Author : Keith Sharp
The Canon of Scripture
“It is a matter altogether of uncertainty to us whether such of the writings as now appear under the name of the Old and New Testaments are in the same state in which those collectors say they found them, or whether they added, altered, abridged, or dressed them up…. they decided by vote which of the books out of the collection they had made should be the word of God, and which should not.”(Thomas Paine, The Age of Reason, 18)
Unbelievers have always denied the authority of the Bible. Besides rejecting the fact the apostles and prophets were inspired of God, they also deny that we have any way of knowing how the Bible should read.
There are two separate questions we must answer to be sure we do indeed have the Bible. First, we must know the canon of Scripture. “Canon,” from the Greek word “kanon,” meaning “rule” (cf. Galatians 6:16), refers to the list of books which are authoritative, in other words, are inspired of God. The problem of canonicity is to determine which books actually belong in the Bible.
The other problem area is textual criticism. The word “criticism” does not mean a denial of Scripture. It means the attempt to determine the proper text of the books of the Bible. It is the study that tries to determine what the original manuscripts (the actual inspired documents that came from the apostles and prophets, known as “autographs”) really said.
So we have one overall inquiry to solve: Do we really have the inspired Scriptures in our present Bibles? But this greater question is answered by solving two smaller but very important matters. What is the canon of Scripture? In other words, what books really belong in the Bible? And, what is the text of the Scriptures? Can we know that the words in our present Bibles represent the words the apostles and prophets actually wrote?
If we accept that Jesus is the Son of God, then whatever He says about any subject settles the matter. Although Jesus rejected most of the traditions of the Jews (Matthew 15:5-9), He accepted as the “commandment of God” the Scriptures the Jews recognized as comprising the Old Testament (Matthew 15:1-4). The Master broke the Scriptures in the Jewish Bible into three sections: “the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms” (Luke 24:44), the very threefold division of the Old Testament the Jews recognized, which included the same thirty-nine books we have in our Old Testaments.
Catholic Bibles today include several books not found in our Bibles. They are called the “Apocryphal” books. “Apocryphal” means “of doubtful authorship and authority.” These books were never accepted as a part of the canon of Scripture by the Jews, none of them claim to be inspired of God, and they were even rejected by the great scholar Jerome, whose Latin translation of the Bible, the Vulgate, is the basis for Catholic versions of the Bible.
There is no reasonable basis for doubting that we have the inspired Scriptures and all the inspired Scriptures that preceded the New Testament in our Old Testament.
But the apostles and prophets of the New Testament wrote this inspired message in books for the disciples to read (Ephesians 3:1-7). What the apostles and prophets wrote “is in truth, the word of God, which also effectively works in you who believe.” (1 Thessalonians 2:13) The apostle Peter promised that “the word of God,” “the gospel,” is “incorruptible” and “lives and abides forever.” (1 Peter 1:22-25)
Thus, even while the apostles were yet alive, their books were being circulated and saved (cf. Colossians 4:16) and were recognized as “Scripture” (2 Peter 3:14-16), that is, God’s Word in written form.
By the end of the second century a list of inspired books, in other words a New Testament canon, had been drawn up by Irenaeus, who was a student of Polycarp, who was a student of the apostle John. The Muratorian fragment, from about the same date, likewise lists the New Testament canon. Origen in the third century and Eusebius and Athanasius in the fourth century provide lists of those books which were accepted as inspired of God.
Often people say the church gave us the Bible. This is not true. The Old Testament was complete four hundred years before the church was established. The New Testament was given to us by the apostles and prophets. The church simply recognized the New Testament in the same way a child recognizes its mother (cf. Galatians 4:21-31).
The twenty-seven books which comprise our New Testament stand with the thirty-nine Old Testament books to complete the canon of Scripture. Whereas the inspired Word of God was once in inspired men, it is now in an inspired book, the Bible.
