Development of the NT ‘Canon’ (collection of writings from God)

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1. Criteria for being included:

• Connection to the Apostles

• Doctrinal consistency with the Old Testament and the Apostles' teaching

• General Church usage and self-evidencing qualities- hearing God’s voice speak in them

• General Church consensus gradually grew as the individual writings were copied and became widely known, and this consensus was confirmed at councils of church leaders

 

2. Circulation of Documents- independently, gradually spread and acknowledged as ‘Scripture’, written by people moved by God to write, as with the Old Testament ‘Scriptures.

 

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NT Text Transmission and Preservation  (Has the text been changed?)  

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• The books of the New Testament were the most frequently copied and widely circulated books of ancient times.

  Existing NT Documents              Number        Dating

  Greek MSS (incl. lectionaries)       5000+        100 AD+

  Latin Vulgate                              10,0000+        400 AD+

  Others (Coptic, Syriac, etc.)           7000+        400 AD+

• The immense significance of the destruction of the Jewish Temple in 70 AD suggests that most, if not all, of the New Testament documents were written before that historic event.

• The number of textual variations (all trivial in nature) found in texts from as early as the late 2nd century point back to a very early date for the originals.

• There is remarkable agreement between the various existing New Testament manuscripts. The variations in the text among all of these manuscripts are very few and none are of a serious nature which would change any Christian doctrine/teaching. This points to both the existence of a common document as their source, and to the accuracy of the transmission.

• The writings of the early church leaders (“fathers”), such as Clement, Polycarp, Ignatius, Papias, Justin Martyr, and Irenaeus, show that the church was in possession of the same NT as ours at the beginning of the 2nd century. Their writings contain 36,000+ quotes from the NT and these include all except 11 verses!

• The continuity of the Church from Jesus and the Apostles to these early leaders by contemporary and overlapping lives, and the fact that the Apostolic writings were widely distributed and regularly read in worship, thus widely known, would have made it highly difficult for any changes to have been made to these documents.

• The church “fathers” and early Christians believed the Apostle’s writings to be Scripture–the Word of God–so they were extra cautious about proving their authenticity. Writings of people who were not Apostles, or close associates of Apostles, were not considered as God-inspired Scripture. Furthermore, it is reasonable to assume that the procedures for copying the NT documents would have been influenced by the extreme care shown by the Jews in copying the OT texts, to ensure God’s Word was being copied accurately.