Walter Bauer's book, Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity, is in many ways the basis for a common misperception about the New Testament canon, that there was very little agreement over the books that made it into the canon until the fourth or fifth century. This article evaluates that claim, showing that there is substantial evidence for widespread agreement over the core canonical books from an early time.

This article is a critical confrontation with Walter Bauer’s book Orthodoxy and Heresy in Earliest Christianity. The author focuses in particular on what Bauer says about Christianity in Western Asia Minor.