Rather than reading the Catholic Epistles in isolation from each other--understanding their individual historical situations as the single, determinative context for their interpretation--this study argues that a proper understanding of these seven letters must equally attend to their collection and placement within the New Testament canon. Resisting the judgment of much of historical-critical analysis of the New Testament, namely, that the concept of canon actually obscures the meaning of these texts, it is the canonical process by which the texts were composed, redacted, collected,...

The tension between reading Scripture as primarily a historically situated text on one hand and binding canon addressed to a community of faith on the other constitutes a crucial issue for biblical interpretation. Considering the ways the disciplines of Biblical Studies, Biblical Theology, Patristics, and Systematic Theology approach Scripture and biblical interpretation, the ""Biblical Theology, Hermeneutics, and Theological Disciplines"" study group, within the Institute of Biblical Research, established a four-year project aimed at clarifying the relationships between these diverse lines...