Jews who became Christians brought the Septuagint, the Greek version of their Scriptures, with them. Paul knew it well and quoted from it. Gentiles, who accepted the Christian faith, found the Old Testament already in an authoritative position. They accepted its authority and assumed its inspiration. They all knew that Jesus quoted the Old Testament. They knew also that Christian preachers held it in esteem, using it in teaching, counselling and proclamation.
The church thus readily accepted the Old Testament into its life and witness without question. They believed that God had inspired these writings. This understanding of inspiration was in due course applied to the Christian writings themselves. However when the New Testament refers to ‘Scripture’ or to ‘inspiration,’ it has in mind some book or books of the Old Testament.
What was the underlying reason why the canon as a whole, that is to say a certain body of books, was accepted by Christians? To this question there is an historical and a theological answer. Christians achieved community as they read their experiences in the light of the ideas and experiences of the Hebrew community. The new community of Christians thought of itself as in continuity with the older community, the Hebrew people. With the coming of Jesus and of faith in him, something decisive had happened, and now for the first time the language of the Old Testament was applied to Jesus. Christians saw him as the fulfilment of Old Testament hopes. Some of the New Testament writings were written with the Jew particularly in mind, for example Matthew and sections of Romans. ‘Christ’ was itself a key term.
Christians inherited the idea of a holy book. The New Testament books were produced in the context of a community which accepted the Old Testament as a holy book. So the New Testament speaks of ‘scripture.’ The New Testament refers to the book with the words, ‘It is written.’ The New Testament writers see the events which are their central concern as fulfilling what that book, the Old Testament, had said. That is not, of course, a sufficient ground for putting the two collections of books together and treating them as one, as a unity. They could have emerged as two independent collections. Or, since the events of the New Testament were treated as fulfilments of the Old Testament prophecies, the New Testament could have superseded the Old. What was the point of retaining the Old? Why did they not say that the prophecy has been rendered redundant by its fulfilment and dispense with it? Why take the two together as one complete whole? The New Testament believers and writers thought of themselves as part of the ongoing history. They believed their history to be in continuity with the events in the history of the Hebrew people. The God who had acted in that history had now acted in the new event, the event of Jesus Christ. So the earlier history could now be understood in relation to the faith in Jesus Christ which was the unifying feature of the new community. Christians took the Hebrew past as their own past. They found a ‘fit’ between themselves and that Hebrew past, with its developing belief in God.
Once Christians expressed this continuity by adopting the book of the Jews as their own they had to undertake the task of interpreting the Old Testament in a suitable way. For there was much there. Could it, in all of its diversity, be christianised?14
For the writers whose works appear in our New Testament, the only book which could be called ‘Scripture’ was the Old ‘Testament.’ This was their only written source of authority. By the end of the first century there were collections of Jesus’ sayings.15 The epistles of Paul were known and so were the Synoptic Gospels. II Peter is probably the latest book of our New Testament, a pseudonymous book as all the evidence indicates. It informs us that Paul’s writings are being misinterpreted and perverted. This means that they have begun to be taken as Scripture. The crucial passage reads: ‘There are some things in them (that is the Pauline letters) hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures.’716 What then are these ‘other Scriptures’?
The Scriptures being accepted are the Old Testament. Then there are the letters of Paul, to which II Peter makes direct reference in this passage.17 The fact that II Peter speaks of these in the plural means that there are many which he knows, including some of the later ones. II Peter alludes to the Gospel of Mark, in the reference to the transfiguration.18 So he knows and probably recognizes the Gospels as Scripture. If II Peter is typical, we have a good idea of the situation at the beginning of the second century. To sum it up then: By around A.D. 100 Christians have accepted
Old Testament books, Paul’s letters, and Gospels.
4 THE WORD ‘CANON’
Now, a brief comment about the word canon. This word, kanon in Greek, had a variety of meanings, and was rather loosely used in early times. It meant a carpenter’s measure or rule, or (like a row of numbers on a measure) a list. A canon was an ideal standard, something which served as a norm. So canonical people or books were those whose names were found on a list. A collection of writings is called a ‘canon,’ for example at Alexandria, because it sets a standard and can serve as a model.
The term canon, when used of ‘Scripture,’ has three distinct meanings. All of them point to a collection of writings taken to have authority, to be unique. The word canon can be used of the books first, as they set the standard; secondly, as they conform to a standard; and thirdly, as they are found on a list.
Canonical books are recognized books. Recognition involves decision. Somebody at a particular place and time recognized such books. Somebody eventually drew up a list and, in so doing, expressed a judgment about the books on it and those not on it. To produce such a selection required a principle of selection. It takes time, a considerable amount of time, several centuries, for such a selection to be completed.
5 THE NEW TESTAMENT
We can trace the stages in this process. First the books are written and that process, in regard to the New Testament, takes us to the second century. Then the books circulate in the churches. This involves somebody copying them by hand, and taking them from one place to another, storing them carefully, at a time when Christianity was not a recognized religion and its meetings for worship were illegal. The next stage is that some people in different places, say Antioch, Jerusalem, Alexandria, make a collection of the books and arrange them in an order which other churches throughout the Empire recognize. So a general recognition began to grow that there was a collection of books, some of them written by apostles, or by people associated with apostles and others of them thought to have been written by such people. These books helped the growing church to become stable in its beliefs in face of challenges. Gradually and with good reason it dawned on the leaders of the churches that it would be helpful to have the collection clearly defined. Lists of accepted books were produced and the different churches largely agreed. That list of books corresponds to the books which now appear in our Bibles. The compilation of a list of books which corresponds to our New Testament takes us into the fourth century.
The process is called canonization. To produce such a canon involves that those who make the selection know many books other than the books they finally recognize. Most contemporary Christians do not know of, let alone have read, other books than the books which came to be canonical. So they are not in a position to make a judgment about them and about the propriety of the selection. If one is not acquainted with the books not included how does one know that they were wisely excluded?
The alternative is simply to accept the decision of the church in the long ago past on these matters. Whether one realizes it or not that is what one is doing if one simply takes the Bible for granted.
Consider the following most interesting statement by Eusebius who wrote about AD 325.
Now the writings which bear the name of Peter, of which I recognize only one epistle as genuine