Controversy in the New Testament

Extract

It was the merit of the Tübingen school that it recognized that controversy was no late arrival in the history of the Christian Church, but that the earliest stages of its development were marked, perhaps marred, by it. Where that school erred was in supposing that the books of the New Testament can be placed out at the various stages of the conflict, so that between them they yield a picture of the course it took. Where today an attempt is made to learn from their work, it is admitted that the New Testament is much less a record of the clash between Jerusalem and Paul than a selection from the literature of the Gentile Church, Pauline or non-Pauline, with Jerusalem not directly represented. Hence, when Hans Joachim Schoeps wishes to do justice to the defeated party, he has to have recourse very largely to extra-canonical sources.¹ S. G. F. Brandon, with the same end in view,² has to resort again and again to conjecture to fill out the scanty evidence available. All our reconstructions of Christian origins are vitiated by the fact that we have so little material from the Mother Church.