THE IDEA OF A NEW TESTAMENT CANON AS EARLY AS THE DAYS OF THE APOSTLES.

THE idea of a New Testament canon must have existed at a very early period of the Christian Church. This may be inferred from the nature of the case, independently of direct evidence on the subject. This idea must have had its origin from the moment when the “apostles and prophets,” who had “preached the gospel with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven,” began to transmit to their converts apostolic epistles or narratives of the Saviour’s life and discourses.

In fact, their knowledge of the Old Testament had fully prepared Christian congregations for the reception of such documents. That sacred volume, whose canon had been formed for centuries, and about whose divine authority the Jews, as Josephus informs us, were entirely agreed, had at all periods been revered by the people of God. It was revered by the apostles, who called it as a whole “the oracles of God.” It was revered by the Son of God himself, who called it “the Law, your Law, the Scripture, the Scriptures.” It was revered by the Christian converts, who read it solemnly in their assemblies. Thus naturally arose in the minds of Christians the notion of a collection of New Testament writings corresponding to the collection of the-books forming the Old Testament.

8. The notion of a canon of Scripture had been, for fifteen hundred years, the great characteristic of the Hebrew nation, and was regarded. by them as inseparable from their existence as God’s chosen people. This notion, which the Israelitish church received in the wilderness, and ever afterwards preserved, was not that of a completed system of legislation, promulgated once for all, and never to receive any additions. On the contrary, it was that of a collection of documents, commencing with the five books of Moses, and gradually enlarging from age to age by fresh communications from heaven, during eleven hundred years, as God, from time: to time, raised up successive prophets, and closing only with Malachi, when the spirit of prophecy became silent for four centuries. It was, therefore, quite natural that, at the advent of the Messiah, the Church should look for fresh communications; as the spirit of prophecy had just been restored to it, men of God, “apostles and prophets,” had been raised up, even more marvellous than the prophets of old. We will even maintain that it was impossible such an expectation should not exist. The period of Christ’s advent was far more important and more solemn than that of its announcement. Its revelations were more striking, its objects more divine, its: promises more rich, its prophets more powerful, its signs and wonders more marvellous.

9. Besides, it must not be forgotten that the Church had its origin in the Synagogue, and that, during the first fifteen years of its existence, all its members were Israelites. All its preachers, as well as all its early converts, were Jews. At the period of Paul’s last visit to the Christians of Jerusalem, the members of the Church there, the mother of all the other Churches of Christ, already amounted to myriads, (Acts xxi. 20, πόσαι μυριάδες.) In all the cities of the Gentiles the apostles began their labours with the children of Israel. In addressing them, they constantly held in their hands the canon of Scripture; incessantly urging them, as Christ had done, to search the Scriptures, as testifying of Christ, (John v. 39.) On all occasions they “expounded to them and testified the kingdom of God, persuading them concerning Jesus, both out of the law of Moses, and out of the prophets, from morning till evening,” (Acts xxviii. 23;) “Saying none other things than those which the prophets and Moses did say should come,” (Acts xxvi. 22.) Though, when addressing heathen audiences, they did not directly quote the sacred writings, they earnestly directed to them the attention of believing Gentiles from the moment of their conversion. “Now to Him,” said Paul, in concluding his Epistle to the Romans, “to Him that is of power to stablish you according to my gospel, and the preaching of Jesus Christ, (according to the revelation of the mystery, which was kept secret since the world began, but now is made manifest, by the scriptures of the prophets, according to the commandment of the everlasting God, made known to all nations for the obedience of the faith;) to God only wise, be glory through Jesus Christ for ever. Amen.”

Thus, on the one hand, the idea of a canon of Scripture was, as it were, innate in the minds of the people of God, and inseparable from their conception of a church; while, on the other, the idea of adding to the sacred books of the Old Testament the no less sacred books of the New, as successively put forth, was equally inseparable from their notion of Scripture.

10. The early existence of this idea of a Scripture canon is distinctly attested by the history of early Christianity. Far from being a subsequent conception, it appears conspicuously under every varied form, from the very commencement of the Christian Church, both among the enemies and the champions of the gospel.

We shall examine this point more in detail by and by. In the meantime, we confine ourselves to a few quotations,

Peter, towards the end of his career, refers, in his second epistle, to “all the epistles” of Paul, as already collected, and calls them “Scriptures;” putting them on a level with the books of the Old Testament, which he calls “the other Scriptures.”¹

The primitive Christians successively collected the apostolic writings from the moment of their appearance; received them as of the same authority with the Old Testament, read them in their assemblies, and called them, as Peter did, the Scriptures, or, as the Fathers did, the Book, τὰ Βιβλία; the New Testament;² the Divine Document;³ the Sacred Digest;⁴ the Oracles of God; or the Gospel and the Apostle, the Gospels and the Apostles;⁵ after; the example of Jesus Christ, who had called the Old Testament “the Law and the Prophets.” It thus appears at how early a period the Christian Church began to speak of the Canon or Rule, and to give the name of “canonical books” to such as formed a ‘part of that infallible code.

Ireneus, born in Greece in the year 120, and martyred in the year 202,⁶ speaking of the Scriptures as divine, calls them the Rule, or the Canon, of truth — κανόνα τῆς ἀληθείας.⁷

Tertullian, in the same century, contrasting Valentine with Marcion, both deeply immersed in the Gnostic heresy, says of the former, about the year 138, that he, at least, appeared to make use of a complete document, meaning a complete and entire collection of the books of the New Testament, as then received in the Church.⁸

Clement of Alexandria, in the same century, speaking of a quotation taken from an apocryphal book, exclaims against those who thought proper to follow any authority besides “the true evangelical canon;” and Origen, born seventeen years before the end of the same century, zealous, as Eusebius⁹ says, in maintaining the ecclesiastical canon, τὸν ἐκκλησιαστικὸν φυλάττων κανόνα, “declares that he only recognised the four Gospels; which alone,” he adds, “are received without controversy in the universal Church spread over the whole earth.”¹⁰ The same Origen, in giving us a list of the canonical Scriptures, calls them the Testamental Scriptures (αἱ ἐνδιάθηκαι γραφαί), that is, “the Scriptures contained in the New Testament.”

Athanasius, in his Festal epistle,¹¹ speaks of three sorts of books: the canonical, (which are those recognised by the Church at the present day;) the ecclesiastical, (which were allowed to be read in Christian assemblies;) and the apocryphal.

When, subsequently, the Council of Laodicea (in 364) ordained that no other book should be read in the churches but the Canonical Scriptures of the Old and the New Testament, it was so far from then introducing for the first time the notion of canonical books, as distinguished from uncanonical, that it merely referred to principles long established in the universal Church.

Jerome, also, frequently speaks of the Canon of Scripture: “Keclesiasticus,” says he, “Judith, Tobit, The Shepherd, . . . are not in the Canon. The Church permits the reading of Judith, Tobit, and the Maccabees; but it does not receive them into the list of Canonical Scriptures. The books of Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus may be read for edification by the people, but not as authority for establishing points of doctrine.”¹²

Such is the origin of the idea of a Canon of Scripture, and such is its import.

1) 2 Pet. iii, 16. This testimony, independently of the objections of some persons to the canonicity of this epistle, incontestably proves the antiquity of the usage that regarded the books of the New Testament as part of the Scriptures; for we shall demonstrate the antiquity of this epistle, independently of its canonicity.

2) See Lardner, vol. viii, page 197, See also vol. ii, page 529. As Paul had given the name of “Old Testament” to the writings of Moses and the Prophets, it was quite natural that the writings of the Evangelists and Apostles should receive the name of “New Testament,” and that the books admitted into the Canon should be styled Testamental or ἐνδιάθηκαι, (Eusebius, H. E. vi., 25.)

3) Tertullian adv. Marcion, lib. v., cap. 13.

4) Ibid., lib. iv., cap. 13.

5) Clement of Alexandria, Strom. vii., pages 706, 757. Ignatius, Ep. to the Philad., ch. 5; Ep. to Diognetus, ch. 11. Justin Martyr, First Apol., ch. 67; Tertullian, De Gree. Scrip., cap. 36; Apol., cap. 39. Hippolytus the Martyr, On Antichrist, ch. 58.

6) Or, according to others, in the year 140.

7) Adv. Heræses, lib. iii, cap. 11; lib. iv., cap. 85 and 69.

8) Tertullian, De Prescript. Heretic, cap. 30, 38.

9) Ecc, Hist., vi., ch. 25.

10) Ibid.

11) Chap. xxxix., vol. ii, p. 961, edit. Benedict, τὰ κανονιζόμενα καὶ παραδοθέντα πιστευθέντα τέ θεῖα εἶναι βιβλία.

12) See also Lardner, vol. x., pp. 41, 48, 52,