A Firm Foundation 5

All right, everybody, let's get started.

Welcome.

We're talking about the reliability of the New Testament

in this kind of sub-series of our larger series about Scripture.

And we're in class two.

Last week, we talked about the preservation of the New Testament.

We spoke about how the New Testament has been extraordinarily preserved

throughout the centuries,

and thus ensuring that we have access to the original words of the apostles.

And then this week, today, we're going to be talking about the canonicity of the New Testament.

And with this, I'll answer questions like,

who decided what books were in the New Testament?

And how was the New Testament put together?

And what about all those false gospels we hear about sometimes?

Why aren't those in the Bible?

And then a couple weeks from now,

we're going to look at the accuracy of the New Testament,

and we'll talk about how the New Testament is historically reliable,

how it's true, and how it's trustworthy.

So that's what we're going to cover today.

Let's open in prayer together.

Father in heaven, we thank you for this opportunity to not just study your word,

but to learn about your word and how you saw fit to assemble it for us.

Father, we ask you to send your Holy Spirit into this time right now,

that you'd put him in our hearts to guide us into truth,

to encourage us,

and to move us closer to you,

and to help us to grow in your truth,

in knowledge of your word,

in love for you,

love for one another,

to grow in humility and gentleness of heart.

And we pray this in the mighty name of Jesus.

Amen.

All right.

So if you're like me,

you might have a lot of questions.

You might even have some concerns about how the Bible was put together.

You might sometimes wonder how things got in there.

What if someone messed up?

What if someone put things in the Bible that shouldn't be there,

or maybe took some things out that should be there?

And so today,

I want us to consider these questions

and look at the answers that we have for them.

And my hope is that after today,

you'll see a glimpse of how God has worked by his Holy Spirit

to not just inspire and preserve the New Testament,

but also to assemble it and to put it together.

And so before we talk about that,

before we talk about how the New Testament was assembled and formed and put together,

I first just need to give a brief word about what the New Testament is made up of.

The New Testament is a collection of 27 books and letters

that were written under the authority of Jesus's apostles.

These apostles, these disciples of Jesus were commissioned by him.

He gave authority to them to teach and to preach his gospel

and to explain Christian doctrine.

Now, there's a lot of misconceptions

or even false theories about how these apostolic documents

were assembled into the New Testament.

And you've likely heard some of these misconceptions or theories.

You might even believe some of these things.

And so I think it'd be good to start our time off

by going through some of these misconceptions

or false theories about how the Bible got put together.

And so we're going to do that first.

We're going to start by just going through some of these that you hear about,

and I'll address each one in turn.

So perhaps the one that I'll talk about first,

I call this one the Bible drop down from heaven theory.

And most people, they don't often put it in so many words,

even if this is kind of what they believe.

But basically, this theory assumes that the Bible was created outside of time,

outside of history, without human hands,

and just presented to us on earth in a nice, neat little package.

And this is actually, substantively,

the theory for other holy books of other religions.

So for instance, the Quran, the holy text in Islam,

Muslims traditionally believe that it was written on tablets in heaven

and then brought down to earth,

where Muhammad, their prophet, memorized it and then presented it.

Mormons believe this about the Book of Mormon,

that Joseph Smith found some gold tablets that were written,

and he transcribed them and presented this Book of Mormon.

But this is, of course, not how the Bible was written.

And the Bible is very clear on this.

If you just glance at it, you'll see that the Bible was written by humans

and in human history.

It's made up of dozens of different books,

written by many different authors living in hundreds,

if not thousands, of miles apart,

and hundreds, if not thousands, of years apart as well.

And God saw fit to inspire prophets over the ages to write his word.

And because God is a God of love who delights in humans,

who delights in his children,

he welcomed them to become part of this process of writing scripture

and inspired some of these prophets.

And that's where our Bible comes from today.

So this whole theory of the Bible kind of drop down from heaven theory,

it's not really an accurate way to understand how the Bible was put together.

A second common false view is, I call this the conspiracy view.

This view maintains that sometime in the early 4th century,

maybe 300 years after Jesus,

the Roman Emperor Constantine or an early Pope,

they plotted or they colluded to manufacture the New Testament.

Constantine, of course, is known as the first Christian emperor of Rome.

He came to power in the early 300s.

And the running assumption behind this theory,

you'll find this in popular culture sometimes,

is that Constantine and this early Pope were pretty bad guys,

and they're sitting in some smoke-filled room colluding,

and they put stuff in the Bible that shouldn't be there,

and they took stuff out that should have been in there,

probably while committing all sorts of other horrible crimes.

And if any of you are familiar with the Da Vinci Code,

it was popular some years ago,

the author Dan Brown posits this very theory.

But, of course, neither Constantine nor an early Pope

decided what was in the Bible.

This is, in fact, so false,

it's hard to believe it has much currency today.

There's simply no evidence that Constantine or an early Pope

ever decided what was in the New Testament,

and there's a whole lot of evidence against it.

In fact, even if Constantine or some early Pope

did try and decide what was in the New Testament,

their power only extended to Roman territory.

And by the 4th century,

Christianity was so far widespread

beyond the Roman Empire,

which you can see there in red or pink,

that even if they had decided this,

they had no power over the Sassanian Empire

in the East or Ethiopia in the South.

There was no phone lines.

They couldn't pick up a phone

and tell people what was in their Bible.

And even if they did, they would have been ignored

because these folks are in other power centers

far removed from Rome.

And in fact, we do have some later examples

in the 4th and 5th century

of Christians in these areas

specifically ignoring what Roman Christians were doing.

And so this theory of an early Pope

or Bishop of Rome

or an early Roman Emperor colluding to manufacture,

it's just not true.

They didn't decide what was in the New Testament.

So that's another misconception,

another false theory about how the Bible got put together.

But let's keep moving.

Let's talk about a third theory.

This one I call the Ecumenical Church Council Theory.

So this theory maintains

that there was some ecumenical church council,

by ecumenical, I mean universal or worldwide.

And this council happened sometime way back in antiquity.

And this council had representatives

from all the churches of the world.

And this council codified the contents of the New Testament.

Well, many Christians will be surprised to learn

that this is not true.

There was no ecumenical worldwide church council

that ratified the contents of the New Testament

or decided what books were in it.

There were, of course,

various smaller local regional councils

that sometimes issued New Testament lists

way back in antiquity.

But these had limited influence

just to their general area.

And so there was no worldwide council

that had some kind of binding power

that decided what was in the New Testament.

The closest we can come to is something like this,

the Council of Trulow in Constantinople in 692.

This was a large council.

It did issue some edicts about the contents

of the New Testament.

But the problem with the Council of Trulow,

it was only a Roman council.

Only the Roman Empire really accepted this.

And as I've already shown,

Christianity was far, far more widespread

than the Roman Empire.

We could say the same thing

about the Second Council of Nicaea in 787 CE.

They did the same thing.

But again, just a Roman council.

If we go earlier, like the Council of Hippo in 393,

Hippo is kind of a funny name, I know.

That's where Augustine was bishop back in 393.

They did issue a list of New Testament books as well.

And they're, of course, much earlier.

But again, this was a regional council.

It was even smaller than the Roman Empire.

It was just Northwest Africa.

So this theory, the ecumenical church council theory,

it's an attractive theory.

But it's also not true.

Now, this next theory has probably the most truth to it

of the ones that we've looked at.

This theory states that the apostles

collected the New Testament.

So according to this theory,

the apostles of Jesus,

they not only supervised the writing of the New Testament,

they also helped collect the New Testament documents

and assemble them together in a single book.

Sometimes you hear, for example,

that John, the apostle John, the son of Zebedee,

the last surviving disciple of Jesus

and author of the book of Revelation,

sometimes you hear that he was responsible

for sealing the New Testament.

And some people find evidence for this

with John's last words

in the last verses of the New Testament,

where he says in the book of Revelation,

if anyone adds to these things,

God will add to him the plagues

that are written in this book.

And if anyone takes away from the words

of the book of this prophecy,

God shall take away his part from the book of life

and from the holy city

and from the things which are written in this book.

Now, there is good reason to believe

that John and other apostles

did help assemble at least part of the New Testament.

For example, the ancient Christian writer Eusebius,

he's writing around the year 311.

He's famous for kind of being the father of history.

He was a fantastic historian.

He writes that the apostle John

accepted the other three gospels

by Matthew, Mark, and Luke,

and that he bore witness to their truthfulness.

And then he wrote his fourth gospel,

the gospel of John,

as a supplement to the other three.

And certainly it seems probable

that the apostles did play a role

in gathering the New Testament together.

Not just John, but for instance,

the second letter of Peter,

he talks about Paul's letters.

He mentions them as scripture.

Peter seems to be affirming these letters

as something that Christians should obey

and consider as the inspired word of God.

Peter also mentions Mark

as being a very faithful Christian.

Mark, of course, wrote the gospel of Mark.

And in fact, an early Christian writer named Papias,

writing around the year 115 AD,

he tells us that Mark recorded Peter's preaching

and that Peter approved of it

and that that's what the gospel of Mark is.

So Peter and John seem to have played some kind of role.

Paul, the apostle,

he also seems to have played a role

in the collection of his own letters

or at least some of his followers,

maybe Timothy or Silas did.

Paul also in 1 Timothy,

I believe it's 1 Timothy 5, 17 through 18,

he seems to call the gospel of Luke scripture.

He seems to be affirming the gospel of Luke

as part of scripture.

So this theory that the apostles played a significant role

in collecting and assembling the documents

of the New Testament,

this is a very reasonable theory.

They clearly played a large role in that.

But we don't have any explicit evidence

that one or some of the apostles

collected all 27 books of the New Testament.

And it would seem likely

that early Christian writings

would mention this fact if it had happened,

but they don't insofar as I'm aware.

And there's also a problem

in that it seems like probably the last book

to be written was the book of Revelation by John.

But John wrote this when he was in exile on an island

and there were other apostles

scattered around the whole world.

It almost seems like they wouldn't have had an opportunity

to collect all these things before they passed away,

at least the final documents that were written.

So definitely it seems like the apostles

played a significant role,

but that's not the whole story.

So if this is the case,

who decided what was in the New Testament?

How did it come to include the 27 books

that we have today?

At some point,

or at this point, I should say,

some people start scratching their heads

and begin wondering what other options

are even available

if these four theories aren't the whole truth.

Well, the answer is, I think,

a wonderful testimony to God's guiding spirit

throughout the history of the church.

And here's the answer.

The answer of how the New Testament was assembled

is that it was not assembled

in one place or time by one person or group.

Rather, the New Testament was assembled

by various churches throughout history,

relatively independently of one another,

and it was done so many times.

Many times, and this all began

in the very early church of the second century.

Back then, when these churches were gathering

the contents of the New Testament,

they all had one overriding factor.

They wanted to identify documents

that were published by the apostles

or were published with their supervision.

And from the very beginning,

there was broad agreement

over what these documents included,

and any disagreements were met

with careful consideration,

with prayer, and with research.

And the remarkable, perhaps even this stunning result,

is that every ancient Christian community

eventually came to use

the very same 27-book New Testament

that we have today.

In other words, the same New Testament

remarkably emerged in multiple churches

relatively independently of one another,

just like how God used multiple people

over many countries and many languages

to write his Bible,

he also used many people over many countries

to put it together.

Now, you might be a little skeptical about this,

so I think it might be helpful

if I showed you what this process

of putting the New Testament together looks like.

So that's what we'll do right now.

To do this,

I want us to travel back in time,

just about 2,000 years

to the very beginning of the Christian church,

to those first few decades

after the resurrection of Jesus,

when the apostles are traveling around the world

and preaching the gospel of salvation.

And if we go to, say, 45 AD,

let's say to ancient Corinth,

and if we peek in on a church service

at this time in the church of Corinth,

we'll notice something about their Bible.

We'll notice that in 45 AD,

they didn't have a New Testament,

and that's because the New Testament didn't exist yet.

It hadn't been written yet.

These very first Christians,

like those in Corinth,

they did not have the New Testament

because, like I said,

the apostles hadn't started writing it yet.

The scriptures that they held to

were the Old Testament.

The earliest New Testament scriptures

were written within a few years of 50 AD or so,

and so in 45 AD,

none of them had been written yet.

It's only 15 years or so,

maybe even less after the resurrection of Jesus,

and so this church is using the Old Testament.

But if we stick around in Corinth long enough

and keep going to their church services

faithfully every Sunday,

there will eventually come a day

when the Corinthians get a letter

from a guy named the Apostle Paul.

And we now call this letter 1 Corinthians,

and it's in our New Testament today.

And because in 45 AD,

Paul was an apostle of Jesus,

commissioned by Jesus to have great authority

to preach and to teach,

the Corinthians get this letter

and they start reading Paul's letter aloud

in their church services

alongside the Old Testament.

And this is actually something

Paul instructed them to do.

In some of his letters,

he says,

make sure you read this out loud

in your church service.

And the Corinthians then start sending this letter

around to their neighboring churches

in Greece,

in Philippi,

in Thessalonica,

which is, again,

something Paul told his churches to do.

And those churches in Thessalonica

and Philippi

begin sending the Corinthians

their letters from apostles,

which we now call

1 and 2 Thessalonians

and Philippians.

And all of a sudden,

perhaps without them even realizing it,

the New Testament is being born.

And over the next 30 or 40 years,

various apostles wrote or supervised

the composition of New Testament documents.

And over these decades and afterwards,

Christians began exchanging

and verifying these documents

to make sure they actually came

from the apostles.

And sometimes churches would find

that a document they had accepted

as being apostolic really wasn't.

And they would reject it.

We actually have witnesses of this

in the New Testament,

in 2 Thessalonians,

when Paul says,

don't be troubled by a letter

as if from me

saying that the day of the Lord has come.

Don't believe it.

And so he's giving them instructions

on like,

you got to test these documents, people.

Now, this process of gathering

and evaluating and verifying

the documents,

documents is apostolic.

This took some time.

This is in part because

the Christian church expanded so rapidly

over many thousands of miles

that it was often difficult

to communicate with one another.

It's easy when you're all hanging out

in Greece and Macedonia,

like these three churches

you see on the screen.

But by 200 AD,

the Christian church

had spread to Spain,

to Northwest Africa,

to Great Britain,

to France,

to Germany,

to Asia Minor,

and Greece,

and to Egypt,

to what we start calling

Mesopotamia,

the Middle East,

to Persia,

even into Central Asia,

Nubia,

Ethiopia,

all the way to Western China,

and even Northwest India

by 200 AD.

And so,

it took quite some time

for these apostolic documents

to be distributed

and translated

into all these various languages.

Remember,

there was no email,

no printing press,

no typewriter,

things like that.

So,

things did take a bit of time.

But,

what we can say

is that the early churches

had broad agreement

on the contents

of the New Testament,

and though it took some time

for things

to settle down,

they eventually did arrive

on complete agreement

about what the New Testament

would look like.

And if you're curious,

we can observe

this agreement

emerging for ourselves.

if we can go back

and canvas

early Christian writings

in the 2nd through 3rd centuries

and see these discussions

over the New Testament

taking place

and watch this general agreement

arise for ourselves.

So,

just like how we went back

to 45 AD

to check out

the Church of Corinth,

we can go to 175 AD

and start canvassing

Christian documents

to see what their New Testament

was like

and see what their New Testament

included.

So,

for instance,

in 175 AD,

there's a document

called the Muratorian Fragment.

It's from Rome

and it contains

a discussion

of the New Testament,

of what their New Testament is.

Now,

unfortunately,

this document

is very old

and we're missing

the beginning of it

and probably the end of it.

So,

it's not a complete

discussion

of the New Testament.

In fact,

it begins

with this half-broken sentence

and then says,

the third gospel

is Luke.

Well,

if you,

so we know they had,

we know they had

two other ones.

Then they have Luke

and then they talk about John.

So,

we know there were four gospels.

There was Luke,

there was John

and then the little

half sentence

really implies its mark.

It doesn't have the name mark

in it,

but what it's talking about

really implies mark.

So,

anyway,

if we go through this document,

we can chart out

what their New Testament

looked like

and I have this

on the screen here.

I know this is small font,

but I wanted to get

the whole New Testament

on here.

On the left-hand side,

you see a list

of New Testament books

in canonical order

from Matthew down to Revelation

and then in the second column,

it's a chart

of the Muratorian fragment

and what documents

this fragment includes

as part of its New Testament

and if it has the letter C

in one of its rows,

that means there's a direct

citation of this document

and you'll notice some things.

First of all,

they have a large chunk

of our New Testament.

Now,

like I said,

it's missing the beginning,

but it's reasonable to think

that they had Matthew and Mark.

We can't be 100% sure,

but they certainly had Luke,

John,

Acts,

and the letters of Paul.

They had 1st and 2nd John.

They have Jude and Revelation.

You'll notice that

I've got some question marks here

on 1st and 2nd Peter

and we don't have anything

for Hebrews and James.

This is because

these documents

are not mentioned,

but remember,

we're missing

the whole document.

So we don't have

the whole list.

We have part of the list

and the document

doesn't talk about

the New Testament books

in the same order

that we have them today.

For instance,

it talks about 1st John

with the Gospel of John.

So there's a chance

and I think a fairly

reasonable one

that it talked about

1st Peter,

maybe 2nd Peter

when it was speaking

about Mark

because Mark

was the interpreter

of Peter

and recorded Peter's statements.

Same with Hebrews and James.

Matthew is the Gospel

that's often written.

It's thought of

as a Jewish Gospel.

It's written for the Jews

and Hebrews and James

are the two letters

that are written

to Jews specifically.

So it's possible

that when it spoke

about Matthew,

it was also speaking

about Hebrews and James.

We're not sure.

I have a question mark

by 3rd John.

That's because

there's some ambiguity.

It mentions multiple letters

of John

but it doesn't say

how many.

So is it 2?

Is it 3?

We don't really know.

But what you can see

is that this New Testament,

the core of the New Testament

of this community

is exactly the same

as ours

and if we had

the whole list,

it might have been

exactly the same.

We don't know.

There may be

some extraneous

minor differences

but we're not sure.

So we just peeked in

one church

around 175 in Rome

but we can keep doing this.

We can do this

for 185

with a theologian

named Irenaeus.

He wrote this wonderful

book of theology.

It's actually

the first

comprehensive theology,

a book of theology

that we have

from a Christian

and he's writing

in France

in 185

and we can go through

this book of theology

and just see

what does he cite

from the New Testament

and try and come up

with what his New Testament

looked like.

So we have this list

from the Muratorian fragment

and we can add this one

from Irenaeus

and we'll see that

he's got Matthew, Mark, Luke,

John, Acts, Romans,

all the letters of Paul

except he doesn't mention

Philemon.

He also has 1 and 2 John,

1 Peter, Revelation.

You'll notice though,

like I said,

he doesn't mention Philemon,

he doesn't mention 3 John,

he doesn't mention Jude

but remember that Irenaeus

is not giving us

a list of New Testament books.

He's just writing

a work of theology,

citing the New Testament

whenever it's relevant

and you'll notice something

about Philemon

and 3 John and Jude

is they're really,

really tiny.

They're only a paragraph

or two long

and you've got to write

a lot of theology

before you have

an opportunity

to mention these books.

So it's not that

we think these were

out of his New Testament,

they very well could have been

in his New Testament,

we just don't know.

He didn't happen

to cite them in this book.

I've got a question mark

with Hebrews.

He definitely knows Hebrews

but we're not sure

if he included it

in his New Testament

or not

but we know he's aware of it.

I have a question mark

with James and 2 Peter

and that's because

he seems to quote them

but it's not certain.

You know,

sometimes people will just

take a lot of language

from a New Testament book

but not say,

oh, this is from James

and that seems to be

like he's doing

what he's doing

but we're not totally sure.

Nevertheless,

his New Testament

looks an awful lot

like ours.

Maybe if we could have

had him make a list

it would have been

exactly like ours.

We just don't know.

Also,

Irenaeus is very clear.

He says elsewhere

that there are only

four Gospels.

He also says

that New Testament documents

need to come

from the Apostles

and be written

under their supervision.

So he gives us

kind of this broad outline

of what the New Testament

should contain.

But let's keep going.

We can do this same project

with a theologian

named Tertullian

in 200 A.D.

in Northwest Africa

writing in Latin.

So we're on another continent now

and his New Testament

is very similar.

Now remember,

Tertullian,

he's not giving us a list.

He's just writing

some theology

but he's got

most of

what our New Testament

has today.

He has 1 Peter,

he has 1 John,

he has Jude,

he does mention Jude,

he mentions Revelation.

He is missing

some things

like James

and 2 Peter,

2 and 3 John

but again,

we don't know

if those were omitted

or if he just

never had reason

to quote from them.

We can't be sure.

Let's keep going.

We'll go to

same time frame,

200 A.D.

in Egypt,

a guy named Clement

of Alexandria,

another theologian.

So this is thousands

of miles away

from Tertullian

writing in a different language.

What does he have?

Well,

if we add him,

we see that he quotes

from all 27 books

of the New Testament

and we see this again

around 200,

230 A.D.

This is when

the old Latin translation

of the Bible

was commissioned.

We're not entirely sure

of the date.

I said 230

to be conservative.

It could easily

be earlier than that.

It could easily be 200

or 180 or something.

But this was,

as far as we know,

the first full-scale

translation

of the New Testament

into another language.

There certainly

were smaller

translations beforehand.

You know,

someone takes

a quick letter

and makes a translation

of it.

This seems to be

the first full-scale

one that we're aware of.

And scholars

have to do a lot of work

to try and piece together

what was included

in this full-scale

translation.

And it seems

like the Old Latin

included all 27 books

of the New Testament

around 230 A.D.

We've got one more guy

we're going to check out.

This is further east

in Caesarea Palestine,

a theologian named

Origen in 245.

Origen gives us

the first complete list

of New Testament books.

Remember,

we did have a list

in the Muratorian fragment

in 175,

but it wasn't complete.

We're missing part of it.

Origen gives us

the first list.

And if you look

at his list,

his list includes

all 27 books

that we have

in our New Testament.

Now,

some scholars debate

if this list

has been properly preserved,

but what we can say

for certain

is that

if we go manually

through Origen's writings,

he does mention

all 27 books

of the New Testament.

So even if his list

has been

not preserved properly,

we do know

he was aware

of all 27 books

in the New Testament.

So,

all of those

were in Latin

or Greek.

So,

Irenaeus

is writing in France,

he's writing in Greek,

Tertullian

is writing in Latin,

Clement is Greek,

the Old Latin Bible

is Latin,

Origen is Greek,

and the Muratorian fragment,

it's in Latin.

Some people think

it was originally Greek

and it was translated,

but we only have it

in Latin today.

Were there any

additional books

that they mentioned?

Oh,

great.

Yes,

I'm going to be getting

to that in a little bit.

Yes,

yes,

yes,

there were.

And we'll talk about that

in just a moment.

Amos.

I have a question.

Are there,

like,

comparable lists

from outside

the Roman Empire?

Not yet.

Not yet at this point.

Outside the Roman Empire.

Now,

remember,

Christianity is still,

at this point,

a persecuted group.

And so,

there is no political authority

to control the Bible.

So,

this is well before

Christianity came to power

in the Roman Empire.

So,

these are all happening

somewhat independently

of one another.

And in fact,

Tertullian,

he ended up separating

from the Roman Church

over a matter

of doctrine.

Not a core

theological doctrine,

but he separated.

So,

some of these,

some of these people

are not even part

of necessarily

the same Christian community,

even though

they all have

the same statement of faith.

I mean,

we would,

if we read his confession

of faith with these others,

we would agree with them all.

Does that help?

So,

at this point,

we don't have a list

outside of the Roman Empire

yet.

So,

we could keep doing this

over decades and centuries.

And like I said,

we would eventually see

all the ancient churches

clustering

around 27 documents

that we have today

in our New Testament.

And,

like I said,

there's two remarkable

things about this.

One is that

there was very early

agreement

within the contents

of the New Testament,

as you can see

on the screen.

Secondly,

is like I said,

eventually all the churches

with ancient roots

came to agree

on this 27-book New Testament.

It did take

a long time

in some places,

particularly the places

that were farther flung

from where the original

locations of these documents

were written.

But,

eventually,

they all ended up agreeing.

So,

to sum up,

the

assembly of the New Testament,

this New Testament

did not fall out of heaven.

There was no conspiracy theory.

There was no single

ecumenical council.

There really was actually

no single uniting factor

other than the Holy Spirit.

And,

the Holy Spirit

guided the apostles

to write the New Testament

and to begin assembling it.

And then,

their later churches

they left behind,

independently of one another,

somewhat,

investigated and tested

which documents

were apostolic.

And,

eventually,

everyone arrived

at the same 27-book New Testament,

even if it took

a long time

in some places.

So,

some of you might still

have some questions.

Like,

what New Testament books

were controversial?

Was there any books

in the New Testament today

that the ancient church

maybe was a little

uncomfortable about?

Well,

we could make a list of these

and I've done that for you.

And,

these are the books

that when you go back

and you read

the early debates,

these are the books

that are in our New Testament today

that sometimes you'll find

an ancient Christian

disagreed with.

And,

I'm going to address

each of these in turn.

So,

Hebrews.

Hebrews was suspicious

in the Latin church

for a little bit.

It was not suspicious

in the Greek church.

But,

in the Latin church it was

and it was because

it was anonymous.

They wanted to make sure

that this was written

under apostolic authority

and so,

some of them

were a little suspicious

of it.

Interestingly,

Hebrews actually has

some of the earliest

attestation

of any

New Testament document.

There's a Christian

writing in 96 A.D.

who is aware

of the letter

of Hebrews.

So,

it has very early

attestation.

I'm actually encouraged

that the early church

took authorship

so seriously

that they didn't just

want to throw everything

in just because

they liked it.

James also

took some time.

Now,

there's a good reason

for this.

If you read

James,

it's addressed

to the 12 tribes

of Israel,

to the Jews.

And the evidence

we have from

the early church

is almost entirely

from Gentile churches.

The Romans,

the Greeks,

the Egyptians,

the Northwest Africans.

And so,

in other words,

this letter

wasn't actually

written to them

initially.

And it makes sense

that it would just

take some time

to percolate

and for them

to come

to accept it.

The next letters,

2 Peter,

2 John,

3 John,

Jude,

they all share

the characteristic

of being pretty short.

They're very short.

And so,

some of,

like that guy

I mentioned,

Eusebius,

who's writing

around the year 300,

he's investigating

these things

and he reports,

he's like,

you know,

2 Peter,

2 John,

3 John,

Jude,

they're not mentioned

a whole lot

in the super ancient

Christian writings

and we saw that

in our chart.

And the reason why

may simply have just been

that they were just

so short.

You've got to listen

to a lot of sermons,

you've got to read

a lot of theology

before you find citations

of 3 John

and 2 John

and Jude.

And we actually

can test this

if we look at

Augustine's writings,

Augustine,

St. Augustine,

he's writing around

the year 400.

We know what his

New Testament contained

because he tells us,

he gives us a list.

He also attended

a council that he headed

that also issued a list.

He has a 27 book

New Testament.

Augustine wrote

5 million words.

He wrote an enormous amount.

It's the equivalent

of writing a 300 page book

every year for 40 years.

And if you go through

his 5 million writings,

you find that he only quotes

from 2 and 3 John

like once or twice,

which means he's only

quoting from them,

you know,

once every one or 2 million

words that he writes.

That's a lot of words.

And in the early church,

we don't even have

5 million words

from the early church

when you combine it

all together.

So there's good reasons

why these smaller documents

may not have come up

as much.

The last one,

Revelation,

the last one

was actually

not controversial

in the early church.

The early church

universally accepted this.

It is quoted constantly

in Latin and in Greek

from the very beginning

of the 2nd century

and all throughout

the 3rd century.

The problem with Revelation

is that in the 4th

and 5th century,

some Christians,

it kind of fell out of favor

to be honest.

And some Christians

started removing it

from their New Testament.

So it wasn't controversial

in the early church.

In the later church,

it was controversial

in certain churches,

but then eventually

came back in.

So those were the books

that are in our New Testament

today that met

with some controversy

at some points.

But what about books

that almost made it

into the Bible

but didn't?

What about those?

I'm interested in those.

Well, I guess in a way,

I would say there's actually

no book that almost made it in

but didn't.

There were some books, though,

that some people thought

should be in at some point,

but many people didn't.

And so in other words,

there are some texts

that some early Christian churches

included,

but I would not say

most of them did.

It was not like they almost

made it in but didn't.

It's just that maybe

there'd be some churches

that were reading this,

but most weren't.

And here they are.

These are books like this,

The Epistle of Barnabas.

I'm going to talk about

each one of these in turn.

First Clement.

It's a letter

by a guy named Clement.

A book called

The Shepherd of Hermas.

A document called

The Gospel of the Hebrews.

And another document

called The Dietessaron.

Now you're looking

at the Epistle of Barnabas

and you're like,

I've heard that guy before.

And that's because

Barnabas is in the Bible.

He's one of the early

followers of the apostles.

He's called an apostle

sometimes.

And this letter,

it's a long letter.

It's an early Christian letter.

It probably comes

from the year 100 or 120.

But it's not by Barnabas.

It doesn't claim

to be by Barnabas either.

But later Christians,

some of them said

he wrote it

and some Christians,

a minority,

included it

within their New Testament.

But scholars are united today

that Barnabas did not write this.

It's not.

It's post-70 AD,

probably 100, 120 AD.

And it's not from Barnabas.

First Clement is another one.

This is a letter of Clement.

I mentioned it earlier

where Clement mentions Hebrews

and Clement wrote

around 95 AD.

And Clement was a disciple

of the apostles.

He was a priest in Rome.

He writes a letter

to the Corinthians.

It's like a kind of a sequel

to 1st and 2nd Corinthians.

He writes a letter to them.

And some Christians

had his letter

in their New Testament.

They're like,

you know,

he was a disciple

of the apostles.

Mark and Luke

were disciples of the apostles.

It's a pretty good letter too.

I like it.

It's a good thing though

that it's not

in the New Testament.

And that's because

it was not written

with apostolic oversight.

It was written

after the apostles

had passed away.

And by the way,

Clement is not writing this

as claiming it's scripture.

He's just writing

a letter to the Corinthians.

And the Corinthians

really liked it.

They, for instance,

seemed to have read it

in their church services

publicly for decades afterwards.

But there were

a few other communities

that included it

in their New Testament,

but most didn't.

Shepherd of Hermas.

This is a weird one, guys.

It's a weird one.

There's a scholar

who talks about,

there's a few churches

who would read this publicly

and there's a scholar

who said that he pitied them,

that they had to listen to this.

This is probably

from the year like 150 AD.

We still have it.

You can read it.

It's probably written

around the year 150.

For some reason,

it really caught on

in some churches.

And for instance,

Irenaeus,

whom,

whom,

let's see,

do I have a church?

Yeah.

Irenaeus,

he liked it.

He quotes from it.

He might have even included it

in his Bible.

However,

the Muratorian fragment

and Tertullian

both mention it

and they both say,

no, no, no, no, no.

No, this is not part

of the New Testament.

And it eventually,

it fell out.

Gospel of Hebrews.

Yes,

Gospel of Hebrews

was included

by some Christians.

Don't let that alarm you.

The Gospel of Hebrews

seems to be just

a Hebrew version

of the Gospel of Matthew.

Remember I said

that Matthew was written

for the Jews

and it seems to be

a Hebrew version of Matthew

that for whatever reason

had some changes

here and there.

So like the man

with the withered hand,

the story of Jesus healing

the man with the withered hand,

it gives his name,

for instance,

or at least tells his trade.

I can't remember

if it's both.

But little changes

like that.

So sometimes,

so it seems to have been

some version of Matthew,

not all that different.

The last one

was the Diatessalon.

This was a huge account

of Jesus' life.

Some of the Eastern churches

had this in their New Testament.

But the Diatessalon,

it means through four.

And what that was,

was just the four Gospels,

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John,

knit together

into a single narrative.

So instead of the four

separated Gospels,

they had this one Gospel

where a man named Tation

took the four Gospels

and put them all together.

So in a way,

it's different

from what we have today.

But in another way,

it's like really similar.

It's not this far off,

outlandish kind of thing

that gives a completely

different picture of Jesus.

Does that make sense?

Okay, so those were

the books that,

you know,

some Christians considered

as authoritative,

others didn't.

Here's another question.

How long until the 27 Book New Testament

was universally accepted?

How long did it take

for the 27 Book New Testament

to become universally accepted?

Well, as I've showed,

we do start having churches

embracing a 27 Book New Testament

very early on.

And even in the earlier stages,

it may have happened.

Remember,

we can't be sure

that this is the complete

New Testament

of these earlier churches

represented by the

Muratorian Fragment

or Irenaeus or Tertullian.

We know that in 245,

there were churches

that seemed to have

a 27 Book New Testament.

There were many.

But how long did this take

to become universally accepted?

Well, the answer to this

is complicated.

And it depends on what area

of the world,

the Christian world

you're talking about.

So for instance,

in Rome,

the 27 Book New Testament

seems to have been embraced

very early on in the 200s.

Same with Western Europe,

same with Northwest Africa,

same with Egypt.

We don't know a lot

about Cyprus,

but we do have a list

of New Testament books

from the mid to late 300s.

It's 27 books.

But then things are

a little different

in other parts of the world.

In Asia Minor

and in Palestine,

we do have some evidence

of 27 books,

but we also have evidence

that there were churches

that were uncomfortable

with the book of Revelation.

This is where we first

start seeing that discomfort.

And what's ironic

is that earlier

in the history

of these churches,

in the 100s and 200s,

they did accept Revelation.

But then it kind of

fell under suspicion.

So those churches

seem to have,

I guess,

what we'd call

like a 26 book

or 27 book New Testament.

It depended

what time you're talking about.

Sometimes they had Revelation

and sometimes they didn't.

Things get more diverse

as we go farther east,

especially when we start

getting to the area

of the Roman Empire

that's overlapping

with the Syriac church.

Syriac is a language

that was anciently spoken

around here

in what is today

Iraq and Syria.

They had what I guess

I would call

a smaller New Testament

in that those books

that I put up on the screen

that said they were controversial

like 2 John,

3 John,

Jude,

they excluded those

from their New Testament

originally.

And they did that

for hundreds of years.

In around 500 AD,

they commissioned

a new translation

of the scriptures

into Syriac

that did have

all 27 books.

And then in 600 AD,

another translation

into Syriac

that also had

all 27 books.

But those translations

didn't totally catch on

for quite some time.

It took a very long time

for all the Syriac churches

to eventually embrace

this 27 book New Testament.

We could go to Armenia

and Georgia.

They follow kind of

a similar pattern,

although they're more quick

to get to the kind of

26 slash 27 book New Testament.

Revelation took the longest here

in Armenia and Georgia.

We go farther

into Ethiopia,

into the Persian

and Parthian Empire.

And things start

taking longer.

And for instance,

this church here

took hundreds

and hundreds

and hundreds of years

to finally adopt

a 27 book New Testament.

Interestingly,

they were a great

missionary church

and they had

a large mission

in China.

and we have

an inscription

from this mission

in the 700s.

And they do have

a 27 book New Testament,

it looks like.

But for some reason,

this area

took a very long time.

So long

that it took

until basically

the printing press

for them

to finally

catch on to that.

And that may be true,

that seems to be true

in Georgia also,

the country of Georgia

which is up here.

But eventually,

they all came

to agree on this.

Okay.

So,

I have another question.

What about those

heretics I hear about

all the time?

What about them?

Well,

that's a great question.

Some of you hear

about heretical

early Christians

that have a very different,

they have other

New Testament documents

like the Gospel of Mary

and the Gospel of Truth

and the Gospel of Judas

and the Gospel of Philip

and the Gospel of so-and-so.

What about them?

What if they're right?

What if we're wrong?

That's important

for us to figure out.

And so,

what I want to do

is I want to examine

early Christian

heretical sects

to see what

their New Testament

contained

and see if it had

big differences

and maybe

and if those differences

are important

and if they are,

are they right?

Are these other

heretical Christian groups

right and we're wrong?

This is important

to figure out.

So,

what we're going to do

is we're going to examine

some early Christian

heretical sects

to see what their

New Testament contained

and while we're doing that,

we're also going to figure out

on our own

which writings

we think

come from

an apostle

because

what if the early church

was wrong?

What if they made a mistake?

So,

we're going to try

and do this

for ourselves.

We're going to go

through some heretical

writings,

look at them

and then we're going

to come up

with the 27

or whatever number

it is,

books in a New Testament

that come from

an apostle.

So,

let's do this.

First thing to know

about some,

about early Christian heretics

is that

early Christian heretical sects,

they made up

a small minority

of Christians.

The majority of Christians

in the early centuries

followed

the mainstream church

and this church

spanned thousands of miles,

dozens of cultures,

many languages

and it was directly linked

to the apostles.

So,

there's good reasons

why we want to trust

those people

instead of the other folks.

But,

let's,

for sake of argument,

let's just look at

what the heretics

believed about

the New Testament

and see what

their New Testament

looked like.

So,

the most prevalent

heretical sects

in the ancient church

were as follows.

You have the Montanists

who were largely

in Asia Minor,

the Novationists

in Italy,

the Donatists

in northwest Africa

and then the Arians

who were all over

but they were largely

in Germany

and in Egypt.

And when you look

at these heretical groups,

we have writings

preserved

from all of these

and when you look

at them

and you try

and see

what their New Testament

looked like,

you'll discover

that they accepted

the very same

New Testament

that the mainstream

church did.

Their debates

with the mainstream

church had nothing

to do with

what scriptures

were accepted

and had everything

to do with

how to interpret

the scriptures.

And in fact,

several of these groups,

the Montanists,

the Novationists,

and the Donatists

actually had this

same confession

of faith.

Their split

from the church

wasn't really

even theological.

It was more

practical

or praxis related.

They didn't want

to be,

the Novationists

and the Donatists

didn't want

to be associated

with an official

church in Rome

and the Montanists

had a very high

regard for the

current inspiration

of the Holy Spirit.

They're like

modern Pentecostals

today,

a very extreme

form of Pentecostalism

and the mainstream

church thought

they went too far

but they're preaching

the same core doctrines

as the church.

Question?

Cathars,

when did they go?

Oh, the Cathars,

they're much later.

They're like 1100,

1200.

Yeah,

they're much later.

Unless,

unless they're,

some people argue

there could be

some kind of

ancient link

with the Donatists

and the Novationists

but they're much later.

So, okay,

but what about

those heretics

that had a different

New Testament?

Well,

the group that was

the largest

that had a different

New Testament

is called the Marcionites.

They were founded

by a man named Marcion

around the year 140.

Their Bible was

very different

from our Bible

and the reason why

their Bible

was very different

was because

they rejected

every biblical writing

that was Jewish

and,

if you think about it,

that's almost everything.

So,

they rejected

the entire

Old Testament.

They rejected

almost the entire

New Testament

because these books

were written by Jews

and for Jews.

The only books

they accepted

was the Gospel of Luke

because Luke

was a Gentile

and they accepted

most of the letters