that the books that belong in the Scripture [...]

I am looking on page 23 of my Bible and it has the list of books. The books all together number 66—39 in the Old Testament and 27 in the New Testament. This is often referred to as the “canon” of Scripture. “Canon” (Gk. kanon) means “rule” or “measuring rod.” The canon of Scripture is [...]