It has been customary to say that the New Testament writers ‘did not think they were writing “scripture”;’ and though, as we shall see, that formulation may need to be revised, not least in the light of recent redaction-criticism, it is certainly true to the extent that for them the place where Israel’s god had acted decisively for the salvation of the world was not in their taking pen and ink to write gospels, but in their god’s taking flesh and blood to die on a cross. Their own work was conceived as derivative from and dependent upon that fact.
