The Cambridge History of Christianity: Origins to Constantine

The decision to couple Marcion with the formation of the New Testament canon is anomalous; Harry Gamble's chapter succinctly summarizes what we know about Marcion and argues cogently that, while studying his work provides insight into the process of canon formation, Marcion actually had little influence on that process. Margaret Mitchell's chapter on the emergence of written forms points out the sheer anomaly that "a movement whose founder's only recorded act of writing was a short-lived and unread finger etching on wind-swept soil" (178) developed a bibliocentric culture and helps us understand how that happened.