Rating: 
Summary: Excellent Source on the Formation of the Canon
Review: Bruce Meztger seems to be the reigning scholar as far as early New Testament books are concerned. He's writen over ten books on that subject alone. From all information about the "Q" document to different textual versions of the gospels, he's your man.This book, however, is not specifically about where the individual books of the New Testament Canon came from. Meztger does talk about who wrote them, to be sure, but he is more concerned with how they actually came to be canonized. He discuses the outside elements that brought the church to seperate certain books as authoritative(canonize), and investigates various books that were eventually rejected. One thing Meztger seems to stress is that the decision to include books in the canon was not done over night in one council; but gradually over roughly 300 years of various(though similar) 'lists' of books. Eventually he concludes with the excellent illustration:"If, for example, all the academies of music in the world were to unite in declaring Bach and Beethoven to be great musicians, we should reply, 'Thank you for nothing; we knew that already.'" Same thing with the canon. I found this book to be extremly boring in places; I'm not very proficient in scholarly works. This book seems to be meant for college students. Its very helpful, though, for those who want to know how the New Testament came to be labeled as authoritative, hence the five stars. Don't miss the concluding essays on modern questions concerning the canon. I recomend this to budding Bible scholars or mature Christians.
Rating: 
Summary: Well written apology -- but just apology
Review: If you're a believing Christian looking for the believers' orthodox account of gospel origins, this is a five- star book. Metzger knows a lot. He organizes well and writes clearly. But you should realize Metzger is doing "believers' scholarship," not "critical scholarship." He starts with the idea the gospel stories are basically true (but not historically infallible) accounts of Jesus life. His job is to understand Jesus through the not-quite-inerrant gospels. Any scholarship that leads away from traditional theology isn't worth mentioning -- so he doesn't. To his credit, Metzger does acknowledge some faith-confounding results of critical scholarship, but he always explains them away, even if the best thing he can come up with is silly. Silly how? Here's an example. Critical scholars have long seen that the original gospel of Mark ends at 16:8, a few lines back from the current ending, without mentioning Jesus' ascension. That changes Mark's theology. Metzger admits the scholarship and even acknowledges it is correct: Mark's gospel did originally end without Jesus' ascension. But the reason, says Metzger, is that Mark up and died before he could get out those last eleven verses. [pg 92] I am not making this up. Is silliness evil? No, it's not. Metzger seems like a nice guy. Silly is OK. But if you read this book you will miss all the scholarship about what the changed theology means, not just to Mark but to the history and development of Christian ideas. What is bad about the book is that it is fundamentally about apology, not scholarship. You always get the believer's conclusion, always with the believer's spin. You don't get the uncomfortable conclusions of critical scholarship. You don't get the facts from the ancient texts that underlie the conclusions. And you don't get the non-silly reasoning behind critical scholarship's faith confounding conclusions. Faith confounding how? Here's an example. Metzger acknowledges the pre-gospel Synoptic Saying Source, aka Q, exists. He mentions, but because it contradicts his theology (he says this himself) quickly dismisses, the non-canonical Gospel of Thomas. He ignores the fact that neither Q nor the Gospel of Thomas mention Jesus' death and resurrection. That's bad, because there is a large body of critical scholarship about this: Jesus' earliest followers, say many scholars, were not Christians! Now, I don't know if the early-followers-not-Christians stuff is true or not. But I do know it's an important part of NT scholarship, and if you read this book you won't get any of it. Metzger doesn't mention the underlying facts and he doesn't mention the reasoning. Read this book and you won't even know the issue exists. That's one example. There are many many others, particularly in the area of the early non-canonical gospels and their similarities, timing and relationship to our four modern gospels. The good news is there are better books for non-believers, or for believers interested in real scholarship. One very good one is Harvard Professor Helmut Koester's: Ancient Christian Gospels Their History and Development.
Rating:
Summary: Well written apology -- but just apology
Review: If you're a believing Christian looking for the believers' orthodox account of gospel origins, this is a five- star book. Metzger knows a lot. He organizes well and writes clearly. But you should realize Metzger is doing "believers' scholarship," not "critical scholarship." He starts with the idea the gospel stories are basically true (but not historically infallible) accounts of Jesus life. His job is to understand Jesus through the not-quite-inerrant gospels. Any scholarship that leads away from traditional theology isn't worth mentioning -- so he doesn't. To his credit, Metzger does acknowledge some faith-confounding results of critical scholarship, but he always explains them away, even if the best thing he can come up with is silly. Silly how? Here's an example. Critical scholars have long seen that the original gospel of Mark ends at 16:8, a few lines back from the current ending, without mentioning Jesus' ascension. That changes Mark's theology. Metzger admits the scholarship and even acknowledges it is correct: Mark's gospel did originally end without Jesus' ascension. But the reason, says Metzger, is that Mark up and died before he could get out those last eleven verses. [pg 92] I am not making this up. Is silliness evil? No, it's not. Metzger seems like a nice guy. Silly is OK. But if you read this book you will miss all the scholarship about what the changed theology means, not just to Mark but to the history and development of Christian ideas. What is bad about the book is that it is fundamentally about apology, not scholarship. You always get the believer's conclusion, always with the believer's spin. You don't get the uncomfortable conclusions of critical scholarship. You don't get the facts from the ancient texts that underlie the conclusions. And you don't get the non-silly reasoning behind critical scholarship's faith confounding conclusions. Faith confounding how? Here's an example. Metzger acknowledges the pre-gospel Synoptic Saying Source, aka Q, exists. He mentions, but because it contradicts his theology (he says this himself) quickly dismisses, the non-canonical Gospel of Thomas. He ignores the fact that neither Q nor the Gospel of Thomas mention Jesus' death and resurrection. That's bad, because there is a large body of critical scholarship about this: Jesus' earliest followers, say many scholars, were not Christians! Now, I don't know if the early-followers-not-Christians stuff is true or not. But I do know it's an important part of NT scholarship, and if you read this book you won't get any of it. Metzger doesn't mention the underlying facts and he doesn't mention the reasoning. Read this book and you won't even know the issue exists. That's one example. There are many many others, particularly in the area of the early non-canonical gospels and their similarities, timing and relationship to our four modern gospels. The good news is there are better books for non-believers, or for believers interested in real scholarship. One very good one is Harvard Professor Helmut Koester's: Ancient Christian Gospels Their History and Development.
Rating: 
Summary: Believers slant.
Review: Metzger in an ordained Christian minister. This book is theology prettied up to pass as scholarship. Amplifying an earlier reviewer, Metzger also says maybe the ending of Mark's original gospel got burned. One imagines conflagrations all over Christendom, everywhere burning up just that last little bit of Mark. Or maybe the _original_ copy of Mark got burned -- no wait, just the last couple pages of the original book got burned in the fire, so it must have been a tiny fire, and Mark died in the fire, the tiny fire, right, so he couldn't redo it. And there was only that one copy, and no rough drafts, right? Oh, oh, here it is: the fire got all the rough drafts, and the last page of the final version, and Mark. Any stupidity will do for apology. A useless book.
Rating:
Summary: Good Book-- Great Author!!!
Review: Metzger is one of the most (if not THEE most) knowledgable men in his field. If you're interested in which books were almost immediately recognized as canonical, and which books kind of hung around on the fringe for the first three centuries, this will be a good book to read. He also covers some good info on books that did not make it in the canon (i.e. epistle of Barnabus, Diadache, Shepard of Hermas, among others...) Two of the above mentioned were found in Aleph (4th century complete NT mss discovered in the mid 1800's).....very interesting!! You definitly don't have to question this author's credentials, he's top of the line!!! He's got some very thought provoking questions at the end of the book on whether or not the Canon is closed or open: "One may speculate what the Church should do if a hitherto unknown document were to turn up, than on unimpeachable external and internal grounds, could be proved to have been written, let us say, by the Apostle Paul." This is a good buy! I still pull it off the shelf from time to time and reread parts of it.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent concise treatment of NT
Review: Metzzger's volume is an excellent concise treatment on the subject of the NT canon and its assembly. It cuts through all the periphery and deals directly with the root issues regarding the inclusion and exclusion of books of the New Testament.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent concise treatment of NT
Review: Metzzger's volume is an excellent concise treatment on the subject of the NT canon and its assembly. It cuts through all the periphery and deals directly with the root issues regarding the inclusion and exclusion of books of the New Testament.
Rating: 
Summary: Church Father citations and book summaries are valuable
Review: Some critical reviews associated with this title mention Metzger's approach to Mark on "page 92" of this book. However, page 92 of this book is part of the section discussing the heretic Marcion -- and has nothing to do at all with the Gospel of Mark. Perhaps these reviewers have confused this title (Canon of the New Testament) with another title from Metzger (Text of the New Testament). With that out of the way, the strengths of this book from Metzger are in the tracing of authoritative citations used by church fathers from the New Testament books prior to canonization. This information alone is valuable. In addition, Metzger's survey of the works of NT Apocrypha (books that weren't canonized, but were in circulation, at least amongst some groups) along with his clear and concise summaries of the contents of these books is quite valuable. These two items alone make the book a handy reference guide. The information on the process of canonization is good -- typical of Metzger's work, bringing the technical down to a level that is accessible by the non-expert.
Rating:
Summary: Church Father citations and book summaries are valuable
Review: Some critical reviews associated with this title mention Metzger's approach to Mark on "page 92" of this book. However, page 92 of this book is part of the section discussing the heretic Marcion -- and has nothing to do at all with the Gospel of Mark. Perhaps these reviewers have confused this title (Canon of the New Testament) with another title from Metzger (Text of the New Testament). With that out of the way, the strengths of this book from Metzger are in the tracing of authoritative citations used by church fathers from the New Testament books prior to canonization. This information alone is valuable. In addition, Metzger's survey of the works of NT Apocrypha (books that weren't canonized, but were in circulation, at least amongst some groups) along with his clear and concise summaries of the contents of these books is quite valuable. These two items alone make the book a handy reference guide. The information on the process of canonization is good -- typical of Metzger's work, bringing the technical down to a level that is accessible by the non-expert.
Rating:
Summary: Great start for further study.
Review: The breadth and depth of Metzger's scholarship is little short of amazing. In this book he has gathered together nearly all the early patristic references which relate to the formation of the NT canon. If you have any questions about how the Church's canon came to be formed, this book will answer it for you. He covers the apostolic fathers, traces separately the growth of the canon in the eastern and western churches, and provides a detailed analysis of the earliest lists (such as the Muratorian canon, Athanasius' Festal Letter of 367, and so forth). Some of the details he provided about the "flexibility" of the canon with respect to certain "antilegoumena" well into the post-Reformation period were entirely new to me. (Prior to Luther, every German edition of the Bible had included the spurious "Epistle to the Laodiceans", for instance.) My only critique is that the first two chapters of the book, while providing an excellent bibliography, are rather poorly written. In these chapters, Metzger tries to survey the post-Reformation and 20th century theological literature relating to the canon. Some of the information is valuable, but by the time he gets to 20th century authors, it degenerates into, "So-and-so said this; and then so-and-so said this." Unless you've read these authors, the description is so short as to be meaningless; and if you *have* read them, why do you need Metzger's one sentence summary? Scholars tend to do things like this, and I've never understood why: my theory is that they're showing off, but you may have your own.
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