Elaine Pagels follows a similar path as Koester and lays the origins of the canon at the feet of Irenaeus.[21] Regardless of the specific raison d’être given to the canon, a dominant position in critical scholarship today is that the idea of canon is not a natural and original part of the early Christian faith. Now, it should be noted from the outset that there is much that is correct in the extrinsic model. Indeed, these scholars are correct to observe that a New Testament was not an instantaneous