Biblical canon, how we got the Bible

OLD TESTAMENT CANON

  • The Old Testament was in use during the time of Jesus, Paul and the apostles and was referred to by them as the “Scripture” (Jn 7:42, Acts 8:32). It was a collection of scrolls (see Luke 4:17).
  • The Old Testament in use during the 1st century apparently consisted of the same 39 books that we use today in the Protestant and Jewish Bibles. The Jewish historian Josephus refers to them in the late 1st century in his writings. The Scripture was often referred to as the Law and the Prophets.
  • The prologue to Ecclestiacus, dated 132 B.C. refers to the Septuagint Bible as containing “the Law, the Prophets and other books of our fathers.” This was found in the Dead Sea Scrolls. The Septuagint was a Greek translation of the original Hebrew Bible produced by 70 Jewish scholars in Alexandria Egypt in about 270 B.C.
  • There did not appear to be a formal canonization process for the Old Testament but it seemed to come about through usage by devout Jews and was confirmed by the Council of Jamnia in 90 A.D. The process has God’s fingerprints all over it, but we can’t precisely trace the origin in detail.
  • It is impossible to verify all of the authors of the Old Testament books, except to note that Jesus himself and New Testament authors credit Moses with writing the books of Law (Mk 12:19), Daniel with writing his book (Matt 24:15) and Isaiah with writing his book (John 12:37-41). We also know that Moses wrote many things down since that is referred to over and over in the five books of Moses (Ex 17:14, 24:4-7, Num 33:2, Deut 31:24). We know that Moses was well educated (Acts 7:22). Remember that Moses lived about 1500 years before Jesus.
  • Chapter markings were not made until about 1250 A.D. and verses were not marked until about 1550 A.D. The Dead Sea Scrolls found in 1947 and dated to the 1st century contained parts of every Old Testament book except Esther. Some were nearly complete copies. The Latin Vulgate translation of the Old Testament was completed in 405 A.D. and used by the Catholics for well over 1000 years.

NEW TESTAMENT CANON​

  • There are fragments of New Testament books dating to as early as 125 A.D. There are no complete copies of the New Testament available that are dated earlier than the fifth/sixth centuries, but there are many copies available from about that time frame.
  • There is a list of authoritative New Testament books dating to about 150 A.D. which is nearly identical to those in the Protestant Bible. Generally speaking, from the earliest times, only books written and accepted in the apostolic era were considered inspired Scripture. There has apparently never been serious consideration given to including any books in the New Testament other than the 27 that we now have. However, several of the 27 were debated from time to time in the early church before they were accepted.
  • The Latin Vulgate was the translation of the Bible used by the Church (405 A.D.). Wycliffe translated the Vulgate into English in about 1380. It was copied by hand. The invention of the Gutenberg printing press in 1454 enabled the Bible to be made available to the masses for the first time, although the Church forbid it.
  • In 1530 Tyndale translated the Greek Bible into English. In 1534 the Church of England broke with the Catholic Church, making it possible for the first time for the Bible to be truly available to the masses. The King James version was completed in 1611 and relied about 90% on the Tyndale translation.
  • The terms New Testament and Old Testament have been used since the 2nd century.

THE ORIGIN AND DESIGN NATURE OF THE BIBLE

This section contains the following discussions concerning the supernatural origin and design of the Christian Bible:

Index