Canon of Scripture

DEFINITION OF CANON:
‘The word canon derives, quite literally, from the Hebrew term qaneh (“reed” or “stalk”), which indicated a type of rod or stick used as a means of measurement’ (1).

For example, we see this term being used in...

-1 Kings 14:15 ‘For the LORD will strike Israel, as a reed is shaken in the water; and He will uproot Israel from this good land which He gave to their fathers, and will scatter them beyond the Euphrates River, because they have made their Asherim, provoking the LORD to anger.’

-Job 40:21 'Under the lotus plants he lies down, in the covert of the reeds and the marsh.'

-Ezekiel 40:3 '...with a line of flax and a measuring rod in his hand; and he was standing in the gateway.'

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'Canon,' a plant, would later become to be known as a measurement tool in a carpenter's belt, and later, as a standard of measurement for Holy Scripture. Today, when we speak of canon, we are referring to a 'list of books accepted as Holy Scripture' (2)

WHEN was the OT canonized?
•‘The 39 books in our Old Testament were already accepted as Scripture by the time of the writing of the New Testament, since no other texts but these are cited as Scripture.’

• ‘Some scholars suggest that the final ordering of the books too place around 70 AD’

• Then it was finalized at the council of Yavneh (Jamnia) in AD 90. (3)


WHEN was the NT canonized?
The oldest known list (canon) of the New Testament books is called the Muratorian Fragment
-170 AD.

But the need for some kind of canon was already recognized by early Church Father’s in their writings:
• Clement of Rome (AD 95)
• Ignatius of Antioch (AD 115)
• Polycarp (AD 108)
• Irenaeus (AD 185)
• Hippolytus (AD 170-235) (4)

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Then Emperor Constantine came along.
Constantine becomes emperor of Rome in AD 311
• Converts to Christianity
• Issues the edict of Milan (AD 313) giving freedom of religion.
• Christianity becomes the state religion
• Constantine orders the burning of heretical books (AD 325)
By the time the Council of Nicaea had been and Constantine had issued his Edict Against Heretics (AD 325), the books condemned as heretical were already clearly differentiated from the books recognized by the church as Scripture.

The first official indication of a definitive list (including the Apocrypha) occurred at the
1. Council of Laodicea (AD 363), later affirmed by
2. The Council of Hippo (AD 393), followed by an undisputed decision at
3. The Council of Cartharage (AD 397), and again in AD 419 (5)

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THE DA VINCI CODE (NYT Best Seller) mentions Constantine at the Council of Nicaea.
In a dialog between two fictional characters, Teabing describes to Sophie what went down at Nicaea...

Teabing:
"During this fusion of religions, Constantine needed to strengthen the new Christian tradition, and held a famous ecumenical gathering known as the Council of Nicaea. At this gathering," Teabing said, "many aspects of Christianity were debated and voted upon - the date of Easter, the role of bishops, the administration of sacraments, and, of course, the divinity of Jesus.”

Sophie:
"I don't follow. His divinity?"

Teabing:
"My dear," Teabing declared, "until that moment in history, Jesus was viewed by His followers as a mortal prophet; a great and powerful man, but a man nonetheless. A mortal."

Sophie:
"Not the Son of God?"

Teabing:
"Right," Teabing said. "Jesus' establishment as 'the Son of God' was officially proposed and voted on by the Council of Nicaea.”

DAN BROWN CLAIMS THAT THIS BOOK HE AUTHORED IS BACKED UP BY HISTORICALLY ACCURATE FACTS!!
No, Dan Brown. They are not. Just ask world renowned biblical scholar (and agnostic) Bart Ehrman:

'Once again, there are elements of both fact and fiction in Teabing's view. Constantine did call the Council of Nicea, and one of the issues involved Jesus' divinity. But this was not a council that met to decide whether or not Jesus was divine, as Teabing indicates. Quote the contrary: everyone at the Council-and in fact, just about every Christian everywhere-already agreed that Jesus was divine, the Son of God. The question being debated was how to understand Jesus' divinity in light of the circumstance that he was also human’ (6)

A rather knowledgeable scholar (who as an agnostic, has no bias rooting in favor of the Christian cause) declares that the council did not exist to decide on the divinity of Christ or His Scripture, but rather, they already believed these things. They were assembling in order to better understand how He could be both divine, and fully human.

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The confusion surrounding Christ's hypostatic union was started by a man named Arius, the father of Arianism.
• Arianism is the heresy that denies the full divinity of Jesus.
• Named after Arius, who was born about 270 and died in 336. He was a priest in charge of one of the principle churches in Alexandria and he appears to have believed that the Son of God was not eternal but was created before the ages by the Father as an instrument for making the world
• Arius’s teaching was opposed chiefly by Athanasius, a deacon at Alexandria, and was eventually condemned by the First Ecumenical Council, held at Nicaea in 325.
• It became an article of ‘Nicene’ orthodoxy that the Father and the Son were equally eternal, and the famous term homoousios (‘of the same substance’) was used to express this belief. (7)

THE COUNCIL OF NICAEA REJECTED ARIANISM IN THE YEAR 325 AD, PUTTING THE WORDS INTO THE CREED WE SAY TODAY:
“very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father’ (8)

It was a debate between two pastors, and the church agreed that Arius was ill in his doctrine. Constantine had no part in this other than to preside over the meeting. Whatever motives Constantine had, the purpose of the Council of Nicaea was not to ‘invent’ the deity of Christ, or to decide on the canon of Scripture.

THESE BELIEFS WERE ALREADY LONG IN PLACE!

NEED FOR CANON:
1. Heretics
2. False writings appear under names of Apostles
3. Missionaries needed to know what books to translate
4. Edict of Diocletian in AD 303 (which forced persecuted Christians to want to know which books were worth dying for)

CRITERIA OF CANON:
• Was it written by a prophet, Apostle, or someone associated with one?
• Was author confirmed by miracles?
• Did the book’s message tell the truth about God?
• Did the book contain God’s power?
• Was it excepted by God’s people (and/or Apostles)?

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Apocrypha = 12-15 Jewish writings
‘Believers in the eastern portion of the Roman Empire, nearest [Israel], tended to agree with the Jews in that area. In the West, however, Christians under the influence of Augustine, the well known bishop of Hippo, usually received the Apocrypha as part of the canon of Scripture…
During the sixteenth-century Reformation most protestants accepted the view of early eastern Christians and rejected the Apocrypha as canonical. The Roman Catholic church, following Augustine, accepted the books. And that is how the churches differ to this day.’ (9)

How does the Apocrypha hold up against these criteria?

~Was it written or supported by a prophet, Apostle, or someone associated with one? No.
1) The Jews (who wrote much of the Apocryphal writings) did not accept their own writings as divinely inspired.
2) Neither Jesus nor the Apostles ever quoted a single verse from an apocryphal writing (though they quoted the Old Testament nearly three hundred times)
3) The apocryphal writings were never declared authoritative or inspired until A.D. 1546, and only by the Roman Catholic church, at the Council of Trent. (Even then, it was only part of an effort by the Catholic church to counter the Reformation by Martin Luther. (10)

Was it accepted by God’s people? No.
Many of our renown church fathers rejected the Apocrypha as inspired:
-Josephus, the Jewish historian (born AD 37/38), did not deem the Apocrypha ‘worthy of equal credit’ to the Scriptures.
-Philo, Alexandrian Jewish philosopher (20 BC - AD 40)
-Melito of Sardis (AD 170) gave the oldest list of the OT, but names none of the apocryphal writings. He includes all we have today, except the book of Esther.
-Eusebius affirms most of the books of our present OT canon, but no Apocrypha.
-….Origen does the same.
-…so does Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria.
-…and Cyril of Jerusalem.
-Jerome, the great scholar and translator of the Latin Vulgate, rejected the Apocrypha. (The Roman Catholic church then snuck it into the Latin Vulgate after Jerome died) (11)

~Does the message in the Apocrypha tell the truth about God? NO! There are theological errors in the apocryphal writings.
• The book of Wisdom teaches the creation of the world out of pre-existent matter (11:17)
• Ecclesiasticus teaches that the giving of alms makes atonement for sin (3:30)
• In Baruch, it is said that God hears the prayers of the dead (3:4)
• Ecclesiasticus and Wisdom teach a morality based upon expediency
• In 1 Maccabees, there are historical and geographical errors.
• Judith and Tobit contain historical, chronological, and geographical errors.

Gnostic gospels?

They too, like the Old Testament apocryphal writings fail to pass the tests...
• They are not written by apostles
• They are not confirmed by any miracles
• They are unorthodox
• They are powerless
• And have been rejected by God’s people early on

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Why can’t we add more books to the Canon?
BECAUSE JESUS CLOSED IT.

Jesus was the full and complete revelation of the Old Testament (Matt 5:17) - ‘Do not think I came to abolish the Law or the Prophets; I did not come to abolish but to fulfill.’ (Heb 1:1-2) - God now speaks to us through His Son. (John 14:9) - ‘He who has seen Me has seen the Father. (Col 2:9) - ‘in Christ all the fullness of Deity lives in bodily form’
Jesus chose, commissioned, and credentialed twelve apostles (cf. Heb. 2:3-4) to teach this full and final revelation that He gave them (Matt. 10:1f), and before He left this world He promised these apostles to guide them into all truth, saying, ‘the Holy Spirit…will teach you all things and will remind you of everything I have said to you’ (14:26), and whe n he, the Spirit of truth, comes, he will guide you into all truth’ (John 16:13), and that it is the ‘Spirit of [their] Father who speaks in [them] (Matthew 10:20). That’s why the church is said to be built on the ‘foundation of the apostles and the prophets’ (Eph 2:20). Because the Apostles lived and died in the first century, and an apostle had to be an eyewitness of Christ (Acts 1:22). (12)

Works Cited:
1~Price, Randall. Searching for the Original Bible, 139.
2~Bruce, F.F. The Canon of Scripture.
3~Price, Randall. Searching for the Original Bible, 148.
4~Price, Randall. Searching for the Original Bible, 152-154.
5~Price, Randall. Searching for the Original Bible, 154.
6~http://www.beliefnet.com/story/168/story_16806_1.html
7~Thompson, Michael B. Heresies and How to Avoid Them, 15.
8~Thompson, Michael B. Heresies and How to Avoid Them, 19.
9~Shelly, Bruce, L. Church History in Plain Language, 60.
10~Charlie Campbell (alwaysbeready.com)
11~Wayne Grudem, Systematic Theology, 56-59.
12~Geisler, Norman. Systematic Theology Vol.1, 533-534.