How We Got the New
Testament Canon
Notes about the NT
Canon:
Canon: from the ancient
Greek word kanon, meaning a rod, esp. a straight rod used as
a rule; a rule or standard; a series or list, as in the canon of
the New Testament. The list of Christian texts which are acknowledged to be, in
a unique sense, the rule of belief and practice of the Church. (Bruce, pp.
17-18)
The Criteria of
Canonicity used by the Early Church Fathers:
The early church didn't pick
gospels at random (eenie, meenie, minie, moe, pick a gospel by the toe), nor
based upon which ones they liked better than others. They actually had criteria
they used. Now this criteria isn't explicitly stated in any one text however it
is apparent from a careful reading of the earliest fathers that to be
considered canonical
1. A text had to have
been written by an apostle (for example Matthew or John) or the disciple of an
apostle (for example Mark or Luke)
2. A text had to date
from the first century AD
3. A text had to be
widely read and recognized throughout the whole church.
4. A text had to teach
the faith the church had always proclaimed orally.
As the Muratorian Canon
Fragment of ca. 175-200 AD demonstrates, just because a text was wildly popular
didn't mean it would make the cut. The Shepherd of Hermas was
a hugely popular Christian text that, as the Muratorian Fragment says, was
rejected because it didn't meet two of the criteria of canonicity:
"But Hermas wrote
the Shepherd very
recently, in our times, in the city of Rome, while bishop Pius, his
brother, was occupying the [episcopal] chair of the church of
the city of Rome. And therefore it ought indeed to be read; but it cannot
be read publicly to the people in church either among the Prophets, whose
number is complete, or among the Apostles, for it is after [their] time."
So if, as many skeptics
claim, the early church simply chose the gospels and letters it liked or agreed
with for inclusion in the canon, and tossed out those it didn't, Hermas and
other popular texts would've been included in the canon. But they weren't.
Paul’s Letters:
Many people aren't aware
that the majority of Paul’s letters were written before the
first gospel. Indeed Paul is our first written witness
to Jesus Christ. I Corinthians 15:3-7 is an early Christian creedal statement that all scholars, whether Christian, Jewish,
agnostic or atheist, consider authentic:
For I handed on to you
as first importance what I in turn had received: that Christ died for our sins
according to the scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he was raised on
the third day, in accordance with the scriptures, and that he appeared to
Cephas, then to the twelve. Then he appeared to more than five hundred brothers
and sisters at one time, most of whom are still alive, though some have died. (NRSV)
Drs. Gary Habermas and
Mike Licona comment:
How is this creed dated?
Jesus’ crucifixion has been dated at A. D. 30 by most scholars, who also date
Paul’s conversion to between 31 and 33. Paul went away for three years
after his conversion, afterwards visiting Peter and James in Jerusalem (Gal.
1:18-19). Many scholars believe Paul received the creed from Peter and James at
this time. . . . Accordingly, even if Paul was not given the creed at this
time, he learned information from two of the most prominent disciples who had
known Jesus. (Habermas and Licona, p.
260, n. 25)
Prof. Timothy Paul Jones
says:
So how can scholars know
that these words actually came from early oral history? In the first place,
Paul introduced this summation with two Greek words that clearly indicated it
was oral tradition. These two words were paradidomi (“handed over” . . .)
and paralambano (“received”). Ancient readers understood these
two words—when used together—to imply that the writer was quoting words that he
or she intended to become oral tradition. In this way, Paul clearly indicated
that he was about to pass on oral tradition.
There are also clues in
the text that suggest where and when the
tradition began. Even though Paul was writing in the Greek language to Greek
people, he calls Simon Peter by his Aramaic name, Cephas .
Then, there’s the repeated phrase “and that”—a repetition that seems odd unless
you’re familiar with Hebrew or Aramaic. The phrase rendered “and that” is the
Greek translation of a familiar Hebrew and Aramaic method for joining clauses.
Based on the vocabulary and grammatical patterns in these verses, it seems that
this tradition originally circulated in the Aramaic language. . . .
Most likely, Paul
learned this tradition around AD 35 when he visited the city of
Jerusalem. (Jones, pp. 91-92)
There is good evidence
that by the end of the first century AD, collections of Paul’s letters were in
circulation. Certainly by the beginning of the 3rd century, a
corpus of 13 Pauline letters existed and was considered canonical. (Patzia, p.
88)
II Peter 3:16 says:
So also our beloved
brother Paul wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, speaking of this
as he does in all his letters. There are some things in them hard to
understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as
they do the other scriptures.
(NRSV)
Concerning this text
from II Peter Drs. Andreas J. Kostenberger and Michael J. Kruger, write:
Most notably, this
passage does not refer to just one letter of Paul, but to a collection of Paul’s letters (how many
is unclear) that had already begun to circulate throughout the churches—so much
so that Peter could refer to “all his [Paul’s] letters” and expect that his
audience would understand that to which he was referring. . . . Peter’s
reference to the letters of Paul as “Scripture” is made quite casually, as if
he expected his readers would have already known about Paul’s writings and
would agree that they are Scripture . . . Peter does not give any
idea that Paul would have objected to the idea that his letters would be
considered “Scripture.” Moreover, Peter himself does not seem to think it is
odd that a letter from an apostle would be considered authoritative Scripture
by the communities that received it. . . . (Kostenberger and
Kruger The Heresy of Orthodoxy, pp. 127-128)
Even if, as some
scholars believe, II Peter is an anonymous text dating to ca. 100-125 AD, it
is still evidence for the fact that certain letters of Paul were regarded as
canonical at a very early date.
By 90-100 AD, Christian
texts like the Didache (The Teaching of the Twelve Apostles)
and I Clement were quoting from several of Paul’s letters as
if they were sacred Scripture.
Dates of Composition of
the Pauline Letters:
Text
Date
Galatians
ca. 49-56 AD
I
Thessalonians ca. 50 AD
II Thessalonians ca. 52
AD
I Corinthians ca. 55 AD
II Corinthians ca. 57 AD
Romans ca.
58 AD
Colossians
ca. 61 AD
Ephesians
ca. 61 AD
Philippians ca. 61 AD
Philemon ca.
62 AD
I and II Timothy and
Titus, between ca. 64 and ca. 67 AD
Dates of Composition of
the NT Gospels:
Text
Date:
Mark ca.
65-70
AD
Matthew ca.
65-75
Luke-Acts (orig.
written as one narrative) ca. 65-70 (Most
Likely Acts dates to
before Paul’s death under Nero
ca. 67 AD.
John, ca. mid 60s
AD/90s
AD
Dates of Composition of
the Other NT Letters
Text
Date:
James ca. 52 AD
Hebrews ca.
65 AD
Apocalypse (Revelation)
ca. 67-69 AD/ mid-90s AD
Jude
ca. 65-70 AD
I, II and III John
ca. 90s AD
I and II
Peter ca. 60s AD/ ca. 100-125 AD
Note: The preceding are the generally accepted dates. Some scholars
(such as N. T. Wright and the late J. A. T. Robinson) believe all of the NT may
have been written before the fall of Jerusalem in AD 69. I
incline towards this view.
Dates of Composition of
Some of the Apocryphal and Gnostic “Gospels” and Why They Were Rejected from
the Canon:
Didache: Ca. 90-100 AD: Though
perfectly orthodox and in agreement with the NT, it couldn’t be connected to an
apostle.
Epistle of Barnabas: Ca. 90-100 AD: Though
popular, rejected because it contains a false prophecy and was anti-Jewish in
tone.
Shepherd of
Hermas: Ca. 150 AD: Though
popular, not a 1st century text written by an apostle, but
a mid-2nd century text written by Hermas, brother of Pius, Bishop of Rome.
Diatesseron: Ca. 173 AD: A late 2nd century
Syrian harmony of the NT Gospels by Tatian, a student of Justin
Martyr.
Gospel of the
Hebrews: 1st century
AD?: Lost by the 2nd century AD. The possible Hebrew original
of Matthew.
Gospel of Peter: 2nd century AD: Not actually
written by Peter and has a docetic flavor (the physical reality of
Jesus is downplayed.)
Gospel of Judas: Ca. 140-160 AD: A dualistic
(two gods), Sethian Gnostic, anti Jewish, anti- creation text in which
Jesus dies but isn’t resurrected. His death is to show an enlightened few
(mostly male) "spiritual people" how to escape the
material world and discover their inner divine spark.
Gospel of Thomas: Ca. 175-200 AD: A
proto-Gnostic, dualist, anti-creation, anti-Jewish, anti-feminine (see
saying 114) text which was heavily dependent upon
the NT gospels, esp. Tatian’s late 2nd c. Syrian
gospel harmony the Diatesseron. Thomas teaches initiates
to realize their divinity and escape the constraints of
the space-time universe.
Infancy Gospel of
Thomas: Ca. 150 AD: Not a
1st century AD text, and presents many fantastic
non-biblical legends about the infant and boy Jesus. Unlike the
NT gospels, this text shows no knowledge of 1st century, 2nd
Temple Palestinian Judaism.
The Council of Nicaea
and the Canon:
Skeptics and popular
authors often assert that the NT canon was decided in 325 AD at the First
Council of Nicaea (the second was in 787 AD) however Nicaea had nothing
to do with the formation of the canon—that was for all practical purposes
already decided long before 325 AD. Nicaea dealt with deciding the
date to celebrate Christ’s resurrection, routine matters of clerical
discipline, and, most importantly, dealt with the heresy of the presbyter Arius
who denied Jesus’ full divinity and coexistence with/as God. The Nicene Creed
was an outgrowth of this council.
Who Really Wrote the
Gospels?
While it is true that
the canonical gospels do not identify their authors, we have extremely early, 2nd century
attestation for their traditional authorship. For example, the 2nd century
Church father Papias of Hierapolis (ca. 60-140 AD), a disciple of the apostle
John wrote:
The Presbyter [John] used to say this also: Mark,
having become Peter’s interpreter wrote down accurately, but not in order, all
that he remembered of the things said and done by the Lord. For he had not
heard the Lord or been one of his followers, but later, as I said, a follower of
Peter. Peter used to teach as the occasion demanded, without giving systematic
arrangement to the Lord’s sayings, so that Mark did not err in writing down
some things just as he recalled them. For he had one overriding purpose: to
omit nothing that he had heard and to make no false statements in his
account. (Eusebius, Bk 3.39, Maier trans. pp. 129-130)
Polycarp of Smyrna
(ca. 65-ca. 160 AD) wrote in 130 AD:
Matthew composed his
Gospel among the Hebrews in their language [Hebrew], while Peter and Paul were preaching
the Gospel in Rome and building up the church there. After their deaths,
Mark-Peter’s follower, and interpreter—handed down to us Peter’s proclamation
in written form. Luke, the companion of Paul, wrote in a book the Gospel proclaimed
by Paul. Finally, John—the Lord’s own follower, the one who leaned against his
very chest—composed the Gospel while living in Asia.
Both Papias and
Polycarp were only one generation removed from the apostles. Besides, no other
authors were ever put forward in the early church for the gospels—not even by
early 2nd century heretics like Marcion, Basilides or
Valentinus. Everyone took for granted that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John wrote
them. Besides which, ancient scrolls often had tags attached, which gave the
author’s name. Over time, assuming they had them, these tags could’ve been lost
from the NT gospels. (Jones, p. 98). Had the authorship of the gospels really been
anonymous, according to Prof. Timothy Paul Jones:
Most likely, each church
would’ve connected a different author with each Gospel. Churches in Asia Minor
might have ascribed a Gospel to the Apostle Andrew, for example, while churches
in Judea might have connected the same Gospel with Thaddeus or James or
Jude.
But what would be the
likelihood that every group of Christians in the Roman Empire would come up
with Mark’s name to describe the shortest Gospel or that everyone would name
Matthew as the author of the Gospel that begins with a genealogy? And what’s
the probability of every church in the Roman Empire choosing Luke as the writer
of the Gospel that bears his name or selecting John’s name for the last of the
New Testament Gospels? In mathematical terms, the answer would be pretty close
to zero. In practical terms, the answer is, it ain’t gonna happen, baby. (Jones, pp. 101-102)
Early Quotations from
the NT:
By ca. 90-100 AD, early
Christian writers like the author of I Clement were quoting from the canonical
NT as authoritative. For example, Clement quotes or alludes to: Titus,
I Peter, Hebrews, Romans, I Cor., James, Matthew, and Luke.
In 110 AD, the martyr
bishop Ignatius of Antioch quotes or alludes to: John, James, Acts,
Galatians, I and II Timothy, II Thessalonians, Philippians, Matthew, Romans,
Ephesians, Luke, I and II Cor., and possibly Revelation.
Canonical Books Accepted
in the Roman Church by ca. 175-200 AD, from the Muratorian Canon
Fragment: The Muratorian canon fragment (called a fragment because its
first portion is missing) is a list of books accepted as canonical around
170/175-200 AD by the Roman Church. It was discovered in the 1700s by an
Italian priest named Muratori (hence its designation Muratorian Canon
Fragment). As can be seen, by ca. 175 nearly every book in our NT was already
considered canonical, and those that weren’t eventually were.
Luke, John, Acts, I and
II Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, I and II
Thessalonians, Romans, Philemon, Titus, I and II Timothy, Jude, I and II John,
Apocalypse (Revelation of
John), Apocalypse of Peter (apocryphal, later rejected), Wisdom
of Solomon (apocryphal, later rejected).
Matthew and Mark aren’t
mentioned because the first part of the document where they were listed is torn
hence the document begins with Luke. Hebrews and James aren’t mentioned.
Even heretics like
Marcion of Sinope (ca. 100-ca. 160 AD) recognized only the canonical NT.
Marcion, a wealthy
ship-owner, was born at Sinope, a seaport on the Black Sea of Asia Minor and
was brought up in the apostolic faith. As an adult Marcion developed
proto-Gnostic ideas, including a belief that the Gospel message and the New
Testament were too Jewish, hence he withdrew from the Church and started his
own sect. Marcion “re-worked” the New Testament, basically by dropping any Old
Testament or Jewish references, and rejected all of the canonical New Testament
writings save Luke’s gospel and the letters of Paul, again, edited to remove
any doctrine or theology he thought was Jewish. Had there been any serious
contenders for alternate gospels circulating in his day, like the Gospel
of Thomas, Marcion would have used them, rather than mutilate the accepted
New Testament texts.
In the early centuries
of the Church (up to the 4th c. AD), only seven texts
now in our New Testament were ever disputed-they were: Philemon,
Hebrews, James, II Peter, II John, III John, Jude.
All seven eventually
gained canonical status—but even had they remained in dispute, we would lose no
distinctive NT teaching about Christ or Christianity that isn’t contained in
the other undisputed books.
The So-Called
“Corruption of Scripture” by Christian Copyists:
As even the popular
agnostic NT textual critic Bart Ehrman admits, 99% of the textual errors in the
NT are innocent, accidental scribal errors, such as copying the same word or
sentence twice, accidentally leaving out a word or sentence, misspelling a
word, misreading a word in the original, etc. He admits that we are able
to “reconstruct the oldest form of the words of the New Testament with
reasonable (though not 100 percent) accuracy,” recovering “the oldest and earliest stage
of the manuscript tradition for each of the books of the New Testament.” (Ehrman, The
Orthodox Corruption of Scripture, p. 62) And of the
remaining handful of genuine textual variants, none of them
ultimately changes any essential teaching in the NT (despite Ehrman's
insistence that these remaining variants are indeed serious). (Jones, p. 77).
The Truth about Oral
History:
Some of Jesus’ teaching
in the canonical gospels may have been written during his lifetime (at least
one of his disciples, Levi/Matthew, as a tax collector, was literate, though
some of the others likely were as well). The rest circulated as oral
history. Skeptics often claim that oral history is unreliable, and
cite the modern game “telephone,” where one person whispers a phrase to another
person, who whispers it to another, and so on, and by the end of the game the
original message gets terribly garbled, as proof.
However the telephone
analogy is a bad example because what critics fail to realize is that the
ancient cultures that produced the NT were oral societies, in which
perhaps only 15-20% of the people could read. Hence the ancients put more stock
in oral tradition than in written material. To ensure that the material was
passed on accurately, there were safeguards in place. For one thing, it was
a community endeavor, in which the community would correct
the tradent (story-teller) if he got something wrong, thus, as
Prof. Mark Strauss says, oral tradition was self-correcting all the way.
Studies have been done over the past 30 years which demonstrate the ability of
so-called “primitive” oral societies of accurately passing down oral history
through several generations. Tradents were free to organize the material to
meet the needs of the occasion, and certain peripheral details might vary, however
they were not free to drop/add anything important. (Eddy and
Boyd) As Dr. J. P. Moreland says, this was sacred tradition, not simply what
Joe was having for dinner Wednesday night.
The Superiority of the
NT over any Other Ancient Texts:
There are presently
about 5,500 ancient manuscript copies and manuscript fragments
in existence today of the New Testament in Greek alone. In
addition, we also have over 19,000 ancient manuscript copies
of the New Testament in Syriac, Latin, Coptic, and Aramaic. So that the
total number of ancient manuscript copies of the New Testament is something
like 24,000. Compared to other ancient writings you thus discover that
the NT manuscripts far outweigh any of the others in both quality and quantity.
There are literally thousands more ancient New Testament
manuscripts than any other ancient texts. The internal
consistency of the New Testament texts is about 99.5% accurate and textually
pure. No other ancient texts even come close! (Slick)
Our earliest copies of
many ancient Greek and Roman texts date to several centuries after they
were originally written. For example, our oldest manuscript copy of
Plato, originally written between 427-347 BC, date to 900 AD—1200 years
later and there are only seven of them! Our earliest copies of
Aristotle, originally written between 384-322 BC, date to 1100 AD—1400
years later and we only have forty-nine copies of them. And our
earliest copies of the writings of Julius Caesar, originally written between
100-44 BC, date only to 900 AD—1000 years later and we only have ten
copies! But we have over five thousand ancient
manuscript copies of the New Testament, a few gospel fragments which
date to about 120 AD, a mere twenty years after the last gospel, John’s, was
written! And our earliest complete New Testaments, Codices Sinaiticus and
Vaticanus, date to approximately 350 AD, a mere two hundred-fifty years after
the New Testament was written!
Sources:
F. F. Bruce, The
Canon of Scripture
Paul Rhodes Eddy and
Gregory A. Boyd, The Jesus Legend: A Case for the Historical
Reliability of the Synoptic Jesus Tradition
Bart D. Ehrman, Did
Jesus Exist? The Historical Argument for Jesus of Nazareth
Bart D. Ehrman, Jesus
Interrupted: Revealing the Hidden Contradictions in the Bible (and Why We Don’t
Know About Them)
Eusebius of
Caesarea, The Church History, trans. and ed. by Paul L. Maier
Craig A. Evans, Fabricating
Jesus: How Modern Scholars Distort the Gospels
James Garlow, The
Da Vinci Codebreaker
Gary R. Habermas and
Matthew Licona, The Case for the Resurrection of Jesus
Rudolph Kasser, Marvin
Meyer and Gregor Wurst, The Gospel of Judas
Andreas J. Kostenberger
and Michael J. Kruger, The Heresy of Orthodoxy: How Contemporary Culture’s
Fascination with Diversity has Reshaped Our Understanding of Early Christianity
Timothy Paul
Jones, Misquoting Scripture: A Guide to the Fallacies of Bart
Ehrman’s Misquoting Jesus
Arthur G. Patzia, The
Making of the New Testament: Origin, Collection, Text and Canon at:
Nicholas Perrin, Thomas,
the Other Gospel
William G. Rusch, The
Trinitarian Controversy
N. T. Wright, Judas
and the Gospel of Jesus: Have We Missed the Truth About Christianity?
Matt Slick, “Manuscript
Evidence for Superior New Testament Reliability” at: http://carmi.org/manuscript-evidence
“Dating the New Testament:
Writings of the Early Fathers,” at: http://www.datingthenewtestament.com/Fathers.htm
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