12/16/2020 – New Testament Part 4: Selection

What is the New Testament and how was it transmitted? Part 4 of a 4-part series. This is TenOnReligion.

Hey peeps, it’s Dr. B. with TenOnReligion. Many people say they believe in the Bible but don’t know the history behind who wrote it or how it was formed. We’re going to look at answering three questions in this four-part series. First, what are these documents and who composed them? Second, how were they transmitted? And third, why these documents – how were they selected? The first two parts of this series on the development of the New Testament focused on the composition of the documents and the third part focused on the transmission of the text. In this episode we’ll talk about how these texts were selected for inclusion into the New Testament canon.

So, to start off, what does the word canon mean? It comes from a word meaning standard or rule and it is used in a wide variety of contexts. When it is applied to the set of New Testament documents the word canon means which documents are authoritative for Christians. Even though there are slightly different Christian canons today, we’re going to focus on the development of the canon in early Christianity.

There were many interpretations of Christianity in the first few centuries. Each of these competing understandings claimed apostolic authority, meaning it went back to the first generation of believers after Jesus. Texts were a big part of this conversation, although it was more like a group of constant arguments. This had a huge effect on which documents were ultimately included in the New Testament. It was a process that was long drawn out over several centuries. For example, there was another gospel called the Gospel of Peter that was popular. A church leader in Antioch in the late 100’s initially sanctioned its use, but later changed his mind when he was told it could be interpreted to support one of the false teachings he opposed called Docetism – the idea that Jesus was solely a spirit and only appeared to be human. This church leader than forbade the use of the Gospel of Peter and it fell out of favor and was ultimately left out of the New Testament. There was another book with Peter’s name on it called the Apocalypse of Peter that was popular early on in addition to the Apocalypse of John, now called Revelation, but the Apocalypse of Peter held a similar fate and was left out. On the other side, the Apocalypse of John, or Revelation, along with the letters of Hebrews and 2 Peter, barely made it in.

So how did this process work? The Hebrew Bible, the Jewish scriptures, were considered authoritative by Jesus himself, obviously since he was Jewish. The sayings of Jesus were considered authoritative likely within a few decades of his execution, and before the end of the century they were on a par with the Jewish scriptures. Jesus’ sayings, however, were in multiple gospel documents beyond the four gospels we have today, so it took until nearly the year 200 for the four gospels in the New Testament today to be viewed as the only authoritative versions.

The main criteria used for a document’s canonicity were:

• Ancient – written near the time of Jesus
• Authorship – written by an apostle or one of their companions.
• Usage – had to be widely read throughout the churches in the Roman Empire
• Orthodox – had to communicate the right teachings

The last one was the trickiest of them all because influential leaders would be advocating for their specific theological views and thus any document that best supported their theology was one that they wanted included in the canon.

The first list of the 27 documents that are in the New Testament today was in an annual paschal letter, basically Easter letter, by a church leader named Athanasius, written in 367 in Alexandria. It only had local or regional authority at the time though. During this time, there were not many collections of the entire New Testament set of documents circulating, instead specific documents were copied and circulated to various churches and regions. Some documents were not as popular so they naturally were not copied as often. Eventually, some documents which were popular early on in Christian history, lost some of their favor, were copied less often, and slowly disappeared after they were no longer copied and the surviving copies either wore out or were thrown away. The matter continued to be debated until it was more or less settled by around the mid-400’s by popular opinion in the West. Some Eastern groups of churches, especially those outside of the Roman Empire at the time, still rejected some documents and accepted others not present in the Western canon. There was no official church-wide pronouncement of which books were to be considered in the New Testament in the West until the Roman Catholic Council of Trent meetings in the mid-1500’s.

The reality is that the authors of the books that became the Bible did not know they were producing books that would later be considered scripture, and they probably had no intention of producing scripture. They were simply writing letters to early Christian communities and stories about Jesus. Essentially, each Christian generation must write its gospels anew, reconstructing its understanding of the historical Jesus with sincerity and reliability and then say and live what that reconstruction means for present life in this world.

The reality is that the authors of the books that became the Bible did not know they were producing books that would later be considered scripture, and they probably had no intention of producing scripture. They were simply writing letters to early Christian communities and stories about Jesus. Essentially, each Christian generation must write its gospels anew, reconstructing its understanding of the historical Jesus with sincerity and reliability and then say and live what that reconstruction means for present life in this world.

This has a been a great series. If you haven’t seen the other three episodes go check them out. I hope this vlog has helped you better understand this topic. Until next time, stay curious. If you enjoyed this, please like this video and subscribe to the channel. This is TenOnReligion.