Debate about teaching the great books of the Western canon has galvanized American higher education in recent years. The Great Canon Controversy provides an overview of the debate, summarizing the position for the canon and the position against it. Casement supports continued teaching of the canon and respect for it, while calling for revising reading lists to include nontraditional works. Part I describes how the canon was taught from ancient Greece to the present, noting key arguments for this form of pedagogy that are still with us today, specific books that were taught at different times over the centuries, and controversies the canon has been subject to in the past. Part II deals with anticanonism, epistemological and political dimensions of the theory underlying it. Casement then shows concrete examples of anticanonism in operation, at Stanford University and St. Lawrence University. Casement argues that, while much of what anticanonists say is hyperbolic or mistaken, we should listen to their demand to give fair treatment to works by marginalized authors and to great non-Western works. This means re-reviewing works worthy of canonization that may have been obscured by prejudice, but still requiring that they make it on their own merits and not out of sympathy for their authors. The Great Canon Controversy will be of great interest to educators and students alike, as well as those interested in the future of higher education in the United States.

Debate about teaching the great books of the Western canon has galvanized American higher education in recent years. The Great Canon Controversy provides an overview of the debate, summarizing the position for the canon and the position against it. Casement supports continued teaching of the canon and respect for it, while calling for revising reading lists to include nontraditional works. Part I describes how the canon was taught from ancient Greece to the present, noting key arguments for this form of pedagogy that are still with us today, specific books that were taught at different times over the centuries, and controversies the canon has been subject to in the past. Part II deals with anticanonism, epistemological and political dimensions of the theory underlying it. Casement then shows concrete examples of anticanonism in operation, at Stanford University and St. Lawrence University. Casement argues that, while much of what anticanonists say is hyperbolic or mistaken, we should listen to their demand to give fair treatment to works by marginalized authors and to great non-Western works. This means re-reviewing works worthy of canonization that may have been obscured by prejudice, but still requiring that they make it on their own merits and not out of sympathy for their authors. The Great Canon Controversy will be of great interest to educators and students alike, as well as those interested in the future of higher education in the United States.

What does it mean to speak of a "canon" of scripture? How, when, and where did the canon of the Hebrew Bible come into existence? Why does it have three divisions? What canon was in use among the Jews of the Hellenistic diaspora? At Qumran? In Roman Palestine? Among the rabbis? What Bible did Jesus and his disciples know and use? How was the New Testament canon formed and closed? What role was played by Marcion? By gnostics? By the church fathers? What did the early church make of the apocrypha and pseudepigrapha? By what criteria have questions of canonicity been decided? Are these past decisions still meaningful faith communities today? Are they open to revision? These and other debated questions are addressed by an international roster of outstanding experts on early Judaism and early Christianity, writing from diverse affiliations and perspectives, who present the history of discussion and offer their own assessments of the current status. Contributors William Adler, Peter Balla, John Barton, Joseph Blenkinsopp, François Bovon, Kent D. Clarke, Philip R. Davies, James D. G. Dunn, Eldon Jay Epp, Craig A. Evans, William R. Farmer, Everett Ferguson, Robert W. Funk, Harry Y. Gamble, Geoffrey M. Hahneman, Daniel J. Harrington, Everett R. Kalin, Robert A. Kraft, Jack P. Lewis, Jack N. Lightstone, Steve Mason, Lee M. McDonald, Pheme Perkins, James A. Sanders, Daryl D. Schmidt, Albert C. Sundberg Jr., Emanuel Tov, Julio Trebolle-Barrera, Eugene Ulrich, James C. VanderKam, Robert W. Wall.

Given the popular-level conversations on phenomena like the Gospel of Thomas and Bart Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus, as well as the current gap in evangelical scholarship on the origins of the New Testament, Michael Kruger’s Canon Revisited meets a significant need for an up-to-date work on canon by addressing recent developments in the field. He presents an academically rigorous yet accessible study of the New Testament canon that looks deeper than the traditional surveys of councils and creeds, mining the text itself for direction in understanding what the original authors and audiences believed the canon to be. Canon Revisited provides an evangelical introduction to the New Testament canon that can be used in seminary and college classrooms, and read by pastors and educated lay leaders alike. In contrast to the prior volumes on canon, this volume distinguishes itself by placing a substantial focus on the theology of canon as the context within which the historical evidence is evaluated and assessed. Rather than simply discussing the history of canon—rehashing the Patristic data yet again—Kruger develops a strong theological framework for affirming and authenticating the canon as authoritative. In effect, this work successfully unites both the theology and the historical development of the canon, ultimately serving as a practical defense for the authority of the New Testament books.

This Thing We Call Literature collects ten essays from the combative, cantankerous cultural critic Arthur Krystal. The essays in this compact volume, mostly coming from The New Yorker, Harper's, and The Chronicle of Higher Education--all share Krystal's conviction that literature and the humanities more broadly are going down the tubes"

The literary critic defends the importance of Western literature from Chaucer and Shakespeare to Kafka and Beckett in this acclaimed national bestseller. NOMINATED FOR THE NATIONAL BOOK CRITICS CIRCLE AWARD Harold Bloom's The Western Canon is more than a required reading list—it is a “heroically brave, formidably learned” defense of the great works of literature that comprise the traditional Western Canon. Infused with a love of learning, compelling in its arguments for a unifying written culture, it argues brilliantly against the politicization of literature and presents a guide to the essential writers of the western literary tradition (The New York Times Book Review). Placing William Shakespeare at the “center of the canon,” Bloom examines the literary contributions of Dante Alighieri, John Milton, Jane Austen, Emily Dickenson, Leo Tolstoy, Sigmund Freud, James Joyce, Pablo Neruda, and many others. Bloom's book, much-discussed and praised in publications as diverse as The Economist and Entertainment Weekly, offers a dazzling display of erudition and passion. “An impressive work…deeply, rightly passionate about the great books of the past.”—Michel Dirda, The Washington Post Book World

Well-known for his scholarly works on the formation of the biblical canon, Lee McDonald has written a carefully researched and reasoned explanation on the history of the formation of the Bible expressly for the interested pastor and curious layman. Combining a lifelong commitment to the Scriptures, both as a pastor and as a scholar, McDonald approaches his task with sensitivity to the importance of these sacred texts as well as with the thoughtful practice of a person steeped in the process by which these texts were brought together to form the Bible as the church knows it now. From the collection (and translations) of the Hebrew Scriptures through the collection of the New Testament Scriptures, and finally the process of settling on the final forms for these collections, McDonald leads his reader right up to the present moment.