“1. This extract from Clement I have inserted here for the sake of the history and for the benefit of my readers. Let us now point out the undisputed writings of this apostle…
For Matthew, who had at first preached to the Hebrews, when he was about to go to other peoples, committed his Gospel to writing in his native tongue, and thus compensated those whom he was obliged to leave for the loss of his presence.
And when Mark and Luke had already published their Gospels, they say that John, who had employed all his time in proclaiming the Gospel orally, finally proceeded to write for the following reason. The three Gospels already mentioned having come into the hands of all and into his own too, they say that he accepted them and bore witness to their truthfulness; but that there was lacking in them an account of the deeds done by Christ at the beginning of his ministry.”
Excerpt From
The History of the Church
Eusebius of Caesarea
Outside of Church authority I’d say there is no good evidence for a closed canon. Its just choosing to accept some tradition over others. Plenty of orthodox Christians disputed some of the books in our canon early (e.g. Eusebius) and thought others should be there. Not to mention the non-orthodox ones with very diverse “canons.” I think scripture with all its errors and inaccuracies is good enough to relay God’s salvific message and serve God’s intended purposes. The same with the canon. If doesn’t need to be closed or exact. If the church mixed up a few books I have confidence God can still work with what He is given. If scripture was not preserved free from error, if the text itself does not appear to have been written free from error, why would I need an inerrant and closed canon?
No Biblical character seems to have been perfect either. They all fail from time to time. Yet in the end God always gets His way. For me every aspect of the Bible tells me its normative for faith and good enough for God to use. It serves His intended purposes, mediates the sacred, transforms sinners and brings people into a growing relationship with Him through the death of Jesus.
There is nothing rational about Biblical inerrancy. No one has ever possessed an inerrant Bible. God doesn’t care about it. He has never utilized perfect prophet or people. Jesus is the only figure that stands out in the entirety of the Biblical tradition.
I know nothing about ancient languages, but it’s interesting what extremely competent people get wrong. As a philosophy undergrad, it was perplexing what my professors were unwilling to see, and what the last couple hundred years of philosophers failed to see as well.
No one really disputes that by the end of the 2nd century there was a significant sector of the church that accepted the fourfold Gospel. But there were many other gospels in the second century and if people didn’t use them, why were they written? Why did they spread and survive? The real question is why do we believe Clement had good information about the authorship of all 4 Gospels 4-5 generation after they were written when rival Christians did use other books they thought were apostolic? We know what tradition won but the fact that the early church says Matthew was the first written Gospel and it was written in Aramaic is two very strong strikes against thinking they possessed good information here.
Mark was written first, not Matthew,
Matthew, Like Mark, was written in Greek.
It is quite clear that the church does not really seem to know what it is talking about on these issues. It gets the original languaged of Matthew wrong and the order of Matthew and Mark. Why on earth do I trust their informaiton on the names of the authors at this point?
Even outside that, for most scholars, it is internal analysis of the Gospels that leads them to question Church tradition.
Well… as it concerns what I saw in philosophy, and the minority view from a handful of biblical scholars, I feel justified in believing there’s more in the Bible that’s true than what extremely competent critics say isn’t
You want a scientific inerrancy? Try making speckled sheep this way…
Genesis 30:
37 Jacob, however, took fresh-cut branches from poplar, almond and plane trees and made white stripes on them by peeling the bark and exposing the white inner wood of the branches. 38 Then he placed the peeled branches in all the watering troughs, so that they would be directly in front of the flocks when they came to drink. When the flocks were in heat and came to drink, 39 they mated in front of the branches. And they bore young that were streaked or speckled or spotted.
The principal criterion was that the writing was apostolic (written by one of the few original apostles or having the authority of an apostle to back the scripture). If you could find authentic lost scriptures that fulfill the criterion, that might lead to interesting discussions about the canon.
There are several other writings that are claimed to be from an apostle. Most of these writings (‘gospels’) were written to support gnostic ideas. So it is not enough that the writing claims to be from the pen of an apostle, there is a need to have much stronger evidence of the authentic origin.
Yep, it is the authenticity of the source that matters, at least for the NT. I agree with most scholars that the other gospels lack authenticity. The OT is a bit different since it was added to over a much longer time period.
Most of the ‘extra’ gospels were probably written to support a particular gnostic teaching. Based on old texts, especially attacks against heresies, there were quite many gnostic groups around. They included a diverse group of teachings that had something in common but much differences. If each preacher teaching gnostic secrets needed a suitable gospel to ensure profits, there was a need for many ‘gospels’. So there were both motivation to write false writings and an audience that used the scripture.
I guess that was one of the reasons early church fathers stressed the importance of oral apostolic tradition. The written text and the oral tradition had to agree, otherwise the ‘gospel’ would not be trusted.
Actually what I see is most conservative Christians caricature and misrepresent critical scholarship. They do to it what YECs do to science.
The statement “Those closest to Jesus in the 1st century aren’t writing anymore” requires them to have begun writing at some point. Most of critical scholarship today rejects the idea that the original followers of Jesus authored any of the NT documents.
There is an article that analysed the numbers used in the text. They concluded that the interpretation of millions of followers was based on an unlikely interpretation of the word that have been translated ‘thousand’. That interpretation came to us through the masoretic interpretation of the Hebrew Bible.
A more likely translation would be ‘group’ that referred to the groups used in Egyptian and other armies of the region. That kind of groups usually included less than 20 men, could be even 8-9 men. That would give a much more realistic picture of the family size etc in the Torah. So, what we read as ‘thousand’ men could be closer to ten men. If true, actual numbers could be less than two percent of the numbers told in our translations.
That would wipe your understandable criticism of millions of jews in the desert.
The question why the trip took 40 years is valid. The text does not list many stopping points. If they really spent 40 years in the region, they must have lived there rather than walked through. Maybe they lived nomadic life. This is all speculation as we do not know how distorted picture of the reality we get by reading the translation through our modern ideas.
The problem is authenticity. There are arguments for making writings by people like Spurgeon or Wesley of a similar weight to biblical scripture but, how do you decide? There are always noted preachers who stand out in society but, are they just popular, or are they more inspired than say the local vicar or pastor? Surely the whole point of Ordination, or even the authority to preach is to accept that these people have some sort of link to God? It is more than likely that an obscure preacher in the backwaters of Scotland has as much, if not more insight than the greatest scholars of our time, but they do not have a stage to be seen on.
I, personally, would love to see Scripture updated to encompass scientific thought but it will never happen.
People have been discussing Scripture since it was first canonised, be it Old Testament in Judaism or New Testament. Christ Himself spent many hours discussing Scripture rather than dogmatically claiming a viewpoint, which is why a dogmatic interpretation will always fail. Be it inerrancy or any other specific interpretation, there will always be disagreement without any definitive answer. Perhaps there is not a definitive answer to be found?
That may tell more of the preconceptions of the critical scholars than the reality.
I guess one of the reasons the critical scholars doubt the originality of the scriptures is the assumed date of the writings. Some critical scholars tend to favor a late timing for the writings, which automatically leads to questions about who wrote the text. The scholars that support an earlier date for the scriptures can more easily accept that the text was written by the ‘correct’ person.
What is true is that the 12 disciples of Jesus did not write much. The apostolic authority came because the writers had spent time with a respected apostle and told information originating from that apostle. Paul was counted among the respected apostles and he wrote many letters. Oral tradition confirmed that what was written did agree with what was told orally by the apostles.
One of my last big aha moments came with reading the commentary on Hebrews 9:7.
Hebrews is such a magnificent book. Sure we don’t know who wrote it, but I can’t imagine it not being in the Bible.
Something else, it’s a real line drawing contest as to what is true in the Bible after you believe in Jesus. And I’ve seen such wildly unlikely providences from God in my life, that I seriously would not be surprised if it were all true in some spectacularly nuanced chiastic sense.