7For there are three that testify in heaven: The Father, the Word and the Holy Spirit, and these three are one. And there are three that testify on earth: 8the Spirit, the water and the blood; and the three are in agreement. (Added text is in Italics)
This is a significant change. Still the difference should not be exaggerated. The additional words are a clear reference to the Trinity, but the shorter reading cannot be taken as a denial of the Trinity. Rather it simply lacks a reference to it. More importantly, regardless of which reading was the original (and it is certainly the shorter reading) this variant does not alter the overall teachings of the Bible in any way. The doctrine of the Trinity is taught throughout the New Testament, and to some extent in the Old Testament, and does not depend on a single verse. No major teaching of the church depends on a single verse, much less a verse in which there is a variant reading.
The recent discoveries of archaeology, and the work of textual critics, have shown that the text of the Bible is thoroughly reliable. They have shown that, despite claims to the contrary, the text of the Bible has not been changed or altered so as to distort the original message. While the ancient manuscripts did reveal a limited number of minor problems, which have since been corrected, they mainly have served to confirm the accuracy of the overall text. As a result, the text of the New Testament we have today is, for all practical purposes, the same as it was when it was written by the apostles.
The Canon of the Old Testament
This still leaves the question as to why the particular books that now appear in the Bible are in there, while others are not. Once again, charges are made that it was at one of those infamous councils that the leaders of the church got together and put in all the books they liked while rejecting all the books they didn’t agree with. As with the other charges, these also lack evidence to support them.
When Jesus quoted from the Old Testament, he did not base his arguments on the strength of a council’s decision. It is very clear from the way that Jesus spoke of the books of the Old Testament that he considered them to be the inspired words of God.11 As the inspired words of God, they were authoritative, and belonged to the canon of Scripture the moment they were written. While this may explain why these books belong in the Old Testament, it still leaves the question of how these books were determined to be inspired.
In their book, A General Introduction to the Bible,12 Norman Geisler and William Nix cite five principles that were used to test whether or not a book was inspired by God. To be considered inspired, a book must have been written by a man of God. It should be confirmed by an act of God, by a miracle or prophecy. It should be in agreement with other writings of God in its teachings. It should have the power of God, that is, it should have an impact on people’s lives. And lastly, it should be accepted and used by God’s people.
As for the Old Testament, the canon was determined by the Jewish people themselves. While the exact time at which the canon became settled is unknown, it seems to have been early and done by consensus. The five books of Moses were certainly considered to be Scripture from the time they were written, and references to them as authoritative can be found throughout the Old Testament.13 Most of the prophets were probably accepted at the time they were written or shortly thereafter. The prophet Jeremiah, writing before the fall of Jerusalem in 586 B.C., speaks of prophets that God had sent earlier (Jeremiah 7:25). Daniel, who wrote during the exile,f states that he “understood from the Scriptures, according to the word of the LORD given to Jeremiah the prophet” (Daniel 9:2).
By the time of Christ, the canon of the Old Testament was settled. This can be seen in the works of Flavius Josephus, a Jewish historian who wrote in the later part of the first century. Josephus wrote that:
. . . every one is not permitted of his own accord to be a writer, nor is there any disagreement in what is written; they being only prophets that have written the original and earliest accounts of things as they learned them from God himself by inspiration; and others have written what hath happened in their own times, and that in a very distinct manner also. For we have not an innumerable multitude of books among us, disagreeing from and contradicting one another [as the Greeks have], but only twenty-two books, which contain the records of all the past times; which are justly believed to be divine.14
The 22 books mentioned by Josephus are the same as the 39 books we have in the Old Testament today. The reason for the difference in the two numbers is that Josephus counted some books as a single book, whereas today we count them as two or more. For example, the twelve minor prophets were counted as one book since they were kept together on a single scroll. The books of Samuel, Kings, and Chronicles were also counted by Josephus as single books, whereas in our modern Bibles each of these have been divided into two books.
After the destruction of the temple in A.D. 70, a need was seen by many Jewish leaders to formally establish the canon of the Old Testament. With the temple gone, the Hebrew Scriptures were to become the center of the Jewish faith. So the Jewish leaders met in the city of Jamnia in A.D. 90. The books that they choose were the same as those mentioned earlier by Josephus, and the same that we have in our Bibles today. The discussions at Jamnia centered around just a few books such as Esther and the Song of Songs. Most of the books of the Old Testament were accepted without any question. Rather than pick and choose those books that best suited them, the Jewish leaders simply ratified those books that were already accepted by the Jewish people as the Word of God. They did not add or remove any books.
The Canon of the New Testament
When we come to the New Testament, once again the evidence for the canon is even greater than that for the Old Testament. By the time of Peter’s death, which occurred no later than A.D. 68,g some of the writings of the apostles were already being accepted as Scripture. This can be seen in the second letter written by Peter when he states:
Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction. (2 Peter 3:15-16)
Here Peter clearly sees the writings of Paul on an equal footing with the “other Scriptures.” The apostle Paul, writing at about the same time, refers to a passage in the Gospel of Luke as Scripture.h
Through the writings of the church fathers during the first 300 years of church history, one can trace the development of the canon. Most of the books were accepted very early and were not seriously questioned afterward. By the end of the first century, the letters of Paul were being collected. Around A.D. 160 the four Gospels were combined into a single unit called the Diatessaron.
Much of the push to establish a canon came about as a reaction to Marcion, a wealthy ship-owner who moved to Rome in A.D. 140 and joined the Christian community there. Marcion was extremely anti-Semitic and rejected anything Jewish. Around A.D. 140, he decided to produce his own version of the canon. He threw out the entire Old Testament, along with three of the four Gospels. The Gospel of Luke was acceptable to him, but only after it had been ”cleaned up” to remove all references to Judaism.
Marcion’s version of the canon was clearly unacceptable and self-serving, but it raised the question: If his canon was wrong, which books made up the true canon? A manuscript from about A.D. 170-180 gives us a description of the canon as it was then beginning to take shape. Called the Muratorian Canon, after its discoverer, Lodovica Muratori, the manuscript contains a description of the books that were considered to be Scripture. The list is very close to the books we find in the New Testament today. The books of Hebrews, 1&2 Peter, and 3 John were not mentioned. The Revelation of Peter is noted as questionable, while The Shepherd of Hermas was rejected.15
The discussion within the church concerning the contents of the canon continued. While the majority of the books were accepted, a few books were still being discussed. Around