Articles

Question:

How did we get the Bible and what is the canon? 

Answer:

The Bible contains sixty-six books recorded over a period of 1,500 years, but how did they come to be recognized as holy and inspired scripture?  It is important to note the church did not create the canon but simply recognized and acknowledged the books that proved to be unquestionably accurate and undeniably inspired.  According to 2 Timothy 3:16, “All scripture is God-breathed (inspired) and profitable for teaching, for conviction, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.”  In other words, Scripture did not come from man’s mind or was the result of man’s thoughts, but rather it was God breathing His thought and His word by the work of His Spirit into and through those who recorded it. 

“No prophecy was ever born by the will of man, but men spoke from God while being born by the Holy Spirit” (2 Peter 1:21).

In the original text, the expression of “being born by the Holy Spirit” meant being moved by the Spirit the way a ship is moved by the wind. 

“God, who at various times and in various ways spoke in times past to the fathers and the prophets, has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, through whom He also made the worlds (Hebrews 1:1-2).”  The Old Testament is God’s speaking in the prophets.  The New Testament is God’s speaking through Christ.   

The Scripture was written by men under God’s command (Exodus 34:27), the word of His Spirit through men (2 Samuel 23:2), and the word spoken by men who were moved by His Spirit (Mark 12:36).  The Old Testament is the word spoken by the prophets under God’s command (Jeremiah 1:7), God’s word coming upon the prophet (Ezekiel 1:3), and spoken through the prophets (Zachariah 7:7; Acts 3:18; 28:25, I Peter 1:10-12).  Therefore, man should neither add to nor take from anything in Holy Scriptures (Revelations 22:18-19).

In Deuteronomy 31:9-26, the laws of Moses were stored in the ark in the tabernacle, and later in the temple (2 Kings 22:8).  Joshua 24:25-26, and 1 Samuel 10:25 refer to the writing down of the law to preserve it for reading by the people. 

In Nehemiah 8, Ezra gathered all the people together for the reading of Law of Moses. 

The Hebrew Old Testament consists of three groups of writing: the Law (Torah), Prophets (Nebiim), and Writings (Kethubim). 

The Old Testament was written in Hebrew and Aramaic.

After the exile in 500 BC, Aramaic became the most common language in Palestine until the conquest of Palestine by Alexander the Great, and as a result, several sections of the Old Testament are in Aramaic rather than Hebrew.  This includes six chapters in Daniel and several chapters in Ezra.  Because Aramaic characters are the same as Hebrew, these sections appear the same as the rest of the Hebrew Scriptures. 

Aramaic lingered for several centuries in Palestine, thus the New Testament contains several Aramaic expressions spoken by Christ including talitha koum (little girl, I say arise!); in Mark 5:41; ephphatha (be opened); Eli, eli, lama, sabachthani (My God, My God, why have you forsaken Me?).

The word “Septuagint” is from the Latin “Septuaginta” or seventy, and is ascribed to the Jewish translation of the Old Testament into Greek.  The Pentateuch, the earliest part of the Old Testament Canon, was translated first during the reign of Philadelphius (285-270 BC) by 72 Jewish scholars; hence, the name “Septuagint” (LXX).  Dates for the canonization of OT scripture range from 432 B.C. to 165 B.C.

Jews preserved scripture as no other manuscript has ever been preserved.  They kept tabs on every letter, syllable, word, and paragraph with special classes of men (scribes; training occurred from age 14-40) whose sole duty was to preserve and transmit these documents with perfect fidelity.

The Bible is unique among all ancient books in the sheer quantity of its historical attestation.  Homer’s Iliad, which ranks second to the Bible in number of existing historical manuscripts, has 643 copies, while the New Testament has 24,000.  This is significant, because a comparison of thousands of manuscripts can attest to the accuracy of the recorded word.

The New Testament as we have it today was not formally finalized until the fourth century, but even by 200 AD, the church recognized the accuracy and validity of the New Testament record, especially the four gospels and the letters of Paul and copies of these records were circulated among the churches for doctrinal instruction.  Many believe Paul’s letters had already been formally collected following the publication of the book of Acts in 95 A.D.  From the end of the 2^nd century, the contents of the New Testament, which had been repeatedly confirmed by eye witnesses, were unchallenged. 

The New Testament was written in Greek, a language as common worldwide in the first century as English is today.  This permitted the gospel to spread rapidly.  Koine (common) Greek was spread across the Middle East during the reign of Alexander the Great from 336 to 323 BC, and had become simpler and more uniform as time passed.

Strict guidelines were used for acceptance into the canon.  Was the record accurate and authentic?  Did it stand up to scrutiny?  Did it contain the truth?  Was it consistent?  Was it received, collected, used, and acknowledged by the people of God?  Was it powerful and effective? 

322 OT prophecies regarding the Messiah were fulfilled in the life of Christ.  668 other prophecies have been fulfilled and can be verified as accurate.  The Bible contains thousands of cross references.  After hundreds of years of review by hundreds of thousands of scholars, the Bible is uniquely 100% internally consistent.  Skeptics and scholars have searched for inconsistencies between what is recorded in Scripture and what exist in the world, yet the Bible has always proven to be accurate, sometimes for centuries before the world knew it.  Archaeology, for many years, has continued to verify the reliability of the Biblical record.