The Canonization of Scripture

Taught by Minister Jason Tarn to HCC Sunday School on July 17, 2011

Introduction
In the past three weeks, weve talked about the reliability of Scripture. Ive tried my best to offer sound, reasonable arguments to defend the reliability of the Bible is three ways. Ive offered evidence for why we can trust that the English translation in your hands is a good translation of the best, surviving manuscript copies available to us AND that the vast quantity and antiquity of those copies bolsters our confidence that they closely reflect the wording of the original documents. o And Ive offered good reason to believe that those original documents were free of error and contradiction because of their unique origin from the mouth of a truthspeaking God, through the hands of inspired human authors. And last week, we considered that span of time between when Jesus walked the earth to when the Gospels were finally written, and I gave you solid evidence to suggest that the oral communication of oral tradition about Jesus was faithfully and accurately passed on within the early church until they were finally encapsulated in written Scripture. This week our attention shifts to the question of canonization. The question is: Who determined what books to include in the Bible? And on what basis did they choose? In recent years, weve heard or read articles about other gospels circulated among the first churches that never made it into the Bible, the Gospel of Thomas and the Gospel of Judas garnering the most attention. So why do we only have four gospels? Why not more? For an example of a popular criticism on this very point, lets turn to Dan Browns The Da Vinci Code again. If you recall, there was a fictional character who was presented in the book as a reputable bible scholar and historian named Sir Leah Teabing. At one point in the narrative, Teabing is explaining how the Christian faith, particularly the Christian Bible, as we know it today was really the product of a power struggle in the Roman Empire. His point is that the Bible and the faith itself are man-made and politically motivated. o More than eighty gospels were considered for the New Testament, and yet only a relative

few were chosen for inclusion -- Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John among them. Who chose which gospels to include? Sophie asked. Aha! Teabing burst in with enthusiasm. The fundamental irony of Christianity! The Bible, as we know it today, was collected by the pagan Roman emperor Constantine the Great. . . . Unfortunately for him, a growing religious turmoil was gripping Rome. Three centuries after the crucifixion of Jesus Christ, Christs followers had multiplied exponentially. Christians and pagans began warring, and the conflict grew to such proportions that it threatened to rend Rome in two. Constantine decided something had to be done. In 325 A.D., he decided to unify Rome under a single religion. Christianity. (Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code, 231)

So what are we to make of these claims? Was the process of choosing which books to include in the Bible arbitrary at best OR the result of a political calculation by Constantine at worst? o Well this morning were going to consider exactly how and why the Bible was put together as we know it today, and well even look at how Constantine might have contributed to the process. But I think youll be comforted by what we find and youll quickly realize that Dan Brown is just a fiction novelist trying to pass as a historian.

Defining Terms
Lets begin by first defining terms. We obviously need to define canon. It comes from the Greek word kanon, which means a rule or measuring rod. It was literally what an ancient Greek carpenter would use as a ruler. So you measure things by comparing it to a kanon. o Well Christians first began to use the term in reference to their core beliefs. So the church fathers would commonly talk about the rule of faith. It was like a statement of faith, a set of apostolic doctrines, that would act as a standard to evaluate any kind of teaching. Youd ask: Does it measure up to the rule of faith? Only later did the term kanon come to describe the official collection of inspired books of Scripture. The Bible we know today. The first person to use the term in this way was Athanasius in the fourth century (ca. A.D. 352, Decrees of the Synod of Nicea 5.18). He was the bishop of Alexandria famous for his battle against the heresy known as Arianism. So when we talk about the biblical canon, we are referring to the standard collection of inspired books that as a whole we call the Bible. And when we talk about canonization, we are talking about the process by which the early church determined which books belonged in the canon. o Now it is important to emphasize that what the church did was only recognize which books were canon/inspired. Canonization was the process of recognizing the inherent authority within divinely inspired books. The early church did not bestow authority upon the books. Now this is where Protestants and Catholics clearly differ. Well address our differences more when we talk about the Apocrypha, but I want to make this point now. Catholics understand the canon to be an authorized collection of books, in that the Catholic Church confers its authority upon this list of books. o Protestants, on the other hand, see the canon as a collection of authoritative books. There is a big difference between an authorized collection of books AND a collection of authoritative books. You bestow authority on one. You recognize authority in another.

Completion of the Old Testament Canon

To understand the process of canonization, lets first look historically at when the biblical canon was completed. That is, at what point in time was the canon considered complete or closed. At what point in time did the early believers recognize a complete collection of authoritative books? Lets start with the Old Testament. o Now there is very little written evidence concerning the canonization process for the OT. But there is much evidence suggesting that the Jews of Jesus day already recognized all 39 books of the OT (as we know them) as Gods authoritative Word and used them in devotion and public worship.

And we also can see from the way Jesus used and quoted the Hebrew Bible that he recognized all 39 books as canon. o If you recall, the Hebrew Bible is organized differently than the OT section of a Christian Bible. The ancient Jews divided their Bible into three divisions: Law, Prophets, and Writings, so it begins with Genesis but the last book is 2 Chronicles. So when you read Luke 11:51 Jesus says the people of God have been rejecting and killing his prophets, from the blood of Abel to the blood of Zechariah, he is basically saying from the beginning to the end of the Bible. Because Abel was the first martyr in Genesis, the first book, and Zechariah was the last martyr in 2 Chronicles (24:21), the last book. He also endorsed the threefold division when he spoke of the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms in Luke 24:44 (sometimes the Writings was referred to by its longest book Psalms). That would imply Jesus recognized the authority of all the books that were in those three divisions. Now as followers of Jesus, his view of the OT canon should be enough to convince us and settle any lingering doubts about whether or not all 39 books were inspired. But we can also consider the numerous times the NT authors referenced the Old and how they either quoted or alluded to every book in the canon with the exception of Ruth, Ezra and the Song of Songs. o And of course, we can consider the verse weve read over and over again. 2 Timothy 3:16, All Scripture is breathed out by God. That is the definitive verse arguing for the inspiration of Scripture, which in this case is specifically referring to the OT. So the Jews of Jesus day, Jesus himself and Jesus followers all read and considered the 39 books of the OT to be canonical. Lastly, we have extra-biblical evidence from the Jewish historian Josephus (A.D. 37-100). In one of his writings, he explains that the 1st century Jews of Jesus day believed the specific books of the OT to be inspired. o For we have not an innumerable multitude of books among us, disagreeing from and

contradicting one another [as the Greeks have], but only twenty-two books, which contain the records of all the past times; which are justly believed to be divine; and of them five belong to Moses, which contain his laws and the traditions of the origin of mankind till his death. This interval of time was little short of three thousand years; but as to the time from the death of Moses till the reign of Artaxerxes, king of Persia, who reigned after Xerxes, the prophets, who were after Moses, wrote down what was done in their times in thirteen books. The remaining four books contain hymns to God, and precepts for the conduct of human life. It is true, our history has been written since Artaxerxes very particularly, but has not been esteemed of the like authority with the former by our forefathers, because there has not been an exact succession of prophets since that time; and how firmly we have given credit to these books of our own nations, is evident by what we do; for, during so many ages as have already passed, no one has been so bold as either to add anything to them, to take anything from them, or to make any change in them; but it is natural to all Jews, immediately and from their very birth, to esteem these books to contain divine doctrines, and to persist in them, and, if occasion be, willingly to die for them. (Against Apion 1.38-40)

Okay a few observations are necessary. Notice he says that the history books written since the reign of King Artaxerxes are not esteemed of the like authority with the former. Why? Because there has not been as exact succession of prophets since that time. So the implication is that the official collection of OT books was completed by the time of Artaxerxes, which was between 465-423 B.C. That fits the interval evidence in our OT because Artaxerxes is reigning in the book of Nehemiah, which was probably one of the last of the 39 books to be written. o Also notice that he mentions 22 canonical books when we have 39 OT books in our Bibles. It appears we have 17 extra books. Well the discrepancy can be explained as follows: He counted 1-2 Samuel, 1-2 Kings, and 1-2 Chronicles as one book each. The 12 minor prophets were counted as one book. Ezra-Nehemiah was one book. Judges-Ruth was one book. And Jeremiah-Lamentations was one book. That is 22 in total. So based on internal evidence and external evidence, we can be confident that all 39 books of the OT were considered canonical by the Jews in the days of Christ and by Christians in the early church.

Completion of the New Testament Canon

So what about the NT? When was it considered complete? Well in this case, we have far more information explaining the process, but at the same time, there are far more concerns and questions. It would not accurate to say that there has never been any doubt in the Church over any of the NT books. o We know from the writings of various early church fathers that certain ones were in dispute and took longer to receive full acceptance. At the same time, in some of our most reliable ancient codexes (bounded copies of the complete NT) include extrabiblical writings. Codex Sinaiticus includes the Epistle of Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas. Codex Alexandrinus included 1 and 2 Clement. So we have to be honest and admit that the process of canonization was not as neat and easy as we would have liked. The first person to create a list of authoritative books was a 2nd century heretic named Marcion (A.D. 140). He saw such a radical difference between the two testaments and their characterizations of God that he concluded they must be describing two different Gods a God of law and wrath in the Old and a God of grace and love in the New. o So he completely rejected the OT and excised the NT of any mention of the OT God. All he was left with for a bible was a heavily edited version of Luke and ten of Pauls letters. That was his canon. But his teaching was quickly rejected and he was deemed a heretic. But his great contribution to Christianity is that he was, in large part, the impetus for the early church to begin to explain their implicit sense of a canon of Scripture.

Now this idea that there was an implicit sense among the early Christians of a canon is supported by a document called the Muratorian Fragment written around A.D. 170 by an anonymous author. Based on this fragment, we can deduce that the author recognized all four Gospels, Acts, all the letters of Paul, 1-2 John, Jude, and Revelation. The only NT books not mentioned are Hebrews, 1-2 Peter, James and 3 John. The author also mentions a book called the Wisdom of Solomon (without any commentary), Apocalypse of Peter (saying some are not willing to read it in church) and Shepherd of Hermas (explicitly saying it is good to read but not of same level as the rest). o What this demonstrates is that the early Christians were making distinctions between canonical and non-canonical works, even though that language had yet to be introduced. A decade later in A.D. 180, Irenaeus wrote a treatise called Against Heresies, which defended the Christian faith against Gnostic heresy, which was on the rise by the 2nd century. Their teachers relied upon a number of alternative gospels, that are commonly known as The Gnostic Gospels. That would include the Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Philip, Gospel of Mary (Magdalene), Gospel of Judas, Gospel of Bartholomew, and Gospel of Peter. o Now as you know, the Four Gospels are anonymous, so the names of the gospel authors are only known to us by tradition. The Muratorian Fragment specifically names Luke and John. And Irenaeus, in his treatise, names all four. Matthew also issued a written Gospel among the Hebrews in their own dialect,
while Peter and Paul were preaching at Rome, and laying the foundations of the Church. After their departure, Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, did also hand down to us in writing what had been preached by Peter. Luke also, the companion of Paul, recored in a book the Gospel preached by him. Afterwards, John, the disciple of the Lord, who also had leaned upon His breast, did himself publish a Gospel during his residence at Ephesus in Asia. (Against Heresies 3.1.1)

One observation I want to point out is that those Gnostic Gospels I mentioned -- unlike our four canonical gospels -- actually claim to be authored by a particular person, usually a close associate of Jesus. For example, the Gospel of Thomas begins with, These are the secret sayings which the living Jesus spoke and which Didymos Judas Thomas wrote down. So think about it. The fact that the early Christians only embraced the four gospels as canonical, when they were aware of these others, is quite significant. If you had to choose between four anonymous gospels (including two that everyone agreed was written by noneyewitnesses, Mark and Luke) VS. gospels that were clearly named and named after close disciples and eyewitnesses of Jesus, which would you prefer? o If canonization was simply a process of trying to find the best books to bolster your case and add weight to the authority of your teaching, then the early church would have chosen the Gnostic gospels or at least include them in their canon. But the fact that they preferred the four gospels only strengthens the case that the four were chosen -- not for political reasons -- but because there was an implicit sense that only those four were canonical.

Now after the 2nd century, we have other writers making lists of authoritative books. Origen (A.D. 185-254) had a list of the 27 books but said that Hebrews, James, Jude, 2 Peter, 2-3 John were disputed by some. o The first church historian Eusebius (A.D. 265-340) is most helpful in providing us not just a list of books but organizing the books into three categories: the accepted writings, the disputed writings and the rejected writings. Under the accepted writings he included the four Gospels, Acts, Pauls letters, 1 Peter, 1 John and Revelation (though that was not unanimous). Under the disputed writings he included Hebrews, James, Jude, 2 Peter, 2-3 John. o Under the rejected writings he included Revelation (by some), Acts of Paul, Shepherd of Hermas, Apocalypse of Peter, Letter of Barnabas and the Didache. It was not until the fourth century in A.D. 367, that Athanasius put together the complete list of all 27 books and used the term canon. He recognized the need to take what was for so long implicit and make it explicit in writing. He believed an explicit canon was a needed response to combat heresy. o His complete list was shortly followed by other church fathers in the West like Jerome and Augustine who were battling other heresies. By A.D. 393 at the Synod of Hippo, all 27 books were confirmed as canonical and ratified by the Synod of Carthage four years later in A.D. 397. So let me summarize this. T.C. Hammond offers a very generalized, but helpful, summary of the recognition of the NT canon (In Understanding Be Men, 29). He states: o The NT books were written during the period A.D. 45-100. o They were collected and read in the churches A.D. 100-200. o They were carefully examined and compared with spurious writings A.D. 200-300. o Complete agreement was obtained A.D. 300-400. Now the fact that agreement was not obtained until three centuries after the writing of these books, can still be a cause for concern. We might be asking ourselves, Why did the Church wait so long to finally agree upon a canon? Here are some factors to keep in mind. o 1) Remember that all the NT books were already viewed as authoritative and were circulating among churches from early on (though perhaps not all fully agreed on which books were acceptable). 2) From the writings of the early church fathers, it is clear than an implicit canon existed since they quoted the NT in their teaching as if they contained implicit divine authority. o 3) In the absence of a unified church hierarchy and since documents were hand copied, it is not surprising to not have immediate, widespread agreement by all the churches since they were spread out over three continents.

4) Since the Church spanned large geographic distances and was heavily persecuted, it was impossible to meet in councils to confirm such things until after Constantine's conversion.

So in one particular sense Constantine was instrumental in the formation of the canon. His decision to officially recognize Christianity removed the hinderance of persecution and enabled the churches to meet. o And his desire to bring stability to the empire may have encouraged the bishops to define the canon with greater precision. For example, he actually instructed Eusebius to oversee the production of 50 high-quality volumes of the sacred Scriptures, which would have required a final decision concerning which books to include. So yes, Constantine played a role but not as influential as Dan Brown wants you to think. So when the bishops of the early church finally did come together to recognize the complete canon, what was their basis for selection? What did they look for to determine which books were canon and which were not? Three tests were: Is it apostolic? Is it catholic? Is it orthodox? Lets consider each. Is it apostolic? That simply means: Is there evidence of the books being written by, or tied closely to, an apostle, an eyewitness of Jesus life, death and resurrection and personally commissioned by him with the gospel. o Is it catholic? Were using catholic in the lowercase sense of universal. So that means: Did the book receive widespread recognition among the early churches and church fathers? Is it orthodox? That means: Does the content of the book measure up to the rule of faith? Does it contradict any teaching in the existing canon? So the process was anything but arbitrary. In the end, it is not like those Synods witnessed intense debate over every book of the NT. The only books really debated were Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, 2-3 John and Jude. And from one source, I read that the only non-canonical books that ever had a real shot of making it were 1 Clement, the Shepherd of Hermas and the Didache. Let me conclude this section on the NT canon with this quote: o The fact that substantially the whole church came to recognize the same 27 books as

canonical is remarkable when it is remembered that the result was not contrived. All that the several churches through the Empire could do was to witness to their own experience with the documents and share whatever knowledge they might have about their origin and character. When consideration is given to the diversity in cultural backgrounds and in orientation to the essentials of the Christian faith within the churches, their common agreement about which books belonged to the New Testament serves to suggest that this final decision did not originate solely at the human level. (Barker, Lane, Michaels, The New Testament Speaks, 29)

The Apocrypha
Our last section on canonization has to do with the Apocrypha. Im referring to the Jewish books written during the intertestamental years (roughly 430 B.C. to A.D. 40). The reason

this is an issue is because the Catholic Church and Orthodox Church have additional books in their Old Testaments that Protestants do not consider to be Scripture. [See Chart] o We call them apocryphal, which means a story of doubtful authenticity. Of course they dont use that term. Catholics call them the deuterocanonical books (secondly canonical) because they were not recognized as canonical until a later time. So let me offer some reason why Protestants have never accepted the Apocrypha as canon. 1) The Jews who authored these books never even accepted them into their canon. Remember Josephus quote about the books of their history written after Artaxerxes reign. They did not confer the same level of authority on these as they did on the 39 books of the OT. o 2) These books contain clear factual errors and theological inconsistencies with recognized Scripture. For example, in 2 Maccabees, the reader is told to pray for the sins of the dead to be forgiven. Or in Tobit and Sirach, readers are told that their good deeds atone for their evil deeds. 3) The Roman Catholic Church did not canonize these books until the Council of Trent in 1546. And there is good reason to argue that they were motivated to do so because some of the books supported Catholic practices that were being challenged by the Reformation. o Certain apocryphal books could be used to support the doctrines of purgatory, indulgences, and prayer to the saints. For example, in 2 Maccabees a departed prophet is said to pray for Gods people on earth. From this you could draw support for the idea of asking deceased saints to intercede to Christ on behalf of the living. 4) While there are some debatable allusions to the Apocrypha in the NT, the authors never cite the Apocrypha as Scripture (with a formula like The Scripture says), but almost every book in the OT is cited as such. o So most Protestant traditions have ceased to use the Apocrypha and do not include them in their published Bibles. That does not mean it is wrong to read them. They are helpful for understanding the historical and cultural changes leading up to the NT. And in fact I read that we are more influenced by the Apocrypha than we think. A few of the hymns we sing are from apocryphal books, like It Came Upon a Midnight Clear based on the Wisdom of Solomon 18:14-15.

Conclusion
So let me conclude with a question. What if we found the lost letter of Paul to the Corinthians? Would it be considered canonical? Should we start publishing Bibles with this letter included? Why or why not? o [It would not be considered canonical because it fails the test of catholicity, widespread recognition among the early church.]