How did we get the New Testament Canon?

Marcion//

The single most significant factor was Marcion (AD 85-160).  Marcion got brave and constructed what he felt was the right canon. Marcion didn’t like Paul and the Old Testament.  Marcion wanted Luke, Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, Philemon, 1 and 2 Thessalonians, and Galatians out of the Bible.

Marcion’s canon was the first canon but obviously it was problematic.

In 180AD church leaders wanted to put a stop to Marcion picking and choosing what texts were in and out of the canon.  The church leader formed a council.  In early 200s, Origen listed all twenty-seven New Testament books, but indicated 6 were still being questioned.  The council of Laodicea in AD 363 stated that the Old Testament, along with the apocrypha, and 27 books of the New Testament were to be read in Christian churches.  The council of Carthage in AD397 was the final decision that concluded the New Testament canon would consist of 27 books, which were both inspired and authoritative texts.

What were the Church’s fathers methods to picking the New Testament books?

Their basic guidelines were:  texts that appeared early, authored by apostle, edifying, and widely accepted.

1. We know that the Holy Spirit, who inspired the New Testament writings, made it possible to appropriately select what texts would appear in the New Testament canon.  We also have to believe in God’s providence and the preservation of the Bible throughout time.  We have evidence from archaeology, the 400+fulfilled prophecies, and of course changed lives throughout the centuries.
2. The texts needed to be adaptable and stable.
3. The New Testament texts needed to authored either by an apostle or be an apostolic associate.
4. The texts need to be edifying, valuable, and be consistent.
5. By 200AD at least 21 of the books had been accepted universally.  Basically all of the churches were in agreement that each book was essentially saying the same thing.
6. The letters were all written before 100AD, so basically 50 to 70 years after Jesus’ death.  THIS IS HUGE!!!!!  No other western literature text appeared so early on after it was written.  For example,  the Persian wars or the movement of Alexander the Great were given to us by only one source.  Plato’s writing appeared about 1,400 years later after he wrote them.  Historians have 14,000 copies of the New Testament and the writing appeared only 50-70 years after Jesus’ ministry and death.  For more on this point please visit here.

© 2010, Jeremy Zach. All rights reserved.

Teens’ question:  Is the New Testament reliable?

** question #7 is somewhat related to question #6.

Answers:

If we are trusting in the Bible so much, students need to be sure it is true.  Three ways to know it is true:  Internal evidence, Bibliographical test,  and Historical test.

Internal Test – Students need to read first hand what the Bible claims about scripture.  2 Timothy 3:16 All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness.  It is imperative students start to see Scripture is sufficient while they approach it  very humbly.  Scripture is the Word.

Bibliographical Test – I would like to simply compare the New Testament books with various other books that are widely read and accepted in Western literature.  Scholars have the earliest copies of Aristotle and Plato about 1,400 years after they were written.  We have 7 copies of Plato and 5 copies of Aristotle.  Here is the kicker:  We have copies of the New Testament about 100 years after the books were written and we still have over 14,000 copies of the New Testament.  The problem is no one is questioning the reliability of Aristotle or Plato.  I think the fact that we still have over 14,000 copies of the Greek New Testament implies the content is pretty important.

Historical Test – Josephus- best known ancient Jewish historian. He was born in 37 CE, only a few years after Jesus’ execution. Josephus was well educated in biblical law and history. In a section of Book 18 dealing with various actions of Pilate, the texts refer to Jesus and his ministry:

Now there was about this time Jesus, a wise man, if it be lawful to call him a man, for he was a doer of wonderful works, a teacher of such men as receive the truth with pleasure. He drew over to him both many of the Jews, and many of the Gentiles. He was the Christ, and when Pilate, at the suggestion of the principal men among us, had condemned him to the cross, those that loved him at the first did not forsake him; for he appeared to them alive again the third day; as the divine prophets had foretold these and ten thousand other wonderful things concerning him. And the tribe of Christians so named from him are not extinct at this day.

- Jewish Antiquities 18.3.3

My point:  other 1st century non-Christian historians claimed that Jesus existed.

I think getting students to see first hand that the New Testament in the scholarly world does have some street cred.  I love watching students see the evidence first hand and are floored because now they can take ownership of their faith.  They have seen some of the many facts of this ancient faith which was called THE WAY.

© 2010, Jeremy Zach. All rights reserved.

Last night in High School youth group, it got hot and heavy. We essentially discussed every other major holy book and asked the question: Can Muslims, Jews, Hindus,and Buddhists enter the pearly gates? Is Jesus the only way?

I argued that there only a few major religions that have Holy Books that claim to be God’s Word. The literature of most religions, Hinduism and Buddhism for example, is regarded by the religion’s adherents as being sacred and full of wisdom. Essentially no one other than Jesus is claiming to be God.

I have read Islamic books trying to prove the inspiration of the Koran, and Mormon books trying to prove the inspiration of the Book of Mormon, and I am not impressed. They simply do not have a character which the resurrection or the fulfilled biblical prophecy possess.

Holding to Christianity as the ultimate truth is not narrow mindedness. Narrow mindedness does not attach to what you believe, but how you believe it. If I refused to consider any perspective, any religious book, and any philosophy which disagreed with my own, that would be narrow minded.
No matter what you believe there will always be opposition. Test everything and anything and all claims of revelation to the same test, and you find, I contend that the Bible stands alone as the definitive “word of God.”

© 2009, Jeremy Zach. All rights reserved.

Dan Dennett is a strong atheist and American Philosopher. Dan has his BA in Philosophy from Harvard and his DPHIL from Oxford. In Dan’s academic work, he wrestles with philosophical truths that underlay in the fields of biology and the human mind. Dan has two overarching arguments: 1) Individuals who believe in an intelligent designer, namely God are not intelligent, and 2) We don’t understand our own consciousness, but half the time our brains are actively fooling us.

Dan does not like God and thinks are brains are useless. Recently, I was listening to a lecture Dan was giving and he started critiquing Rick Warren’s book: Purpose Driven Life. Dan essentially de-constructed the great commission which Warren’s argues as the driving force to enabling a life with purpose. Dan felt as though making disciples of all nations is problematic when you have five other major religions combating each other. In the world, as of 2005, there are 33% Christians, 18% Islam, 16% Hinduism, 16% non religious, 6% Buddhism, 4% Chinese traditionalist, 4% primal indigenous, and 3% other. He suggests it is dangerous committing ourselves to one religion when all of the other religions have a holy book saying that their religion is true; and the other religion is not true or from the devil. Dan is skeptical of not only religion, but of Warren’s interpretation of Christianity.

Reviewing over Dan’s work and lectures I have been thinking: What if I was born in an Islam community/country, would I still be a Christian? Would I still be exposed to Jesus considering the deep cultural and social traditions? As believers in God’s word, how do we respond to Dan’s major and thrashing critiques of Christianity? How do we say Jesus is the only true way and not come across being judgmental, condescending, or authoritative?

Bottom line: these are not easy questions to answer. To be honest, there is such a heavy gravity going against God in the secular and academic worlds. I guess this is not new news. Through out history there has always been individuals who have been resistance to institutional religion, church, and/or God. These anti-God individuals will try everything to debunk God. Who knows, maybe in and through our actions of love and justice we, as Christians, are able to present God’s peace.

© 2009, Jeremy Zach. All rights reserved.

Lately, I have been in a weird academic mood. I have received this academic bug that caused me to explore philosophy (Medieval and Modern) and physics. Weird, I know. I have only really wrestled through these academic disciplines in college and bit in seminary. In my current exploration, I have come across a lot of literature, philosophy, and theories. In particular, I have stumbled across Murray Gell-Mann. I read his book: The Creation of the Universe. This by no means was an easy read, but it helped me understand, through a physics lens, secular thought to how the earth was created.

Murray is a physics theorist and works in the field of fundamentals physics. Murray has received: the Noble Prize in 1969, his Yale BS degree at the age of 15 in 1948, and his PHD from MIT in 1951. He has been a Professor at Columbia University in 1954-55, University of Chicago, and California Institute of Technology, where he taught from 1955 until 1993. Now, he is currently the Robert Andrews Millikan Professor of Theoretical Physics Emeritus at Caltech as well as a University Professor in the Physics and Astronomy Department of the University of New Mexico.

Murray is a smart man. Murray’s job description is essentially to cut up particles and interact with the chopped up elements within the particles. Then, he somehow formulates a systematic theory in how particles are developed. He suggests that nature obeys laws and, in Newton’s words, “it is the business of natural philosophy to find them out.” (Natural Philosophy was physics during Newton’s time) The laws are not just some construct of the human mind, although human beings are engaged in an effort to find successive approximations to those laws and finally, perhaps, discover their exact form. Murray wants to get to the essences. He wants to dig to the core. However, he states we can never really get to the core. We only just keep getting closer and closer to the core.

The most perplexing thing about Murray to me is that: here is a brilliant man trying to find meaning and understanding to how the earth functions by deconstructing particles. Murray performs hypotheses and theories to articulate a possible answer, but never a concrete answer. He can only conclude we are approaching near certainty through our probability.

It blows my mind that this man, with his brain power, does not have a concrete answer. Murray argues two major things. First, more does not create more. You do not need something more in order to get more. Second, the universe was created by the laws of motion, gravity, and a lot of accidents. Seriously? That is all you got? You are telling me that we were created by accidents. Our bodies and earth were created by a random change and accidents. Basically I am a byproduct of a bunch of accidents? Murray suggests that our human mind was constructed from neurology and accidents. Thus, that is how we got our complex mind. How uncertain is that? Yet, Murray is soo certain in their uncertainty.

Science can only steer near certainty. This allows for me to ask the question: What if there is something so much bigger outside of the human mind and science? What if the world was not created through many accidents? What if there was a creator who created this complex, but simple world?

© 2009, Jeremy Zach. All rights reserved.