The Canon Formation
What is the “Canon”?
The word “Canon” comes from the Greek word: κανών, which means: “any straight rod or bar; rule; or standard”.
So, when speaking of the Canon of Scripture, we are referring to all those books of the Bible which are accepted as God’s Holy Word. It is the rule by which everything is measured.
The Bible is divided into two parts: the Old Testament and the New Testament, for a total of 66 books, 39 Old and 27 New Testament books. It was written over a period of about 1600 years, by 40 different authors, with one consistent theme throughout the entire book, since God Himself inspired the authors on what to write. There is no other book in all the world, like this book.
What is the purpose of this book?
Jesus tells us in John 5:39
“You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me.”
Paul tells us in 2 Timothy 3:16,17
“All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, thoroughly equipped for every good work.”
The Bible explains who created us, who we are accountable to, how we fell into sin, and how God promised a Savior.
It tells us how we are to live our lives and what God demands from us. It shows that we are wicked and are in a constant state of rebellion against God. It makes known to us that sinners are on a road to Hell and eternal suffering as punishment for our sins.
All the Old Testament is a reminder of our sinful condition and points to this promised Messiah, while the New Testament declares Jesus to be this Messiah (or Christ), who has come to save us from our sins.
Therefore, the main purpose of this book is to point us to Christ for our eternal salvation.
How did this book come into existence?
Since the time of Moses, who wrote the 1st five books (known as the Torah), God has inspired His chosen people / prophets to write down His Words and decrees. In all, there are 39 books of the Old Testament.
These are the books that the ancient Jews accepted as their body of Scripture. Each was written near or during the time / events which are described within.
These books were also accepted by Jesus and the Early Church.
We too, accept all of these Old Testament books today.
No more, and no less.
In 332 BC, Alexander the Great conquered Israel, bringing the Greek language to Palestine.
(Thus, making it difficult for
seminarians ever since.)
The Septuagint (LXX) is a Greek translation of the Hebrew Old Testament. According to the Letter of Aristeas, this translation was requested by Ptolemy II, of Egypt, circa 250 BC. It was translated by 70 Jewish scholars who were confined to their quarters separately but were able to produce identical translations. Jesus, the apostles, and the early church quoted from this work extensively, but not from the Apocrypha contained within.
The Apocrypha (means hidden), contains 14 extra books written between the Old and New Testaments (the intertestamental period), that Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox believe should be part of the Old Testament. Sometimes these are referred to as the deuterocanonical books.
These include:
The First Book of Esdras
The Second Book of Esdras
The Book of Tobit
The Book of Judith
Additions to the Book of Esther
The Book of Wisdom
The Book of Sirach
The Book of Baruch
The Epistle of Jeremiah
Additions to the Book of Daniel
The Prayer of Manasses
The Additional Psalm
The First Book of Maccabees
The Second Book of Maccabees
The Third Book of Maccabees
The Fourth Book of Maccabees
We do not accept any of the Apocryphal books as Scripture, because the Jewish people did not accept them as Scripture. The Book of Malachi brought about the 400 years of silence, as he was the last prophet of the Old Testament.
More importantly, Jesus and the Apostles never, not even once, quoted from the Apocrypha but quoted from the Old Testament hundreds of times.
What about the New Testament?
How did that form?
After Jesus' ascension and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, the disciples immediately began to spread Christ’s message all around the world. Some of the New Testament was written as early as the late 40s, less than a couple decades after Jesus’ ascension, while most (if not all) the New Testament was completed by AD 70, as there is no mention of the fall of Jerusalem or the destruction of the Temple in any of their writings, which occurred in AD 70.
When did we first have a list of accepted letters and books?
The Muratorian Canon was the first recorded list of accepted books, going back to AD 150. It included 23 of the 27 New Testament books.
It excluded Hebrews, James, and 1st/2nd Peter, and included the Wisdom of Solomon (an Apocryphal book).
The Apostle John had a disciple named Polycarp, who had a disciple named Irenaeus who became Bishop of Lyon, France in AD 177. He wrote a five-volume work, titled Against Heresies, where he quotes over a 1,000 passages, from 23 of the 27 New Testament books. He did this because of the numerous Gnostic teachings and books that were becoming popular, such as those found in the Nag Hammadi Library.
By AD 240, Origen of Alexandria used all 27 of our New Testament books and no others.
By AD 325, Eusebius of Caesarea (adviser to Emperor Constantine) said that there were 22 books that were “unquestioned by any church”.
By AD 367, Athanasius of Alexandria was using all 27 books that we use today.
Why did it take so long to get a complete list?
The original scrolls were scattered all around the Roman Empire. Not only would it have taken time to make multiple copies of these books, but it would have taken time to transport these books across great distances, that were often difficult to traverse, throughout a region where Christianity was against the law, punishable by death.
It was also expensive and time-consuming to produce such copies. They didn’t have easy access to paper, copy machines or even Gutenberg’s printing press. They painstakingly copied these scrolls by hand, under candlelight, trying to make as accurate copies as they could, without getting caught by the Roman authorities.
Also, a leading Bishop didn’t arise until about 500 years after Jesus. Until this time, there was no one figure, no single Bishop, that had the plan or the authority to dictate what books were going to be “official” and which were not.
Some churches were using these, other churches were using those, while still other churches didn’t even know such and such books even existed.
It wasn’t even necessary to have an “official” Canon until these many heresies started to arise, so they probably weren't even thinking about it.
How did the early church know, or deem, some books worthy, while rejecting others into the Canon?
With the number of false teachings that were spreading across the empire and all the false writings that even had the names of the apostles, there needed to be a way to gather all the books / letters from across the empire so that all Christians would have the same books and teachings. This was a stressful task, as no one wanted to include a book that shouldn't be, nor exclude one that should be in the canon. Criteria needed to be established.
The writing needed to be written from an Apostle or someone working with an Apostle. It needed to be accepted by most of the churches, from the earliest times. It could not disagree in doctrine with any of the known Scriptural books. And it could not contain any errors of any kind. For these reasons, many of the "books" that were floating around were rejected by the Church.
What were the Gnostic writings?
The Gnostics were a group of people, that incorporated some of the teachings of Jesus with their own worldview / philosophies. They wrote their books between the late 2nd century and the 4th century AD.
The Gnostics taught that a person needed “Secret Knowledge” to gain Salvation--not Jesus. They taught that there were two main gods, one good (Jesus) and one evil (the O.T. god) that governed the universe. They taught that all physical matter was evil and anything spiritual was good, therefore, Jesus' body must have been an illusion or a spirit.
There were many reasons to doubt the authenticity of these books. First off, they were written much later than the Books of the Bible, many years after the Apostles and other eyewitnesses had died.
Also, the books had many historical, geographical, and spiritual / moral inaccuracies, proving that they were not inspired by God.
None of these teachings or books were ever accepted by the churches, but instead, were considered heretical.
They were / are considered Pseudepigrapha (false writings).
These heretical teachings became popular again, when in 1945, in Egypt, 52 separate Gnostic treatises (the Gospel of Thomas probably the most famous) were discovered. This is known as the Nag Hammadi Library.
Yes, they are old, making them interesting, but they were written hundreds of years after Jesus. The authors were simply trying to cash in on Jesus' rising popularity.
Dan Brown's novel and Director Ron Howard's movie The DaVinci Code were heavily influenced by the Gnostic teachings. They too were trying to 'cash in' on Jesus' popularity by creating controversy. This movie / book has done considerable damage to the Christian message, as now many people doubt the reliability of the canon formation, thinking that some books were left out of the Bible for unjustified biased reasons.
Do we have any of the original writings
from the Apostles or Prophets?
Unfortunately, we do not. Paper is not something that survives real well through the centuries.
It was for this reason that the ancient Jewish scribes and early church (later the medieval monks) copied the Scriptures.
They did not want to lose these writings to the sands of time.
The Masoretic Text
is the Hebrew Old Testament. It was meticulously copied from ancient manuscripts by the Masoretes who invented vowel signs and punctuation marks for the Hebrew language. To make sure that there were no copying errors, the Masoretes would count every word and letter. This is universally accepted as the Hebrew Bible. Our oldest copy of this comes from circa AD 950 (called the Aleppo Codex). This was the oldest copy of the Old Testament until the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered.
The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered in 1947 by some local Shepherds in Qumran, Israel. Reportedly, some sheep were straying from the herd and made their way into a nearby cave. The shepherd boy threw some rocks into the cave to scare the sheep out but instead he heard some pottery break. He then got his father involved who, not knowing the find that was discovered, tried to sell some of the leather scrolls to a shoemaker, to make a quick buck. The shoemaker immediately recognized what he had and contacted British authorities.
The rest is history.
These scrolls and fragments are about 1,000 years older than the Masoretic text. There are about 972 Biblical manuscripts found at this site. They contain every book from the Old Testament (except Esther). The most complete is the Isaiah Scroll. These caves contain many other non-biblical scrolls as well. Including poetry, some Greek and Jewish histories, Legal texts, Wisdom literature, three Apocryphal scrolls, some Calendrical texts, some biblical commentaries, and even some messianic prophesies. Along with the famous “Copper Scroll” describing an enormous treasure (but no map or location).
Before this discovery, biblical scholars would make the claim that we couldn't trust the reliability of our Bible because the oldest copies are a thousand years after Christ, leaving an enormous amount of time for errors to creep in. Since this discovery, the scrolls have been translated and have been found to be in almost complete agreement with the Masoretic text, showing that errors did not creep into the Scriptures. This was an amazing discovery.
There is even debate among scholars such as, Jose O’ Callaghan, whether or not some of the fragments (specifically 7Q5 and about 9 others) are fragments of the New Testament. If this Greek fragment is not from the Book of Mark...
then the oldest New Testament fragment would be:
John Ryland’s Papyrus (P52)
from John 18.
This fragment is dated around AD 125, and was found in Egypt, in 1920.
The Codex Sinaiticus
is the oldest complete manuscript of the New Testament (and at one point contained the Old Testament as well). It was discovered in 1859, at St Catherine’s Monastery, in the Sinai Peninsula. It is dated to circa AD 350. Thus, the oldest complete manuscript that we have of the New Testament is about 300 years after the time of the Apostles.
There are many more manuscripts than these.
In fact, if we compared the amount of New Testament manuscripts to other ancient literary works, we would have over 24,000 N.T. manuscripts and only 643 manuscripts of Homer’s Illiad, or 7 manuscripts of Plato.
It is absolutely amazing, that over all these thousands of years, all the persecutions, all the many wars, fires, and floods, that we have as many extant copies of this precious Book as we do. It reminds us of what Jesus said in Luke 21:33
“Heaven and earth will pass away, but My words will by no means pass away.”
