Recommended Reading: Forgotten Scriptures

Acadia Divinity College's Lee Martin MacDonald, author of The Biblical Canon: Its Origin, Transmission, and Authority (1995; 2nd ed. Hendrickson, 2007) and co-editor of The Canon Debate (Hendrickson 2002), has recently released Forgotten Scriptures: The Selection and Rejection of Early Religious Writings (WJK 2009).The title is somewhat misleading–it reads as if it is a collection of apocryphal texts, when in reality it is a study of the canon selection process for the Hebrew Bible and the New Testament. MacDonald is a true expert on this topic and what he has to say is an excellent corrective to the anti-CA apologists (often discussed here) whose knowledge of canon-selection (and its implications for the study of the CA) tends to be limited and constrained by their faith commitments. I may have occasion to post on some of MacDonald's observations at a later date.