Today I found a copy of Vernon K. Robbins’ Who Do People Say I Am? Rewriting Gospel in Emerging Christianity in the mail courtesy of Eerdmans Publishing. This looks like an interesting volume. The blurb on the book is as follows:
Spanning early Christian writings from the Gospel of Mark to the Acts of John, this book by Vernon Robbins explores the various ways early Christians explained their understanding of the special nature of Jesus beyond the canonical Gospels.
Who Do People Say I Am? shows how second-and third-century Christian authors of additional Gospels and Gospel-like writings expanded and elaborated on Jesus’ divinity in the context of his earthly existence. According to Robbins, these Christian authors thought that the New Testament Gospel writers could and should have emphasized the divinity of Jesus more than they did.
Throughout the book Robbins asks and answers questions such as these:
- If Jesus introduced new beliefs and practices, what did second- and third-century believers find unresolved in the New Testament Gospels about those beliefs and practices, and how did they try to resolve them?
- What gaps in the storylines of the New Testament Gospels did second- and third-century Christian writers think could be filled in, and how did they fill them in?
- If Jesus really were fully divine when he came to earth and lived among his disciples, what experiences did his disciples have that the New Testament Gospels do not tell us?
Learning activities and a bibliography at the end of each chapter help make this book a valuable resource for students and any other interested readers.
I’ll make sure to share my thoughts when I finish reading it.
the archives near Emmaus 
If Jesus introduced new beliefs and practices, what did second- and third-century believers find unresolved in the New Testament Gospels about those beliefs and practices, and how did they try to resolve them?
.. and what if He didn’t? What if he came to fulfill and perfect old beliefs and practices, such as providing sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins (a practice laid down in Israel’s sacrificial laws). What if the beliefs and practices He introduced only seemed new because the beliefs and practices being exhibited by temple culture was so far from being those laid down by prophets of old, they seemed new by comparison.
Than it means either that Robbins has made some assumptions about early Christians that simply may not be true, or it means the early Christians have made some assumptions about Christ that Robins picks up on which are false.
Either way, it would appear to be a fruitless line of reasoning (if what Christ introduced was perfection of the old, rather than new, meaning innovative)
Didn’t mean to put that all in bold. Sorry.
Sounds like he’s trying to reinvent the wheel. Or at least Roman and Orthodox Catholicism, which preserves many ancient traditions that the Protestant Reformation simply decided were not important.