In a response to an earlier post...someone asked this question. It is true that the canon was "officially recognized" by the church in 397 at the Council of Carthage...however it is an oversimplification of the process by which the church recognized the scriptures that had been inspired by God. Below was my response.
The New Testament books were written over a 50-year period.The claim that I Timothy makes regarding inspiration, authority, and usefulness has applied to “all scripture.” This Greek word “graphe” is a term applied to all the texts recognized as God’s inspired revelation.
To say that a New Testament collection didn’t occur until 400AD is a bit misleading. The gospels received universal recognition within the 1st generation of Xians. We see in I Peter 3:16 that the writings of Paul were already recognized as “scripture” even within his lifetime. Before 100AD Clement of Rome refers to a “collection of Paul’s letters” that was recognized as scripture. Ignatius and Polycarp (2nd century) also reference this Pauline collection. By the end of the 2nd century there was widespread agreement on 21 of the 27 books of the New Testament.
By 240 we have church leaders listing all 27 books of our New Testament. This is echoed again by 300. We have further confirmation of this in 367, 393, 397 and 419.
I hope you will find that the more questions you ask and the deeper you research the Bible, the more you find its claims are confirmed.
Thursday, November 20, 2008
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4 comments:
Thanks for sharing all this! It's a lot of fun to learn more about the history of the Bible to better understand some tough passages. :)
1st Timothy was written around 65 AD, earlier than all the Gospels except perhaps Mark. Therefore 1st Timothy's claims of scriptural divine inspiration can not be referring to three of the four Gospels, since they had not yet been written!
That is, unless you think that 1st Timothy was referring to things yet to be written in the future.. If you think that, then why couldn't 1st Timothy be referring to ANY documents written in the future? Not just the ones that were settled upon in 397 AD?
Your objection is interesting but perhaps, it seems to me, logically flawed. As an analogy, if I were to say, “All St. Bernards are big dogs.” The truth of the statement is not confined only to the St. Bernards that have been born to date. It is a universal statement that describes the category. In the same way, Paul's statement in I Timothy describes the category of writings called “scripture.” Regardless of the date of I Timothy's composition (and this is not a settled question) the statement describes all scripture regardless of when it was written.
That brings us back to the original question. How did the early church determine what writings belonged in that category. What I have tried to demonstrate is that their was remarkable consensus and a consistent pattern of agreement on the canon from the 1st generation of Christians up until the canon was officially “closed” by the Council of Carthage.
In four words....still doesn't sound correct.... interesting.
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