Literary Expansion.

The literary disposition that began to pervade Greek Christianity in the earlier years of the second century swelled to a flood in the last third of that century and reached proportions that amaze the modern reader. The volume, variety, and vigor of this literature must be realized if we are to understand what manner of faith it was that was beginning to turn the Greco-Roman world upside down, for not the least of the elements of its strength was the intellectual attack it was making upon paganism.

We have been too much inclined to pass by all this literature and go directly to the New Testament, as though it existed apart from the contemporary and later Christian literature. And it is true that it was in the books of the New Testament and in the earliest collections of them — of the letters of Paul and of the Four Gospels  — that the letter and gospel types were first set powerfully before the early Church; and Revelation and Acts offered patterns for the apocalypses and acts that were to come. But the development of Christian thought did not stop with the writing of the New Testament, and although none of these later writers achieved the insight of Paul, the first of its authors, they have something of value to contribute to our understanding of historical Christianity, the development of Christian doctrine, and the extraordinary movement, so largely literary, that in a century and a half after its formation made the New Testament the religious authority of that ancient world.

It was the conviction of the early church that the acceptance of the gospel released new powers in the human spirit, and never was this truer than in these first centuries when in the defense and advocacy of Christianity men like Irenaeus, Tertullian, and Origen stood forth to fight the literary battle for the new faith. It was an age of writers, publishers, books, and readers to a degree that may well surprise the modern reader and give him a new idea of the intelligence and reading interest of Christian circles in the second and third centuries.

A few Christian books not included in the New Testament may well be older than some of those that found a place in it, and they throw light upon the situations in which canonical books were written. In origin the books are interrelated, for all come from, and find their places in, the ongoing life of the church. But the story of the New Testament books has often been told and need not be repeated here. The reader is referred instead to introductions to the New Testament that emphasize the literary and historical circumstances of the New Testament books. In the present study, it will be enough to assume the existence of these circumstances without undertaking to repeat what has already been said in print about New Testament origins.