Redimete Diem!

Look carefully then how you walk, not as unwise but as wise,
making the most of the time, because the days are evil. (Eph. 5:15-16, ESV)

Home  |  Da Vinci Code  |   The Pilgrim's Progress  |  Worship  |  Sermons | Courses
Christian Ethics  |  Miscellany  | Family |  Questions, etc.

Confronting The Da Vinci Code

 Part 8:  The Formulation of the New Testament

 “The Bible did not arrive by fax from heaven. …

The Bible is a product of man, my dear.  Not of God.  The Bible did not fall magically from the clouds.  man created it as a historical record of tumultuous times, and it has evolved through countless translations, additions, and revisions.  History has never had a definitive version of the book.”

(Prof. Teabing in The DaVinci Code, p. 231)

             Actually, a very important part of the Bible does claim to have arrived “by fax”, as it were, from heaven.  When Moses descended from Mt. Sinai, he carried with him the Ten Commandments who were, by its own testimony, written by the very finger of God.  So do the words God gave directly (and this is just a sampling) to the prophets Jeremiah (rf. Jer. 36:2), Isaiah (Is. 40:1), the Psalms (Ps. 68:11) and others in the Old Testament as well as the book (vision) of John which we call The Revelation (Rev. 1:19).  In fact, over 3000 times throughout the Scriptures in the Bible are found the words “The Lord says”.  And, in more than a few places throughout the Scriptures, there are affirmations of the divine authority present in them (1 Cor. 14:37; 2 Tim. 3:16; 2 Pet. 1:21; 3:15-16).  To deny that, to claim instead that the Bible is a product of man and not God is not a statement with any historical veracity, it is, instead, just a personal opinion and judgment.  The Scriptures claim to be from God, that is not in dispute.  The only thing left to decide is whether you accept that fact or deny it.

The “Evolving” New Testament

            “There is a distinction between the canonicity of a book of the Bible and its authority. … People frequently speak and write as if the authority with which books of the Bible are invested in the minds of Christians is the result of their having been included in the sacred list.  But the historical fact is the other way about; they were and are included in the list because they were acknowledged as authoritative.” (F.F. Bruce)

            The story of the formulation of the New Testament begins with the oldest records about the subject of the New Testament: Jesus Christ.  At first, the words and acts of Jesus were verbally proclaimed by those who had witnessed and ministered under him themselves.  But before that first generation was gone, the first written testimonies of the gospel story were committed to writing by those who were eye-witnesses, as in the case of Matthew and John, and by the scribes or secretaries of other eye-witnesses, such as Mark and Luke.  In fact, virtually all of the books listed in the New Testament were in existence by the beginning of the second century.

            By the end of the first century, the titles the four gospels were given indicate that they had already been collected together and esteemed as a four-fold witness to Christ: The Gospel According to Matthew, According to Mark, According to Luke, and According to John.  At about the same time, there was an effort to collect Paul’s letters together which bears the same testimony in their various titles: The Apostle to the Romans, First to the Corinthians, to the Galatians, to the Ephesians etc.

            In the period of the Early Church Fathers (70-120 AD), most of the gospels and epistles were readily quoted from as already being in existence and already regarded as authoritative.  The contrast is evident because the Church Fathers credit these earlier writings with authority while refraining from claiming such authority for themselves or for one another.

            In the period of the Apologists (120-220 AD), the Christian faith was defended aggressively against persecutors and dissenters by also quoting the gospels and Paul readily.  Yet, they, also, did not quote the Church Fathers in the same way or claim such inspiration for themselves.  Even the Gnostics, whom the Apologists were refuting, appealed to the gospels and to Paul in an effort to find support for their own arguments.

            The first attempt to make an official list or canon of authoritative books came from an unorthodox source.  In the middle of the 2^nd c., a Gnostic heretic named Marcion drew up a New Testament list to suit his own purposes.  It consisted of two parts: The Gospel and The Apostle.  The Gospel was only an edited part of Luke’s gospel and The Apostle consisted of only 10 of Paul’s letters.  But nothing else was considered relevant or added to the list.

            It was due to Marcion’s work, and the attention that it received, that moved the leaders of the church to more carefully define such a list.  Their initial response was a list that included the four gospels, the thirteen Pauline letters, the book called Acts of the Apostles, and the writings of some other apostles and “apostolic men”.  As R. Laird Harris writes: “We then have a history of the New Testament books as an authoritative collection almost exactly like our New Testament from someone who wrote less than seventy years after the death of the last apostle and who may well have talked with Polycarp himself or others who knew the apostles.”

            When the second century came and with it a flood of other, spurious writings appeared, they also claimed the names and titles that had come to be known for carrying authority and legitimacy – Gospels, Acts, Epistles, and Apocalypses.  But as Harris also observes: “There was no large number [of texts] that gained recognition only to lose it.  In fact, there was not even one that gained any noticeable degree of recognition only to lose it.” (Harris)

            By 230 AD, Origen described the New Testament discussion this way:

                those accepted by all Christians everywhere:

                        the four Gospels, Acts, 13 letters of Paul, 1 Peter, 1 John and Revelation,

                those still disputed by some:

                        Hebrews, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, James, Jude,

                        Epistle of Barnabas, Shepherd of Hermas, Didache,

                                    Gospel According to Hebrews.

Finally, contrary to Mr. Brown’s fictional claims, Constantine and the Council of Nicea had nothing whatsoever to do with the final formulation of the New Testament canon.  In fact, no council or “word from on high” took that step in the early church.  Athanasius (296-373 AD), writing in a Paschal letter (367 AD), listed the 27 books we now recognize as being accepted by all Christians everywhere.  Augustine and Jerome also affirmed the same list in their writings.  Likewise, the later Synods of Hippo (393) and Carthage (397) also listed these same books, not in an official way of pronunciation but simply to record their established canonicity.

The Unchanging Witness

            Rather than being a weakness because we cannot boast that the New Testament was “faxed” to us or that it dropped out of the sky – claims which sound more like the ones the Mormons make about their book – the greater integrity can be laid to their charge because of their antiquity and accuracy, their years of testimony and trustworthiness, their power and their consistent message.  And far from having “evolved through countless translations, additions and revisions”, the multiple texts of the Scriptures not only trace back in time - even as far as 130 AD with the fragment of John’s gospel that resides in the John Rylands Library in Manchester, England – but also to give us an overwhelming confidence that by their collection and study we can know, to an extremely high degree, precisely what the originals said.

            Although there have been many attempts, some continuing even in our own day, to pollute and destroy the integrity of the New Testament Scriptures – by outright denying them or attempting to rewrite them to suit someone’s particular purposes, or simply to attempt to bring them into a “political correctness” (which is such a large pressure today), the true words of these ancient documents will be with us for all time if and when we take the time to appeal to their multiple and early witness. The call to guard the true Word of God will not be over until the Lord comes again.  But at the same time, he has not failed to leave us without a witness.

Bruce, F.F., The Books and the Parchments, Old Tappan, NJ:Revell Co. Publ., 1963.

Harris, R.L., Inspiration and Canonicity of the Bible, Grand Rapids:Zondervan, 1969.

David G. Barker, 2005