Today’s topic is the canon of Scripture. The term “canon”
is derived from the Greek word meaning “rule” or “measuring rod”. Which books
measured up to the standard of being the Word of God? This is an important
question because the foundation of Christianity is based on the authority of
Scripture. So we have to ask, “What is Scripture”?
Some skeptics argue that the Bible is the result of
church head councils gathering together and arbitrarily voting on which books
would or would not be included in the Bible. It is true that church councils
played an important role in publically recognizing the canon of Scripture. But
most often, individual churches or groups of churches had already recognized
the books that are now included in our Bible as “inspired” from their origin (2
Timothy 3:16, Col. 4:16, 1 Thess. 5:27). Very few books were actually disputed
in the first 2-3 centuries, and the issue was largely settled by 303 A.D.
This is an extensive topic, and we are limited in how
much we can deal with in this blog post. I want to encourage you to read a 16-page
document that I put together titled, “How Did We Get the Bible?” You can
download that document here.
For another scholarly look at this topic, we will turn to
F.F. Bruce’s articulation of how the writings of the New Testament came into
being. In The New Testament Documents:
Are They Reliable, F.F. Bruce writes:
The first steps in the formation
of a canon of authoritative Christian books, worthy to stand beside the Old
Testament canon, which was the Bible of our Lord and His apostles, appear to
have been taken about the beginning of the second century, when there is
evidence for the circulation of two collections of Christian writings in the
Church.
At a very early date it appears
that the four Gospels were united in one collection. They must have been
brought together very soon after the writing of the Gospel according to John.
This fourfold collection was known originally as 'The Gospel' in the singular,
not 'The Gospels' in the plural; there was only one Gospel, narrated in four
records, distinguished as 'according to Matthew,' 'according to Mark,' and so
on. About AD 115 Ignatius, bishop of Antioch, refers to 'The Gospel' as an
authoritative writing, and as he knew more than one of the four 'Gospels' it
may well be that by 'The Gospel' he means the fourfold collection which went by
that name.
About AD 170 an Assyrian
Christian named Tatian turned the fourfold Gospel into a continuous narrative
or 'Harmony of the Gospels,' which for long was the favourite if not the
official form of the fourfold Gospel in the Assyrian Church. It was distinct
from the four Gospels in the Old Syriac version. It is not certain whether
Tatian originally composed his Harmony, usually known as the Diatessaron, in Greek
or in Syriac; but as it seems to have been compiled at Rome its original
language was probably Greek, and a fragment of Tatian's Diatessaron in Greek
was discovered in the year 1933 at DuraEuropos on the Euphrates. At any rate,
it was given to the Assyrian Christians in a Syriac form when Tatian returned
home from Rome, and this Syriac Diatessaron remained the 'Authorised Version'
of the Gospels for them until it was replaced by the Peshitta or 'simple'
version in the fifth century.
By the time of Irenaeus, who,
though a native of Asia Minor, was bishop of Lyons in Gaul about AD 180, the
idea of a fourfold Gospel had become so axiomatic in the Church at large that
he can refer to it as an established and recognised fact as obvious as the four
cardinal points of the compass or the four winds:
For as there are four quarters
of the world in which we live, and four universal winds, and as the Church is
dispersed over all the earth, and the gospel is the pillar and base of the
Church and the breath of life, so it is natural that it should have four
pillars, breathing immortality from every quarter and kindling the life of men
anew. Whence it is manifest that the Word, the architect of all things, who
sits upon the cherubim and holds all things together, having been manifested to
men, has given us the gospel in fourfold form, but held together by one Spirit.
When the four Gospels were
gathered together in one volume, it meant the severance of the two parts of
Luke's history. When Luke and Acts were thus separated one or two modifications
were apparently introduced into the text at the end of Luke and the beginning
of Acts. Originally Luke seems to have left all mention of the ascension to his
second treatise; now the words 'and was carried up into heaven' were added in
Luke xxiv. 51, to round off the narrative, and in consequence 'was taken up'
was added in Acts i. 2. Thus the inconsistencies which some have detected
between the accounts of the ascension in Luke and Acts are most likely due to
these adjustments made when the two books were separated from each other.
Acts, however, naturally shared
the authority and prestige of the third Gospel, being the work of the same
author, and was apparently received as canonical by all except Marcion and his
followers. Indeed, Acts occupied a very important place in the New Testament
canon, being the pivotal book of the New Testament, as Harnack called it, since
it links the Gospels with the Epistles, and, by its record of the conversion,
call, and missionary service of Paul, showed clearly how real an apostolic
authority lay behind the Pauline Epistles.
The corpus Paulinum, or
collection of Paul's writings, was brought together about the same time as the
collecting of the fourfold Gospel. As the Gospel collection was designated by
the Greek word Euangelion, so the Pauline collection was designated by the one
word Apostolos, each letter being distinguished as 'To the Romans,' 'First to
the Corinthians,' and so on. Before long, the anonymous Epistle to the Hebrews
was bound up with the Pauline writings. Acts, as a matter of convenience, came
to be bound up with the 'General Epistles' (those of Peter, James, John and
Jude).
The only books about which there
was any substantial doubt after the middle of the second century were some of
those which come at the end of our New Testament. Origen (185-254) mentions the
four Gospels, the Acts, the thirteen Paulines, 1 Peter, 1 John and Revelation
as acknowledged by all; he says that Hebrews, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, James and
Jude, with the 'Epistle of Barnabas,' the Shepherd of Hermas, the Didache, and
the 'Gospel according to the Hebrews,' were disputed by some. Eusebius (c.
265-340) mentions as generally acknowledged all the books of our New Testament
except James, Jude, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, which were disputed by some, but
recognised by the majority. Athanasius in 367 lays down the twenty-seven books
of our New Testament as alone canonical; shortly afterwards Jerome and
Augustine followed his example in the West. The process farther east took a
little longer; it was not until c. 508 that 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Jude and
Revelation were included in a version of the Syriac Bible in addition to the
other twenty two books.
For various reasons it was
necessary for the Church to know exactly what books were divinely
authoritative. The Gospels, recording 'all that Jesus began both to do and to
teach,' could not be regarded as one whit lower in authority than the Old
Testament books. And the teaching of the apostles in the Acts and Epistles was
regarded as vested with His authority. It was natural, then, to accord to the
apostolic writings of the new covenant the same degree of homage as was already
paid to the prophetic writings of the old. Thus Justin Martyr, about AD 150,
classes the 'Memoirs of the Apostles' along with the writings of the prophets,
saving that both were read in meetings of Christians (Apol i. 67). For the
Church did not, in spite of the breach with Judaism, repudiate the authority of
the Old Testament; but, following the example of Christ and His apostles,
received it as the Word of God. Indeed, so much did they make the Septuagint
their own that, although it was originally a translation of the Hebrew
Scriptures into Greek for Greek-speaking Jews before the time of Christ, the
Jews left the Septuagint to the Christians, and a fresh Greek version of the
Old Testament was made for Greek speaking Jews.
It was specially important to
determine which books might be used for the establishment of Christian
doctrine, and which might most confidently be appealed to in disputes with
heretics. In particular, when Marcion drew up his canon about AD 140, it was
necessary for the orthodox churches to know exactly what the true canon was,
and this helped to speed up a process which had already begun. It is wrong,
however, to talk or write as if the Church first began to draw up a canon after
Marcion had published his.
Other circumstances which
demanded clear definition of those books which possessed divine authority were
the necessity of deciding which books should be read in church services (though
certain books might be suitable for this purpose which could not be used to
settle doctrinal questions), and the necessity of knowing which books might and
might not be handed over on demand to the imperial police in times of
persecution without incurring the guilt of sacrilege.
One thing must be emphatically
stated. The New Testament books did not become authoritative for the Church
because they were formally included in a canonical list; on the contrary, the
Church included them in her canon because she already regarded them as divinely
inspired, recognising their innate worth and general apostolic authority,
direct or indirect. The first ecclesiastical councils to classify the canonical
books were both held in North Africa — at Hippo Regius in 393 and at Carthage
in 397 — but what these councils did was not to impose something new upon the
Christian communities but to codify what was already the general practice of
those communities.
There are many theological
questions arising out of the history of the canon which we cannot go into here;
but for a practical demonstration that the Church made the right choice one
need only compare the books of our New Testament with the various early
documents collected by M. R. James in his Apocryphal New Testament (1924), or
even with the writings of the Apostolic Fathers, to realise the superiority of
our New Testament books to these others.
A word may be added about the
'Gospel according to the Hebrews' which, as was mentioned above, Origen listed
as one of the books which in his day were disputed by some. This work, which
circulated in Transjordan and Egypt among the Jewish Christian groups called
Ebionites, bore some affinity to the canonical Gospel of Matthew. Perhaps it
was an independent expansion of an Aramaic document related to our canonical
Matthew. It was known to some of the early Christian Fathers in a Greek
version.
Jerome (347-420) identified this
'Gospel according to the Hebrews' with one which he found in Syria, called the
Gospel of the Nazarene, and which he mistakenly thought at first was the Hebrew
(or Aramaic) original of Matthew. It is possible that he was also mistaken in
identifying it with the gospel according to the Hebrews; the Nazarene Gospel
found by Jerome (and translated by him into Greek and Latin) may simply have
been an Aramaic translation of the canonical Greek Matthew. In any case, the
Gospel according to the Hebrews and the Gospel of the Nazarenes both had some
relation to Matthew, and they are to be distinguished from the multitude of
apocryphal Gospels which were also current in those days, and which have no
bearing on our present historical study. These, like several books of
apocryphal 'Acts,' and similar writings, are almost entirely pure romances. One
of the books of apocryphal Acts, however, the 'Acts of Paul,' while admittedly
a romance of the second century, is interesting because of a pen-portrait of
Paul which it contains, and which, because of its vigorous and unconventional
character, was thought by Sir William Ramsay to embody a tradition of the
apostle's appearance preserved in Asia Minor. Paul is described as 'a man small
in size, with meeting eyebrows, with a rather large nose, bald-headed,
bowlegged, strongly built, full of grace, for at times he looked like a man,
and at times he had the face of an angel'.
Pastor Jeff Frazier
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