This book is a collection of lectures at the 35th Annual Brigham Young University Sidney B. Sperry Symposium held in 2006. The Sperry Symposium, named in honor of pioneer Latter-day Saint scripture scholar Sidney B. Sperry is held annually on the BYU campus and seeks each year to examine an aspect of the religious scriptural heritage of the LDS Church.

I really enjoyed this book because it goes into depth about where the New Testament came from and how it was developed. The book touches on topics such as authorship of all the books found in the New Testament and why or why not certain texts were included in the New Testament.

This book will really intrique you if you enjoy studying formation of the New Testament and enjoy learning about ancient manuscripts and the theories that belong to them. The book also ties in how modern day revelation ties into the New Testament.

My favorite part was learning about the thousands of manuscripts and parchments that exist but aren’t found in the Bible. It makes me wonder just how many things have been written that we don’t have access to. I also learned that there were hundreds of epistles and stories about Christ that weren’t included in the New Testament because the person who was compiling the record didn’t want them to be in there, whether they were true or not.

It’s also interesting to think about the true authorship of the epistles. The book argues that many of the books in the New Testament were written by people other than the stated author. In the case of Matthew, Mark and Luke, it’s possible that common people actually wrote/transcribed what the Apostles were saying. Which isn’t all that odd considering that is how The Book of Mormon came about.

In short, if you like reading about ancient manuscripts and love reading textbook-like books, this book is for you.