Reflections on Method: What constitutes the Use of the Writings that later formed the New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers?

Abstract

Abstract When the members of the Oxford Society of Historical Theology published their account of the use of the New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers, they expressed the hope that ‘their labours will not be wholly without fruit in this important Weld of Biblical study’. In this respect, their hopes have been met, and the work has served as a useful tool for 100 years. Readers may not always agree with the judgements that its authors have made, but the volume has given subsequent generations of scholars and students convenient and easy access to the primary texts in order that they may assess them for themselves.1 Yet scholarship moves on, and one very significant difference between the content of the 1905 volume The New Testament in the Apostolic Fathers and that of at least some subsequent discussions of the same topic has been apparent for some time. This striking diVerence concerns the amount of space that is devoted to the explicit discussion of methodological questions.