by ChrisChris » Wed Apr 06, 2016 4:51 pm
As others have said, for Christians it wouldn't really be a game-changer. There are other vaguely contemporaneous accounts and compelling scholarly testimony to other early documents (Q, etc), but the primary "canonizing" consideration for what constitutes scripture is that it was historically received and incorporated into worship. It might be interesting and shed light on historical events and practices after Christ's life, but since the scriptural texts themselves are understood not as a research endeavor but rather an authoritative record of those writings which were accepted and deemed worthy of preservation by the community. There's no historically-critical way of undercutting that or adding to it.
For me, if there were new documents which added to our understanding, as there have been (like the Dead Sea Scrolls), then that's all well and good, and historically interesting. If there are new documents which contradict the gospel accounts, even the source texts for those later accounts, (for example, a record of the sayings and teachings of Jesus without any references or claims to his divinity, the wet-dream of higher criticism), it wouldn't matter to me, because that text wasn't preserved and didn't enjoy perduring widespread use. As a Catholic, I don't believe in Christianity because the Bible furnishes evidence of events, I believe in the historical Church which defines and is defined by those texts it believes to have divine origin and to teach accurately what must be believed.