New Testament : A Literary History

Introduction
Part One: The Double Beginning Of Early Christian Literature
1. The Charismatic Beginning Of The Gospel Literature: Jesus
2. The “Charismatic Phase” Of Epistolary Literature: Paul
Part Two: The Fictive Self-Exegesis Of Paul And Jesus
3. The “Pseudepigraphic Phase”
4. The Fictive Self-Exegesis Of Paul: The Deutero-Pauline Literature
5. The Fictive Self-Exegesis Of Jesus: Tradition Redacted In The Synoptic Gospels
6. The Jesus Tradition Transformed: The Gnostic Gospels
7. The Synoptic Tradition Expanded: Jewish-Christian Gospels
8. Harmonization Of The Jesus Tradition: Further Apocryphal Gospels
Part Three: The Authority Of Independent Forms
9. The “Functional Phase” (Acts, Revelation, Hebrews)
Part Four: The New Testament Becoming World Religious Literature
10. The “Canonical Phase”
Conclusion

Additional Info
Gerd Theissen takes up the problem of the emergence of the New Testament canon out of the wide variety of early Christian literature. Drawing from Max Weber’s discussion of the evolution of religious organizations, Theissen describes the development of early Christian literature as a series of phases in the life of the movement: the charismatic, the pseudepigraphic, the functional, and the canonical.