The Canon#

The New Testament canon consists of books accepted by the early church as divinely inspired. The term canon originally meant “measuring reed” but developed the metaphorical meaning “standard” (compare the literal and metaphorical meanings of “yardstick”). As applied to the New Testament, canon refers to those books accepted by the church as the standard that governs Christian belief and conduct.

The Precanonical Period#

At first, Christians did not have any of the books contained in our New Testament. They depended therefore on the Old Testament, on oral tradition about Jesus’ words and deeds, and on messages from God spoken by Christian prophets.

Books such as Paul’s Letters and the Gospels received canonical recognition quickly. We call them the homolegoumena (Greek for “confessed”).

Because of their brevity and limited circulation, other books simply did not become known widely enough for rapid acceptance into the canon. Uncertain authorship caused Hebrews to be questioned for a while, and the early church hesitated to adopt 2 Peter because its Greek style differs from that in 1 Peter and thus raised doubts about its claim to authorship by the Apostle Peter. We call such books the antilegomena (Greek for “contradicted”).

Canonization#

Quotations of New Testament books as authoritative by the early church fathers help us recognize what books they regarded as canonical. Later the church compiled formal lists, or canons. An early Gnostic heretic named Marcion may have played a provocative role. To support this teaching Marcion selected only those books he considered free from and contrary to the Old Testament and Judaism: Luke (with some omissions) and most of Paul’s Letters. This canon dates from about A.D. 144.

The reaction of orthodox Christians against its omission of other Christian books now in the New Testament shows that the church as a whole had already accepted or was in the process of accepting those books that Marcion rejected. By the fourth and fifth centuries, all our New Testament books were generally recognized and others excluded. Church councils of those centuries formalized existing belief and practice concerning the New Testament canon.

The idea of a canon implies that God guided the early church in its evaluation of various books, so that truly inspired ones gained acceptance as canonical and those not inspired, whatever of lesser value they might offer, did not gain acceptance as canonical. The process of canonization took time, and differences of opinion arose.

Most readers who will compare the subapostolic writings and the New Testament apocrypha with the canonical books of the New Testament will heartily endorse the critical judgment of the early Christians.

Subapostolic Writings#

Subapostolic writings are books written in the period immediately following that of Jesus’ twelve apostles by the “apostolic fathers,” who themselves did not belong to the Twelve but who succeeded them in leadership of the church:

• 1 and 2 Clement

• Letters of Ignatius

• Letter of Polycarp to the Philippians

• Didache, or Teaching of the Twelve Apostles

• Letter of Barnabas

• Shepherd of Hermas

• Martyrdom of Polycarp

• Letter to Diognetus

• Writings of Papias

Criteria#

Various criteria for canonicity have been suggested, such as edifying moral effect and agreement with the oral tradition of apostolic doctrine. But some edifying books failed to achieve canonical status. So also did some books that carried forward the oral tradition of apostolic doctrine. More important — in fact, crucial — was the criterion of apostolicity, which means authorship by an apostle or by an apostolic associate and thus also a date of writing within the apostolic period.

• Mark associated with both of the apostles Peter and Paul.

• Luke accompanied Paul.

• And whoever authored Hebrews exhibits close theological contacts with Paul.

• James and Jude were half brothers or stepbrothers of Jesus and associates of the apostles in the early Jerusalem church.

• Traditionally, all other authors represented in the New Testament were themselves apostles: Matthew, John, Paul, and Peter.

Modern criticism casts doubt on some of the traditional ascriptions of authorship. Such questions receive individual attention in later sections of the present book. But even under negative critical views it is usually affirmed that books not written by apostles were at least written in the apostolic tradition by followers of the apostles.

Rationale#

Jesus himself affirmed the full authority of the Old Testament as Scripture but made his own words and deeds equally authoritative and promised the apostles that the Holy Spirit would remind them of his ministry, teach them its significance, and reveal to them further truth.

The canon of the New Testament consists, then, of the authoritative record and interpretation of God’s self-revelation through Jesus Christ—an interpretive record predictively authenticated by Jesus himself, whose view of his own words and deeds, now written and expounded by the apostles and their associates, did not fall below his view of the Old Testament as God’s Word. The closing of the canon by limiting it to apostolic books arose out of a recognition that God’s revelation in Christ needs no improvement.

The New Testament Apocrypha#

The New Testament Apocrypha differ from the Old Testament Apocrypha, consist of fanciful and sometimes heretical books, and do not enjoy acceptance as canonical by any major branch of the Christian church.

The Text#

Writing#

Papyrus supplied the writing material for most, and perhaps all, books of the New Testament. Most and perhaps all New Testament authors used scrolls, though a few may have used codices (plural of codex, a book with pages bound together in the modern style), and for copies the codex quickly gained popularity among Christians. Commonly, an author dictated to a writing secretary called an amanuensis. Sometimes the author gave the amanuensis freedom of varying degrees in the choice of words.

Copying#

The original documents, none of which are extant, go by the term autographs. At first copies were made one by one when private individuals and churches wanted them. But as demand increased, a reader dictated from an exemplar to a roomful of copyists. Gradually, errors of sight and sound, inadvertent omissions and repetitions, marginal notes, and deliberate theological and grammatical “improvements” slipped into the text. Concern for textual purity led to the checking of some manuscripts against other manuscripts. Nevertheless, the number of errors kept multiplying.

As the church grew richer and increasingly regarded the text of the New Testament as sacred, more durable writing materials, such as vellum (treated calfskin) and parchment (treated sheepskin), came into use. Earlier manuscripts were usually written all in capital (uncial, or majuscule) letters, later manuscripts in cursive, small (minuscule) letters. Word divisions, punctuation marks, and chapter and verse divisions were lacking at first—in fact, these did not come till much later.

Most of the variant readings, or differences, in early manuscripts have to do with spelling, word order, the presence or absence of “and” and “the,” and other relatively inconsequential items.

Textual Criticism#

The exercise of determining the original wording of the New Testament is called textual criticism. Making up our primary sources for this exercise are Greek manuscripts, early versions (that is, ancient translations, especially Syriac and Latin), and quotations in the writings of the early church fathers and in lectionaries (readings from the New Testament in ancient liturgies). By comparing these, scholars can usually decide among variant readings with a fair degree of certainty. Among their most important rules for evaluation are preferences for:

• The reading in the oldest, most carefully copied, geographically most widespread manuscripts and versions

• The reading that reflects the author’s style and theology as seen elsewhere and that best explains the development of other readings

• The more difficult reading (since it is more probable that copyists made an expression easier to understand than harder to understand)

• The shorter reading (because copyists were more liable to add to the text than to delete, except where the omission appears to have been accidental)

Materials for determining the original text of the New Testament are far more numerous and ancient than those for the study of any of the old classical writings. Thanks to the labors of textual critics, remaining uncertainties about the text of the Greek New Testament are not serious enough to affect our understanding of its fundamental teachings.

Chapter and Verse#

Stephen Langton (d. 1228) divided the biblical text into chapters, Robert Stephanus into verses in his printed edition of 1551.

Translations into English#

So far as English versions of the New Testament are concerned, JohnWycliffe produced his translation from Jerome’s Latin Vulgate in 1382, and William Tyndale translated from the original Greek in 1525. Following a succession of further English Bibles, the Roman Catholic Douay Version appeared in 1582 and the vastly influential King James (or Authorized) Version in 1611.

But the earliest and best manuscripts of the New Testament had not yet been discovered, and the following centuries saw great advances in scholarly knowledge concerning the kind of Greek used in the New Testament. A large contribution has come from the study of numerous papyri found during the last 150 years.

As a result, numerous versions have appeared in recent times, for example, the English Revised Version (1881), the American Standard Version (1901), the Revised Standard Version (1946), the New English Bible (1961), the New American Standard Bible (1963), the Jerusalem Bible (1966), Today’s English Version (1966), the New International Version (1978), and the English Standard Version (2001), plus updates of some of these versions and various individual efforts. Of special interest to advanced students is the NET Bible.

Summary#

As a canon, the books of the New Testament provide an authoritative guide for Christian belief and behavior. These books were written over the latter half or so of the first Christian century. Despite initial doubts concerning some of them, eventually Christians recognized all of them to have divine authority mediated through Jesus’ Spirit-inspired apostles and their associates.

Through hand copying, errors crept into the text of the original documents. As a result, it has become necessary to do textual criticism, that is, to decide between differences of wording in early Greek manuscripts, translations, and quotations of the New Testament for what its authors are most likely to have written. Fortunately, we have an abundance of materials to perform this task; and there is large-scale agreement on the original wording. Recent English translations have capitalized on the labors of textual critics, so that we now have a more reliable understanding of the New Testament than was possible before the discovery of its earliest and best manuscripts.