How We Got Our Bible

The New Testament Canon

CONTENTS
(click on title to go to subject)

Introduction
The Mind of God
The Mind of Man
The "Official" Canon


INTRODUCTION

The story of the New Testament was gradual. It wasn't one event and suddenly we have the New Testament. It was piecemeal, spread throughout the whole Roman Empire.

Initially, there was no coherent unity. Someone might have the Gospel of Matthew, but not the Letters of Paul. Others might have the Letters of Paul, but none of the gospels. It was only over time that people became more and more aware of other texts. Little by little they slowly gathered together the different texts. Its like today how videos go viral.

The exact dates when the books of the New Testament were written is largely unknown. They were most likely written between 50 and 125 AD. In 185 AD, Irenaus wrote that the book of Revelation was written almost in his days, toward the end of Domatian’s reign (81-96 AD). As far as scholars can tell about the Gospels, their best guess is as follows: Mark, 70 AD; Matthew, 80 AD; Luke, 85-90 AD; John, 95-100 AD.

Regardless when they were written, scrolls of the Gospels were circulating during the 1st century. These scrolls were called biblos or biblion in Greek. Specifically, biblos refers to the inner part of the papyrus plant that scrolls were written on. While papyrus largely came from Egypt, it got its name from the Phoenician city through which it was exported to the rest of the world—Byblos.

By 100 AD, codices (s. codex) became the preferred way of presenting the Gospels. These were multiple papyrus—or later, parchment—that were connected together and stitched on one side, resembling a book. The Ryland Papyrus P52, the earliest and most famous Greek New Testament manuscript was dated 100-150 AD and came from a codex. By the mid 100s AD, the four Gospels were being bound together in codices and utilized exclusively in churches.

Around 200 AD, Tertullian wrote that churches in Corinth, Philipi, Thessolonika, Ephesus, and Rome still had original writings that were by then 150 years old.

Before going into the evolution of how we got the New Testament versions, it's important to understand the intricacies of the New Testament canon, how it came about, and some of the myths surrounding it.

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THE MIND OF GOD

Most people begin there understanding of how we got the New Testament canon with when certain books were beginning to be accepted. That's a grave mistake. The canon of the New Testament began with and ends with God.

Just like the Old Testament, the question is not: is there a New Testament canon? The canon comes from God, not from man. If there is a book sitting in a corner somewhere that we don't know about and that God has deemed to be part of the canon, it's in the canon. The real question is, do we have it right—do we have the right books in our Bible? A good stating point is prophesy. Prophesy proves the canon.

The New Testament did not begin when man decided which books it liked … which books belonged. It was the apostles themselves, whom had been sent out by Christ, that established the rule of what Christianity was and what it wasn't. They were given the authority by God.

That you may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and of the commandment of us, the apostles of the Lord and Savior. (2 Peter 3:2 NKJV)

Peter was grouping the commandments of the apostles with the prophets of the Old Testament. This left zero doubt that the apostles spoke with authority as they declared to us the message of God. In other words, Apostolic teaching was the word of God (the canon ) that had been delivered one time for all—and one time only. There was no more scripture to be written.

And then Paul drives a nail in it.

As we have said before, so now I say again, if anyone preaches any other gospel to you than what you have received, let him be accursed. (Galatians 1:9 NKJV)

It's the singular message from God, delivered at a specific time that takes precedence. That message ends up having more authority than the messengers once it has been delivered—it is a living thing. As such, it's God who who preserves it.

In the mind of God, the New Testament canon was official the moment it was written. What the early church would struggle with was knowing the mind of God. Man did not make anything canon, they only tried to discover the canon that already existed. The question had always been not when it's official scripture, but when its functioning as scripture.

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THE MIND OF MAN

Sometimes when the New Testament scholarship discusses the matter of canon formation, the story implied is that there are some smoke filled rooms somewhere in the 2nd century and a bunch of these cigar smoking Christian big shots got together and they decided who was going in and who was going out and then... it was a wrap, they closed up and then everything else was on the cutting room floor. … I think precisely the contrary is closer to a more responsible historical reconstruction — Allan D. Callahan, Associate Professor of New Testament, Harvard Divinity School.

Humans are funny creatures. We love to argue. And what most of the theologians of the time argued over in relation to the New Testament canon was not trying to discover the mind of God, but what books people had a personal interest in. It always comes back to what people want, rather than what God wants.

For example, from the very beginning, there were those who questioned certain books written by an associate of an apostle, rather than the apostle themselves. For example, Mark and Luke were not apostles. However, an associate doesn't make it unacceptable, it's still Apostle-ish.

What was written always comes back to an apostle. Just because Mark wasn't an eye-witness doesn't make the book he wrote unacceptable. Mark knew Peter and traveled with Peter. It comes back to Peter the Apostle's teaching. Mark was written based on the testimony of Peter, not the testimony of Mark.

Then there's Hebrews. There was great debate about who wrote it. Did Paul write it, or did someone else? The majority of the early church writers did, in fact, think it was Paul, but it doesn't really matter. Thats because in chapter 2, it refers to its contents as coming from the Lord and spoken to the apostles.

How shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation, which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed to us by those who heard Him. (Hebrews 2:3 NKJV).

Thus, Hebrews was seen by the early church as being apostolic, regardless who wrote it.

Many of the early church leaders wrote constantly of the validity of the books of the Bible they had, without anyone writing denials. They are constantly quoting New Testament material. While quoting doesn't make it scripture, there is validity to the amount of times its quoted—almost 50 times more than the Old Testament. And yet, the Apocrypha books were hardly quoted at all.

In reality, there was a consensus of sorts among people in the early Christian movement as to what constituted reliable literature. The question that was always on their minds was what did they want to read or want to hear over and over again. Conversely, they were concerned about the other kinds of literature that they didn't want to read or hear.

For example, there were other gospels written, such as the gospel of Peter and the gospel of Thomas. The reason these gospels were rebuffed related to the what was perceived as the original function of a gospel, which was the narrative of Jesus' suffering and death. The passion narrative was central to the redemption of mankind—the cross as the only means of salvation.

So, only the gospels that had an acceptable passion narrative were read and studied. It's the reason why people stopped reading the Gospel of Thomas. It had no passion narrative, rather contained primarily sayings of Jesus. The gospel of Peter, while containing a passion narrative, had heretical elements in it (Jesus's human form was an illusion).

Besides, the number four just seemed to fit.

The heretics boast that they have many more gospels than there really are. But really they don't have any gospels that aren't full of blasphemy. There actually are only four authentic gospels. And this is obviously true because there are four corners of the universe and there are four principal winds, and therefore there can be only four gospels that are authentic. These, besides, are written by Jesus' true followers.—Irenaeus, Bishop of Lyon, 170 AD.

I'm sure similarly pivotal things have been chosen on even weaker grounds.

From early on, then, there were the four main gospels that we now have in the New Testament. In 170 AD, an early Assyrian Christian apologist and ascetic named Tatian, wrote the Diatessaron. In it, he sought to make a single coherent narrative of Jesus's life and death. He didn't use any other gospels other than Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. In fact, the very name Diatessaron is Latin for "through the four." He didn't use any other of the so-called "lost gospels," so while he didn't intend to validate the four gospels, he ended up doing so.

And by the 2nd-early 3rd centuries, Paul’s epistles had been gathered into collections and were circulating together rather than as individual manuscripts. An early manuscripts, identified as Papyrus P46 from about 200 AD, contained an early edition of collection of the Pauline Epistles of Romans, Hebrews, 1st and 2nd Corinthians, Ephesians, Galatians, Philippians, Colossians, and 1st and 2nd Thessalonians—in that order.

By the second century, the codex of the Gospels and the codex of Paul’s epistles were functioning as scripture. What theologians of the time were disagreeing over were books like Jude and 2nd Peter. Some argued that the reason these books were disputed was because they were not included in all codices. However, it was not that they were particularly disputed by certain churches. Instead, it was individual churches exercising their authority over choosing what books were most important to their communities.

Certainly the book of Revelation was heavily debated. The nature of that book from the Apostle John was not seen as suitable by some Christians. Some churches didn't accept it, while others accepted it but asked it not be read in church. For example, It was not until the latter half of the 6th century AD that the Eastern churches accepted the book of Revelation.

The reason Revelation was such a problems was because cults were springing up that twisted the contents of the book. These were end-times cults and they scared a lot of people into not wanting to include it in the canon. It just seemed too dangerous, yet no one doubted its authorship or apostology.

Unfortunately, there were other, more dangerous kinds of gospels that circulated as well. These were the heretical gospels of the second century. Most of these were from people who would consider themselves Christians, but were not.

Two examples were Marcion and Valentinus. They thought they were more evolved Christians. They believed the material world was evil, didn't honor the God of the Old Testament, and they didn't honor the law that God gave in the Hebrew Bible. They were either borderline Gnostics like Marcion or fully fledged ones like Valentinus.

There was also a growing class of extra-biblical literature that included things like stories of the apostles traveling to strange lands. These kinds of stories proliferated through the second and third century. It was taking over the popular imagination, which reflected the upsurge in the popularity of Christianity.

The proliferation of gospels and other literature had many differences, but they all saw Jesus as pivotal— the one on whom everything depended. However, many also saw Jesus as only a teacher, or a figure of enlightenment—an ascetic figure whom anyone can emulate, even become. And that's a very different kind of gospel. So, these became unacceptable to read.

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THE "OFFICIAL" CANON

No official canon was ever declared. Many still think it was the Council of Nicea in 325 AD that decided hich books should be included in the Bible—thank you Dan Brown, author of The DaVinci Code. There was a Council of Nicea in 325 AD—it was a council of 300 Church Bishops, presided over by Roman Emperor Constantine, who met not to decide on the Bible’s canon, but for the purpose of defining the nature of God and the divinity of Christ for all of Christianity—eliminating confusion, controversy, and contention in the Church.

Arias of Alexandria proposed that Christ was a created being rather than the eternal son of God. Opposing him was Athanasius. The Council overwhelmingly agreed with Athanasius and affirmed the deity and eternal nature of Jesus Christ—recognizing the Trinity as three co-equal and co-eternal Persons.

It was perhaps the 39th Easter letter of Athanasius 42 years later in 367 AD, that may have led to the confusion regarding how the canon was set. In it, Athanasius wrote there were 27 books—that we now know as the New Testament—be accepted by the Church. He was the first church leader to do so. In the letter he said, "let no one add to these, let nothing be taken away."

The fact remains, though, that there was no central authority that gave us our New Testament at any point in time, ever in history, period. For centuries there was no authority because the church was under great persecution. The authority was the texts themselves, breathed by God, presented by the Apostles.

However it came about, it’s evident that by the 4th century there was little question which books were in the Bible. The church never started by excluding books. They only recognized books as they became aware of them. Any councils that met were only affirming what was already in use as scripture. And they didn't speak with one voice—they were scattered and persecuted. Yet, there was always a growing universal acceptance for the core of the New Testament.

To summarize. There were books that were never disputed … ever: the four Gospels, Acts, the Epistles of Paul excluding Hebrews, 1st John, and 1st Peter. Then, there were books that were debated, but finally accepted: Hebrews, James, 2nd Peter, 2nd and 3rd John, Jude, Revelation, and the Pastoral Epistles. Finally, there were books that were never accepted, though they were popular. People may have enjoyed reading them, for a while at least, but they never wanted them to be included as scripture.

I suppose, if one were looking for a date to pin on the New Testament canon, the 367 AD letter by Athanasius might work. Though, that was one man stating a personal opinion, regardless how strong the opinion, or how highly regarded the man was. Personally, I would select the date when the last book was written, sometime around 125 AD. At that point, the canon was closed. It just took man a while to catch up with God.

The development of the "official" canon (in the eyes of man) was really from the bottom up, as opposed to from the top down. It's only now, when there are those who want to criticize the New Testament canon, that top down arguments appear.

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