Let The Bible Speak
The Canon of Scripture
We’re so glad you’ve joined us for our study from the Bible about the Bible. Two weeks ago, we answered the question: “How do you know the Bible is God’s inspired Word?” Last week, we addressed the questions: “How do you know the correct books are in the Bible?” and “Where in the Bible does it tell us what books are supposed to be in the Bible?” We discussed what specific books belonged to the Old Testament canon.
Religious teachers who cannot support their doctrines and practices with the Scriptures downplay their significance to elevate to the same level as the words of Jesus, the apostles, and prophets, the authority of other religious leaders, books, creeds, confessions of faith, councils, and earthly headquarters. A careful examination of their religious system reveals that they elevate the authority of commentaries and commentators ABOVE the authority of Jesus, the apostles and prophets. Whenever these sources contradict what Jesus, the apostles, and prophets taught in the Scriptures, these religious institutions give alternative authorities greater weight.
According to Ephesians 2:20, the church is “built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ Himself being the chief cornerstone…” Any other architectural design for the church of Christ is worthless. It’s worse than worthless because it makes vulnerable billions of the gullible and uninformed, exposing them to the consequences of following a cheap imitation of the bride of Christ that Jesus bled and died to save.
The Tanakh is the Jewish Bible that contains the same books as our Old Testament and excludes the Apocrypha of Roman Catholic Bibles. Jesus validated the canonicity of the Tanakh when He taught in Luke 24:44, "These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms concerning Me." He emphasizes the same truth when He speaks of the Law and the prophets in Matthew 5:17; 7:12; 11:13; 22:40; Luke 16:16; and John 1:45.
The Apostle Paul further establishes this truth when he emphasizes that God entrusted the Old Testament to the Jewish people: “What advantage then has the Jew, or what is the profit of circumcision? 2Much in every way! Chiefly because to them were committed the oracles of God” (Romans 3:1-2). The 39 books of our Old Testament match the books the Jews hold as canonical.
We noticed further that while Jesus and the Apostles frequently quoted the Old Testament Scriptures, they never quoted from the apocryphal books of the Roman Catholic Bible.
We made the point that God, not man, established the canon when He inspired the prophets or apostles to write a book or letter (2 Peter 1:21). The Old Testament is composed of only thirty-nine books because God only inspired men to write that many books. No man or council has or had the power to make a book canonical unless the Spirit inspired one to be written and therefore give a book divine authority. [skip song]
The second step in the process of canonization involved men merely recognizing the book was inspired by God.
The third step in establishing which books were authoritative demanded that men collect and preserve the books that they recognized as inspired. This process was guided by Divine Providence.
God gave canonicity to the books of the Bible, but how did man determine which books merited acceptance and deserved recommendation as legitimate? Geisler and Nix detail five steps that explain the process. We will notice a brief summary of those steps.
Was the book written by an apostle or prophet of God?
If it was written by a man in whom God had given the gift of inspiration, then it was the Word of God. The Lord said through His prophets, for example, in Deuteronomy 18:18, “I...will put My words in His mouth, and He shall speak to them all that I command Him.” At the same time, God insisted in Deuteronomy 4:2, “You shall not add to the word which I command you, nor take from it…” These statements establish the parameters in which a book should be accepted as a revelation from God. Meanwhile, though the Bible presents prophecies of men of questionable character like Balaam (Numbers 24:17) and Caiaphas (John 11:49), no canonical books were written by them. They were merely quoted by the inspired author as were the uninspired Greek poets quoted by the Apostle Paul in Acts 17:28; 1 Corinthians 15:33; and Titus 1:12.
Was the book confirmed by an act of God?
Often, miracles separated true prophets from false ones: Moses (Exodus 4:1-9), Elijah (1 Kings 18), Jesus (John 3:2; Acts 2:22), and the apostles (Hebrews 2:4). Geisler and Nix write, “In short, a miracle is an act of God to confirm the Word of God given through a prophet of God to the people of God. It is the sign to substantiate his sermon; the miracle to confirm his message.”
Did the written material tell the truth about God?
Since only contemporaries could vouch to miraculous confirmation of an apostle or prophet, internal evidence within the writing also had to be scrutinized. Since God does not contradict Himself (2 Corinthians 1:17-18; Hebrews 6:18), Christians rejected any book claiming inspiration that did not harmonize fully with truths in accepted writings. God issued a “no tolerance” policy to the life of the false prophet himself:
“But the prophet who presumes to speak a word in My name, which I have not commanded him to speak, or who speaks in the name of other gods, that prophet shall die.” (Deuteronomy 18:20)
Obviously, none of his writings would be accepted!
"‘How shall we know the word which the LORD has not spoken?'--when a prophet speaks in the name of the LORD, if the thing does not happen or come to pass, that is the thing which the LORD has not spoken; the prophet has spoken it presumptuously; you shall not be afraid of him” (Deuteronomy 18:21-22).
Jews and Christians rejected apocryphal books, in part, because of historical errors, moral discrepancies, and heretical teaching. More on this later.
Does the book demonstrate the power of God?
Since believers looked to the Scriptures as “living and active,” (Hebrews 4:12) and, therefore, carrying transforming power for instructing (John 20:30-31) and evangelizing (2 Timothy 3:15), if the books did not show potential for giving spiritual life and motivation, they were set aside.
Did God’s people accept the book?
The initial response to a book was critical. For instance, the Apostle Paul wrote of the Christians of Thessalonica, “...[W]e also thank God without ceasing, because when you received the word of God which you heard from us, you welcomed it not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God…” (1 Thessalonians 2:13). When a book was received, collected, read, and used by the people of God, it was regarded as canonical.
Geisler and Nix explain:
There is ample evidence in Scripture that books were immediately accepted into the canon by contemporaries of the writers. For example, when Moses wrote, his books were immediately placed by the Ark (Deuteronomy 31:26). Joshua’s writing was accepted in like manner (Joshua 24:26). Following him there were books by Samuel and others (1 Samuel 10:25). Daniel even had a copy of Moses and the Prophets (Daniel 9:2, 10-11) which included the book of his contemporary Jeremiah (Daniel 9:2). Likewise, in the New Testament Paul quoted the gospel of Luke as “Scripture” (1 Timothy 5:18) and Peter had a collection of Paul’s “letters” (2 Peter 3:16). Indeed, the apostles exhorted that their letters be read and circulated among the churches (1 Thessalonians 5:27; Colossians 4:16; Revelation 1:3).
....Because every preceding section of Scripture (and nearly all the books) are quoted in succeeding sections, and because each book of the Bible is quoted by some church father or listed in some canon, there is ample evidence to conclude that there was a continuity of conviction within the covenant community concerning the canon of Scripture… .In brief, this means that the present of a book in a canon down through the centuries is evidence that it was known by the contemporaries of the prophet who wrote it to be genuine and canonical, despite the fact that succeeding generations lack definitive knowledge of who the author was or what his prophetic credentials were. Surely God in His providence guided His people in the preservation of His Word.
The same authors write:
Technically speaking, the discussion about certain books in later centuries was not a question of canonicity but of authenticity or genuineness...Because they had neither access to the writer nor direct evidence of his supernatural confirmation, they had to rely on historical testimony about their prophetic credentials. Once they were convinced by the evidence that the books were written by an accredited spokesman for God, then the books were accepted by the church universal. But the decisions of the church councils in the fourth and fifth centuries did not determine the canon, nor did they even first discover or recognize it. In no sense was the authority of the canonical books contingent upon the later church councils. All those councils did was to give later, broader, and final recognition to what was already a fact, namely, that God had inspired them and that the people of God had accepted them in the first century.
When taking into account the criteria for the acceptance by God’s people of books to be included in the Bible canon, how did the Apocryphal books of the Roman Catholic church fare? Not very well at all. In fact, Augustine, the most significant voice of antiquity to recognize the Apocrypha, reasoned, according to Geisler and Nix, that they “should be in the Bible because of their mention ‘of extreme and wonderful suffering of certain martyrs.’” Using that logic, of course, Fox’s Book of Martyrs should be included as part of the Bible canon.
Meanwhile, Augustine’s contemporary, Jerome, who was revered as a greater biblical authority, rejected the Apocrypha. The Catholic Encyclopedia writes that Jerome’s “Latin scholarship, his acquaintance with Biblical places and customs obtained by residence in Palestine, and his remarkable knowledge of Hebrew and of Jewish exegetical traditions, especially fitted him for a work of this kind”--referring to the Latin Vulgate in the late fourth century.
The article in the Catholic Encyclopedia on “Versions of the Bible” says:
Adopted by several writers in the fifth century, [the Latin Vulgate] came into more general use in the sixth. At least the Spanish churches employed it in the seventh century, and in the ninth it was found in practically the whole Roman Church. Its title "Vulgate", indicating its common use, and belonging to the Old Latin until the seventh century, was firmly established in the thirteenth. In the sixteenth the Council of Trent declared it the authentic version of the [Roman Catholic] Church.”
The article in the Catholic Encyclopedia on “Versions of the Bible” later explains that the Council of Trent declared “that the Vulgate alone was to be held as ‘authentic in public readings, discourses, and disputes, and that nobody might dare or presume to reject it on any pretence...’"
Clearly, the official status the Catholic Church gave to Jerome’s translation of the Bible for over one thousand years demonstrates its great deference to Jerome as an authority on the Scriptures. His judgment, therefore, regarding the canonicity and authenticity of the Apocrypha outweighed Augustine’s analysis. Geisler and Nix point out that Jerome said that the church “does not apply [the Apocrypha] to establish any doctrine.”
J. W. McGarvey writes further of Athanasius in Evidences of Christianity:
The next catalogue which we cite is from the pen of Athanasius, who was Bishop of Alexandria from 326 to 373 AD., and one of the most noted Greek writers of the fourth century. In an epistle addressed to the disciples under his oversight, he gives, for the purpose of guarding “some few of the weaker sort” from being deceived by apocryphal books, a list of the true books of the whole Bible… He appends to his list this warning: “These are the fountains of salvation, that he who thirsts may be satisfied with the oracles contained in them: in these alone the doctrine of religion is taught: let no one add to them or take anything from them.” This testimony sets forth both the personal knowledge of Athanasius as far back as he could remember, and that of his early instructors. As he was made Bishop in 326, we may fairly presume that he remembered the books in use as far back as AD 300, and that his early teachers remembered far into the third century. All remembered them as books believed to have been delivered to the first generation of “the fathers” by the “eye-witnesses and ministers of the word.” They must have existed long before, in order to acquire this reputation.
Of the thirty-nine books of our Old Testament, thirty-four books, called homologoumena, are accepted by all. Geisler and Nix cite Roger Beckwith’s analysis:
Even if it became possible, after the destruction of the Temple, to add certain disputed books to the canon (which is conceivable), the undisputed books, in all three sections of the canon, must have been canonical before the Temple was destroyed, and not just a little while before, but for a very long while.
Nearly all reject the Pseudepigrapha (false or spurious writings). Some early Christians questioned some writings called Antilegomena (or spoken against). A fourth set of writings, categorized as Apocrypha (hidden, secret), some accept. The first two classes merit no further discussion. We discussed the Apocrypha last week.
The Song of Solomon, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Ezekiel, and Proverbs represent the third type of writings, Antilegomena, which Jewish rabbis initially and finally recognized as authoritative or canonical, but later rabbis scrutinized.
While widely accepted and the least challenged of this kind, some in the first century questioned this book’s legitimacy because of its seemingly sensual nature. The canon of Aquila, Melito, Tertullian, the Mishna, and Josephus treat the Song of Solomon as Holy Scripture. After the school of Shammai examined this book more carefully, the confident assertion of Rabbi Joseph (50-132 AD) prevailed, insisting that the “Song of Songs is the Holy of Holiest” amongst the Holy writings of Scripture.
While the evaluation of man “under the sun” in Ecclesiastes raised eyebrows, Solomon alleviated these concerns by summarizing his underlying message in Ecclesiastes 12:13-14, “Fear God and keep His commandments, For this is man's all. For God will bring every work into judgment, Including every secret thing, Whether good or evil.” Again, Josephus, Aquila, the Mishnah, and other scholarly Jewish material treat Ecclesiastes as canonical.
Scholars later challenged the book of Esther due to the absence of the word “God.” How could such a book be counted as spiritual? Some suggest that during this time of Persian domination the writer intentionally omitted God’s name so foreign writers might not rewrite the story replacing the name of Jehovah with another god. Geisler and Nix cite Graham Scroggie who insists that “the name of Jehovah (YHWH) may be seen four times in acrostic form in the book, in such a way and in such places that would place it beyond the realm of mere probability (Know Your Bible).” Additionally, the reader can see the fingerprints of God and specifically His Providence woven throughout the book. Consider Mordecai’s challenge to Esther “For if you remain completely silent at this time, relief and deliverance will arise for the Jews from another place, but you and your father's house will perish. Yet who knows whether you have come to the kingdom for such a time as this?" (Esther 4:14).
Once again Josephus claims Esther for the canon as does the canon of Aquila, the Mishnah and other scholarly Jewish writings.
The first century school of Shammai challenged the book of Ezekiel out of concern that it did not harmonize with the law of Moses and that its first ten chapters hinted at gnosticism. No concrete examples of contradiction with the Torah were ever presented. Meanwhile, in the first twenty chapters of Ezekiel alone, the prophet uses the phrase “says the Lord” clearly claiming to be inspired by God. Among the sources that credit it as being Divine are the Dead Sea Scrolls, the book of Revelation, and Josephus.
Peter Leithart writes,
Brian Peterson’s John’s Use of Ezekiel [shows that] John made extensive use of the imagery, structures, and themes of the prophecy of Ezekiel… . He sees parallels between the Prologue and the chariot vision of Ezekiel; between the temple cleansing and Ezekiel’s visions of Yahweh’s departure from a defiled temple; between Ezekiel’s denunciation of false shepherds and Jesus’ discourse on the Good Shepherd; between Jesus’ repeated “I am” statements and Ezekiel’s refrain, “you will know that I am Yahweh”; between the Jesus-as-vine discourse of Ezekiel 15;... between Jesus’ resurrection as the new temple and the new temple visions of Ezekiel 40-48.
Rabbis questioned the canonicity of Proverbs because some considered it self-contradictory. Skeptics based this concern on Proverbs 26:4-5 that taught one should “answer (and answer not) a fool according to his folly. The rabbis concluded that these two seemingly conflicting proverbs merely taught that sometimes a fool should be answered in this way and sometimes not.
Adding to the legitimacy of Proverbs, the following sources (and others) treat it as Scripture: the Dead Sea Scrolls, Philo, the canon of Aquila, Josephus, the epistle to the Romans, and the epistle of James.
These facts and many more give us confidence that we have properly recognized the thirty-nine books of the Old Testament as canonical--as the inspired word of God.
Thank you for watching Let the Bible Speak. We pray you have heard God speak to you through His word. Call us for a free copy of 1263, “The Canon of Scripture” or The Truth Frees Bible study course at no charge. Visit to watch video, hear audio, or read transcripts of the program. On behalf of the congregations listed shortly, we echo the sentiment of the apostle Paul when he wrote in Romans 16:16, “the churches of Christ salute you.” Until next week, goodbye and may God bless you.
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