When Did the Gospels Become Scripture‪?‬

In teaching NT Introduction, I am fond of saying that the authors of NT books would have had no inkling that their writings would become part of something called the New Testament or the Christian Bible, which did not reach exactly its present form until the fourth century. Matthew did not know that his Gospel would begin the NT, although he would be happy to discover that it does. It is well suited for that position and purpose. John did not know that his Gospel would stand in the NT alongside three other, Synoptic Gospels, and that it would be the fourth, presumably to be read after the others. Some exegetes believe that John was actually written with the others in view, but that premise creates as many problems of interpretation as it resolves. (1) However that may be, the presumption of a historical distance, and consequent difference of purpose, between the composition of the NT writings and their incorporation into a canon of scripture is representative of our discipline. The question When did the Gospels become scripture? is certainly not a new one. Understandably, it is ordinarily construed as a question about the formation of the canon, in this case particularly the four-Gospel canon. The latter question is important, interesting, and the subject of recent, relevant discussions. For example, in his 1996 S.N.T.S. presidential address Graham Stanton argued that the four-Gospel canon was formed sooner rather than later in the second century. (2) More radically, David Trobisch has proposed that the entire NT as we know it was actually assembled, redacted, and published in the latter half of the second century) John Barton has argued that by that time the principal elements of the NT were already functioning as scripture, if not referred to as such. (4) Needless to say, any discussion of canon or scripture stands on the shoulders of such contemporary figures