Why We Believe

The New Testament Canon

There are some general guidelines in determining whether or not a New Testament period document is canonical. One thing to keep in mind is that the Church did not create the canon, but simply recognized that the books were inspired from their inception. There were many reasons for establishing a canon. By the Third century, documents that most Christians understood were spurious were being circulated and it became imperative to clarify that these documents contained doctrines and accounts at odds with documents that had already been in use in churches for generations. Though there were a few documents used in one local church and not used in another and vice versa, generally a fairly consistent set of documents were being used in common throughout the churches. To distinguish between spurious documents and those already recognized by the churches, informal criteria around the following questions became determinative:

(a) Is the document authoritative? Does the document command attention with a claim such as “Thus says the Lord?”

(b) Is the document prophetic? Did the author have adequate credentials as a man of God?¹⁰

(c) Is the document authentic? In their careful discernment, the early church fathers had a policy of “if in doubt, throw it out.”

(d) Is the document dynamic? Does the Holy Spirit bear witness of its life-transforming power (Luke 7:21-23)?

(e) And most importantly, does it have a history of being used and read by the people of God? In the case of the New Testament, books were read in the churches and quoted extensively by the early church fathers.

The church, by the end of the fourth century recognized twenty-seven documents additional to the Old Testament, as Scripture. Complimentary to the external criteria cited above, there was internal evidence. Peter ranks Paul’s epistles as equivalent with the Old Testament scripture in authority (2 Peter 3:15, 16). In the case of the New Testament, an additional test for canonicity include: “Is it written with apostolic approval or direction?” In Acts 2:42, the Apostles teaching was the standard of faith (cf. 1 John 2:24-27).

Reasons for determining canonicity:

(a) The heretic Marcion (c. 140 AD) held gnostic view that the Old Testament Creator-God was evil, but the New Testament God was good. He believed that the Law was intrinsically evil and sourced in the creator-God of Old Testament; therefore, he threw out the Old Testament. He believed Luke and ten of Paul’s epistles were scripture (Paul set up an antithesis between Law and Gospel). Also, he believed that because Christ cannot be contaminated by evil, Christ was not incarnate, Christ’s body was apparent, not real. Christ’s death was brought about by the evil God and not real. The cross was not the center of salvation. Instead, salvation is separating from matter. The Church needed to offset his influence. The fact that Marcion clearly had a canon (although his own) presupposes that there was a generally accepted canon from which he could differ.

(b) There were questionable books in circulation and this called for a council manic decision. This is not to imply that there was centralized church authority. The individual bishops had authority in their jurisdiction, and only that authority as given them in accepted scripture.

(c) Edict of Diocletian (303 AD)—The destruction of Christian scripture. There was a definite need to know. Who wanted to die for just a religious book!

The Muratorian Fragment (end of 2nd Century) lists 21 of the 27 New Testament books. Discovered Latin text in 1740. It may have an underlying original Greek text (not extant).

Athanasius (367 AD)—earliest recorded listing of New Testament books and it is exactly like our present list.

Council of Hippo (393 AD)—Reaffirmed canonicity of 27 New Testament books. The bishops at these and other councils officially eliminated the other books.

When were the New Testament Documents Written?

The New Testament itself claims that the events recorded in the gospels and Acts can be attested by “eyewitnesses” (Acts 1:1-3). From the patristic literature alone, we can set upper limits as to when the documents were composed, all before the end of the first century AD:

(1) The Rylands fragment, discovered in Egypt during the last century, is barely three inches square and contains a portion of John 18:31-33. Yet it constitutes the oldest known copy of any part of the New Testament. It is dated AD 125, which if you take into account that it is a distance from where it was probably composed (Patmos) and allowing time to circulate, puts John within the first century. This is remarkable because for years some scholars were claiming John wasn’t written until well into the second century!¹¹

(2) The Letter of Barnabas (perhaps the work of a Christian from Alexandria) refers to Matthew as Scripture. Dated AD 125.

(3) Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna, recognized Ephesians as Scripture by AD 115.

(4) The Gnostic leader Basilides, a contemporary of Polycarp, acknowledged that Romans and 2 Corinthians were Scripture (AD 115). This presupposes that 1 Corinthians was in circulation.

(5) The Didache an early Christian document (c. AD 100-110) refers to one gospel—Matthew.

(6) Papias, bishop of Hierapolis in Phrygia (c. AD 125) refers to Mark and John as gospels and knows of John’s first epistle.

As to the dating of individual New Testament documents, I went over this in my previous discussion on the Resurrection of Jesus

In addition to the Gospels, there are non-Christian Witnesses of Christ.¹²

Josephus

Josephus composed a first century document called The Jewish War. He had accompanied Titus back to Rome following the 68 – 72 AD Jewish uprising.

Tacitus

Tacitus lived toward the end of the first Century. He documented the lives of the Julio-Flavian emperors in his work entitled the Annals.

Suetonius

Suetonius, another Roman historian, lived A.D. 75-160. It has been noted that Suetonius considered Christ (Chrestus) to be a Roman rebel active in the days of Claudius, who reigned A.D. 41-54

Pliny the Younger

Pliny the Younger was governor of Asia Minor during the reign of Trajan AD 98 – 117.