V. Canon:
What books make up the scriptures?
A. Old Testament
1. God started the canon
a. Exodus
31:18: And he gave to Moses, when he had finished speaking with him on Mount
Sinai, the two tablets of the testimony, tablets of stone, written with the
finger of God.
2. Moses added to the
canon
a. Deuteronomy
31:24-26: When Moses had finished writing the words of this law in a book to
the very end, Moses commanded the Levites who carried the ark of the covenant
of the Lord, “Take this Book of the Law and put it by the side of the ark of the
covenant of the Lord your God, that it may be there for a witness against you.
3. Prophets (mostly)
added to the canon as Israel’s history progressed
a. Joshua
24:26: Joshua wrote these words in the book of the law of God
4. Prophetic word from God
stopped after Malachi
a. From
Artaxerxes to our own times a complete history has been written, but has not
been deemed worth of equal credit with the earlier records, because of the
failure of the exact succession of the prophets (Against Apion, Josephus, 1.41)
5. Earliest
list from the church fathers is from Melito of Sardis circa 170 AD. He mentions
every book except Esther. (Ecclesiastical
History, Eusebius, 4.26.14)
6. Jerome
(404 AD) included apocrypha, not as “books of the canon” only as “books of the
church”
B. New Testament
1. Apostles proclaimed
the Gospel as God’s word, not their own
a. 1
Thessalonians 2:9-13: For you remember, brothers, our labor and toil: we worked
night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you, while we proclaimed
to you the gospel of God. You are
witnesses, and God also, how holy and righteous and blameless was our conduct
toward you believers. For you know how,
like a father with his children, we exhorted each one of you and encouraged you
and charged you to walk in a manner worthy of God, who calls you into his own
kingdom and glory. And we also thank God constantly for this, that when you
received the word of God, which you heard from us, you accepted it not as the
word of men but as what it really is, the word of God, which is at work in you
believers.
b. Galatians
1:11-12: For I would have you know, brothers, that the gospel that was preached
by me is not man's gospel. For I did not
receive it from any man, nor was I taught it, but I received it through a
revelation of Jesus Christ.
c. 1
Corinthians 14:36, 37: Or was it from you that the word of God came? Or are you
the only ones it has reached? If anyone
thinks that he is a prophet, or spiritual, he should acknowledge that the
things I am writing to you are a command of the Lord.
d. 2 Peter
3:15-16: And count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved
brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, as he does in
all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard
to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction,
as they do the other Scriptures.
2. This means the
apostles writings were inspired
a. Matthew,
John, Romans, 1&2 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians,
Colossians, 1&2 Thessalonians, 1&2 Timothy, Titus, Philemon, James,
1&2 Peter, 1&2&3 John, Revelation
3. What
about the other books? They all bore apostolic authority via other means
a. Mark was
associated and got his information from Peter
b. Luke/Acts
was associated and got some of his information from Paul and probably Peter and
other eyewitnesses as well
c. Hebrews:
only doubt was authorship, never content, it was always considered to be
apostolic content
d. Jude,
being both Jesus’ and James’ brother, was eventually accepted into the canon
4. Early
church fathers clearly distinguished between apostles’ writing and their own
a. Ignatius
(110 AD) in To the Romans, 4:3: I do
not order you as did Peter and Paul; they were apostles, I am a convict; they
were free, I am even until now a slave.
5. Muratorian fragment
dated about 170-180 AD
a. Lists 22
of 27 NT books
b. only
missing Hebrews, James, 1&2 Peter, 3 John
6. Origen in Homilies on Joshua 7.1 about 250 AD
a. But when
our Lord Jesus Christ comes, whose arrival that prior son of Nun designated, he
sends priests, his apostles, bearing “trumpets hammered thin,” the magnificent
and heavenly instruction of proclamation. Matthew first sounded the priestly
trumpet in his Gospel; Mark also; Luke and John each played their own priestly
trumpets. Even Peter cries out with trumpets in two of his epistles; also James
and Jude. In addition, John also sounds the trumpet through his epistles [and
Revelation], and Luke, as he describes the Acts of the Apostles. And now that
last one comes, the one who said, “I think God displays us apostles last,” and
in fourteen of his epistles, thundering with trumpets, he casts down the walls
of Jericho and all the devices of idolatry and dogmas of philosophers, all the
way to the foundations (Hom. Jos. 7.1).
7. Codex Sinaiticus
about 350 AD and Council of Laodicea in 363 AD
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