THE AUTHENTICITY OF THE TWENTY-TWO HOMOLOGOUMENA OF THE NEW TESTAMENT IS ESTABLISHED BY INCOMPARABLY STRONGER EVIDENCE THAN WHAT EXISTS IN FAVOUR OF THE AUTHENTICITY OF ANY OTHER BOOK OF ANTIQUITY WHATEVER.

113. WITH this majestic unanimity of evidence before us we can fearlessly maintain that in the whole compass of ancient literature there is not a book to be at all compared to our first canon, as to the complete demonstration of its authenticity. History does not present ‘a similar instance of literary evidence. Should any doubt the accuracy of this assertion, let him mention a single book in favour of the authenticity of which a tenth part, of the same proof can be produced. “The testimony to its genuineness,” says Michaelis, “is infinitely superior, and that in numerous respects, to anything that ancient literature could present to us in favour even of the most abundantly-attested books.”

The immense inequality, in such comparison, will appear from ten or eleven peculiarities.

114, Even the most eminent profane works were addressed merely to individuals, by authors unconnected with each other; and most frequently they were not addressed to any person at all. The writings of the New Testament, on the contrary, were addressed by the apostles to the churches of their time; that is, by eight public personages to large associations of individuals by whom they were known, and whom they knew, spread over the earth, permanently settled, unrestrained, connected with the apostles, and with each other, by the closest relations, and the most sacred ties.

This is the first powerful guarantee of authenticity exclusively belonging to the writings of the New Testament.

115. Even the most authentic and the most distinguished works of antiquity, how eagerly soever they may have been welcomed by contemporary readers, never awakened among them anything at all to be compared to the intensity of interest with which the primitive Christians received the Scriptures. To the readers of heathen works it was of no great importance to be preserved from error respecting the genuineness of the books, and the identity of the author. Their endeavours to ascertain the real authorship would naturally correspond to the amount of the interest at stake, They risked but little in falling into a mistake in regard to Tacitus, Pliny, Plutarch, or Cicero, All their efforts to find out the real truth in the matter would be limited. But ‘the case was very different with the primitive Christians to whom were communicated, in the name of the apostles, the books in which these holy men had spoken under the impulse of the Holy Spirit. It was a vital question whether or not any particular book was written by any of the apostles or prophets on whom the Church of the living God is built as its foundation, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner stone.¹ For these living oracles every believer was ready to endure the extreme of torture. His Christianity, his faith, his salvation, were involved in the trial.

This is the second powerful guarantee belonging exclusively to the Sacred Scriptures.

116. When the writings of heathen antiquity made their appearance, their contemporaneous readers, for the most part, were neither eye-witnesses nor competent judges of. the facts those works report. Our sacred books, on the contrary, appeal to facts which the whole primitive Church and every individual believer could verify by the evidence of the senses. Living witnesses, actors in the work, ministers known for twenty years to all contemporary Christendom, miracles performed in their own days, congregations who had been present when they were performed, prophecies, gifts of tongues, cures that continued to be wrought during the lives of the apostles,² and during the succeeding generation, that is, till the commencement of the second century.

This is the third guarantee, rendering all mistake in the primitive churches on the subject of the canon a matter of impossibility.

117. The productions of ancient literature which have come down to our times were put forth without the aid of any association of men specially intrusted with the task of verifying their origin and watching over their transmission. The books of the New Testament had for these purposes the churches and their bishops, on the one hand, and, on the other, the college of apostles, whose long career extended to the end of the first century. Paul alone had disseminated the gospel from Arabia to Jerusalem, from Jerusalem to Illyria, and beyond Illyria to Italy, and, perhaps, further west,³ encumbered as he was daily with the care of all the churches.⁴ Peter was for thirty years at the head of the evangelisation of the circumcised, as Paul was in respect to the cireumcised,⁵ and John, till the commencement of the second century, had the superintendence of the churches of Asia.

This is the fourth guarantee of authenticity, entirely wanting in favour of the most incontestable writings of heathen antiquity.

118. The most celebrated works of the ancient world were, no doubt, perused by contemporaries with eagerness; but their popularity was subsequently transferred to other productions no less valued, and they were consigned to neglect for ages. But how different was the case with the Holy Scriptures of the New Testament! Believers continued to refer to them unceasingly, copied them with their own hands, earnestly and constantly studied them; the most barbarous tribes learned to read only in order to become minutely acquainted with their contents; the followers of Christ meditated on them day and night⁶ from generation to generation, for, since the days of David, such was ever the practice of “the righteous,” who unceasingly made the Scriptures the light, the guide, and the consolation of their lives.

This forms a fifth guarantee of authenticity, belonging exclusively to the sacred canon.

102 THE TWENTY-TWO BOOKS

119. The writings even of the most eminent of the ancients might in a brief space of time disappear and be lost, without exciting great emotion on the part of any one, and, in this manner, in fact, have perished a great number of the finest works of antiquity, even of such as were at first preserved with the greatest care: the Hortensius of Cicero, nearly the whole of Varro, the works even of Menander, which almost everybody knew by heart, those of Ennius and of Pacuvius, three-fourths of Livy, the great history of Sallust, the greatest part of Tacitus, the books of Pliny the Elder on the war in Germany, the last part of the Fasti of Ovid, sixty books of the Roman History of Dio Cassius, twentyfive books of the Bibliotheca of Diodorus Siculus, and nearly the whole of Polybius. Greatly as these works were valued by antiquity, they have been lost. Such, however, could not have been the case with our sacred books, for, besides the eagerness of every Christian to possess a copy of them, they were preserved in innumerable places of worship in all parts of the world, and all true ministers of Jesus Christ, as history testifies, were at all times ready to surrender their lives rather than be deprived of the Scriptures.

This forms the sixth guarantee of authenticity, exclusively belonging to the canonical Scriptures.

120. In regard to most even of the masterpieces of antiquity they were not translated into various languages till many ages after their first appearance. The books of the New Testament, on the contrary, were, at the beginning of the second, and even before the close of the first, translated into all the principal languages of the East. They were translated first into Syriac, then into Arabic, Coptic, Sahidic, Armenian, Persian, and afterwards into Ethiopian. In the West, they were translated first into Latin, afterwards into Gothic, Sclavonic, Celtic, and Anglo-Saxon. We have already spoken of the Peshito and its high antiquity. A Latin version was made during the earliest days of the Church. It is believed that the Vetus Itala, in common use till the time of Jerome, was completed before the end of the first century, and we find Tertullian already quoting it towards the end of the second.

Such, then, is a seventh guarantee of authenticity, exclusively belonging to the canonical Scriptures.

121. The productions of ancient literature did not give rise, like the books of the New Testament, to controversies almost contemporaneous, the sound of which, reaching our own times, serve indirectly, but, for that very reason more forcibly, to establish their authenticity. As to the books of the New Testament, on the contrary, the very attacks against them serve to prove the anterior existence of the canon, the apostolicity of its authors, and its reception by the primitive Christians, so that the earliest unbelievers and the earliest heretics attest with irresistible force, by their very hostility, the apostolic authenticity of our sacred books. In combating the doctrines of the Scriptures, these enemies recognise the respective writers, and unconsciously and unintentionally bear witness to future ages that these books were, previously to their attacks, already revered by the whole Christian Church as the code of its faith. They contest their teaching, but not their authenticity. They reject them as erroneous, but not as spurious. They load them with odious abuse, but, at the same time, admit them to be written by the apostles whose names they bear.

We shall return to this subject more in detail; but it was necessary to make brief reference to it at this stage, as the incidental testimony of enemies is, perhaps, of more weight than that of all the orthodox Fathers.

Such is an eighth guarantee of authenticity, to which there exists nothing equivalent in favour of any other production of literary antiquity.

122, Even the most distinguished writings of the ancients are comparatively little quoted by the authors of succeeding ages. With our Holy Scriptures the case is quite otherwise. Quoted, commented on, interpreted, employed to furnish texts of sermons, by an uninterrupted series of ecclesiastical writers, they might, had they been lost, have been, as Lardner remarks, entirely reconstructed from the quotations contained in the writings of early Christian authors. The works of the whole series of Fathers would almost seem intended to furnish materials for this very purpose. We have already spoken of the immense labours of Origen on the whole of the Scriptures. Irenæus, before him, during the second century, in Gaul, copiously quoted from every one of the homologoumena. Clement of Alexandria, during the same period, quoted them in Egypt. As for Tertullian, who was born about the middle of the second century, he so copiously quoted by name all the books of the first canon, and of the second-first, in Africa, that, according to the remark of Lardner, were we to collect all the passages of the New Testament quoted in his writings, their amount would be greater than all the quotations made from Cicero during two thousand years by all writers that are known to exist.

Such is the ninth special guarantee of the authenticity of the New Testament.

123. There is a tenth peculiarity which of itself would constitute an immense distinction between the writings of the New Testament and all the other literary productions of antiquity. The latter were perused, however, extensively by individuals detached from each other, and the reading of them thus furnished no collective guarantee for their authenticity. The Holy Scriptures, on the contrary, were, from the days of the apostles, read by permanent associations established for the purpose — read uninterruptedly from week to week and from day to day — read in every country then known — read so repeatedly that often individual believers knew them all by heart — read invariably, in a word, during worship, from the days of the apostles, as they are still read at the present day, and as they will continue to be read in every living church till the day that Jesus Christ shall appear from the heavens,

This tenth guarantee, more strong, perhaps, than all the rest, will again require our attention more in detail,

124. Lastly, there is a further circumstance of emphatic significance in favour of the New Testament, which does not apply to the documents of classic antiquity. In connexion with these, there existed no continuous order of earnest guardians, jealously occupied in verifying their authenticity, and watching, with a holy severity, in order to exclude all books that were doubtful, and give their sanction to no one till its authenticity was fully established. In regard to the Scriptures, on the contrary, we can trace from the days of the apostles the uninterrupted existence of such a body of examiners and guardians.

A close attention to the history of the churches will shew that, from the commencement, they were in possession of twenty-two books, received during the lives of the apostles, and that not the slightest opposition to any of these in any church whatever was heard of during two centuries; that, however, during the same period, five short letters, addressed to certain individuals or certain churches, were not received unanimously, though recognised by the majority, (πλείστοις) but were, in certain parts of the world, regarded, for a time, as doubtful. This reserve, freely maintained in reference to a very small portion of the canon, (the thirty-sixth,) gives additional force to the unanimous assent accorded to all the rest. ‘‘ From the close of the first century,” says Dr Tiersch,⁷ in his useful work on the canon, “the churches henceforth left to themselves, and more than ever jealous of the sacred deposit, shewed themselves watchful to prevent innovations, and actuated by a thoroughly conservative spirit, and determined to regard the collection of genuine scriptures as for ever closed, till they obtained the fullest evidence that such and such a late epistle, which had long been held as apostolic by a great number of churches, was really of Divine authority.” Still they did not venture to issue a decision of their own regarding its authenticity, and admit it into the canon, notwithstanding the mind of the majority in its favour, but confined themselves to declaring, that not having received it at their foundation, they waited, in perfect liberty, for fuller proofs on the subject. It was thus that, on the one hand, their admirable firmness in regard to the first canon, and, on the other, their holy vigilance and increasing jealousy in reference to the second, furnish us with one and the same testimony, and equally serve to confirm our belief.

Had their not been in some churches more or less hesitation in regard to the late epistles, there might have been ground for suspecting that there existed on their part too much facility and indifference in receiving and transmitting the canon. But the difficulty felt, for two centuries, by a portion of the churches regarding these five epistles, — that holy slowness to receive them, joined to their dread of rejecting them, — that prudent and yet respectful disposition which for a time neither ventured to condemn nor to sanction them, — that long and scrupulous hesitation, sufficiently indicates the wisdom with which they acted, the liberty with which they examined, and the mature deliberation that preceded their decision.

These striking facts, then, all taken together, bestow new force on the unshaken and unanimous testimony to the first canon.

125. What has already been said might be sufficient for completely establishing our thesis, and justifying us in fearlessly asserting that this unanimity of all the churches in the world, combined with all the incomparable circumstances accompanying it, gives the first canon, or rather the twenty-two homologoumena, a certainty unequalled by any in the whole compass of ancient literature.

Complete, however, as the evidence here produced may already be, it is of importance to exhibit it in a still stronger light, by pointing out the causes of so marvellous an agreement. To what human circumstances is this great historical phenomenon to be attributed? This is the question we are going to examine in the following pages; and the inquiry will open up new sources of evidence to confirm the authenticity of our canon.

We shall first examine, in the following chapter, three other historical facts, which, while they illustrate the character of the primitive Church, explain to us how the astonishing unanimity of the people of God all over the world, in reference to the first canon, came to be so promptly established.

1) Eph. ii, 2-20.

2) See Gal. iii. 2; Acts xix. 2; 1 Cor. xiv. 27.

3) Rom. xv. 19, 24.

4) 2 Cor. xi. 28.

5) Gal. ii, 8, 9.

6) Ps, i, 1-8.

7) Chap. iv. — Versuch zur Wiederherstellung des hist. Standpunkts für die Kritik der N. T. Schriften. 1845.