GENE: Ben, thanks for the conversation. It’s been delightful to speak with you about our brother, Peter. Let me ask you a final question, if I may. Could you give us your thoughts about the new Tyndale House Greek New Testament that places the seven Catholic letters by the three pillars – James, Peter, and John, along with Jude the brother of James (and Jesus) – after the Gospels and Acts and before the Pauline corpus? They’re following early Christian canonical
tradition here. What does this canonical arrangement say to us about the development of early Christianity and the role of Peter and the Pillars in the early church and today? Any thoughts on that?
BEN: I was not thrilled with the form that that volume took in several respects. In an age of too much stimuli, nevertheless this volume was just plain boring to look at, and with print too small for most, especially in dealing with the apparatus. I was not thrilled with the arrangement of the NT either. Paul’s letters are chronologically our earliest witnesses, and frankly the most influential ones going forward in the late first century and beyond (see 2 Peter 3— his letters are already collected and circulating). Furthermore, the two earliest groups of collected documents that circulated were the four canonical Gospels and Paul’s letters. Even Hebrews is squeezed in as some sort of Pauline witness. And on the other hand, various of the Catholic documents were debated and disputed early and later. So…. no I was not thrilled with this re-arrangement of the Greek NT. Nor was I always sure the text criticism involved in various decisions was always the best.
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