As Humphrey Palmer has rather trenchantly remarked, whether or not the early church was adept at thinking up stories about Jesus to fit church settings, the form critics have certainly been adept at thinking up church settings to fit the stories about Jesus.

— D. A. Carson, 'Redaction Criticism: on the legitimacy and illegitimacy of a literary tool', in Scripture & Truth (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1992), 125, referring to Humphrey Palmer, The Logic of Gospel Criticism (New York: St. Martin's, 1968), 193....

Tertullian's sophisitic brilliance and literary versatility, ruthless vigor as disputant and polemicist, fecundity in uttering memorable dicta, and fervent religious immediacy make him a captivating writer as well as a priceless mirror of early African Christianity.

— from the Dictionary of the Christian Church (kinda reminds me of the ironic question - why is the word "abbreviation" so long? :-)

A classic is something that everyone wants to have read and nobody wants to read.-- Mark Twain, "The Disappearance of Literature"

The holy passion of Friendship is of so sweet and steady and loyal and enduring a nature that it will last through a whole lifetime, if not asked to lend money.-- Mark Twain, "Pudd'nhead Wilson's Calendar" (seen in the Linux 'fortune' command)

"[New Testament] scholarship is sometimes overimpressed with its own judgments about what Paul could, or (especially) could not have said or done."  "One can be sure, for example, that if we did not have 1 Corinthians, one of the "assured results" of NT scholarship would be that Paul and his churches new nothing of the Eucharist.  Indeed, but for the abuses in the church in Corinth, one can only imagine what other assured results based on silence there might be." -- Gordon D. Fee, 1 and 2 Timothy, Titus, a Good News Commentary, ed. W....