In our continuing series, we will now look on the development of the New Testament Cannon.
According to most Bible scholars we have a better idea on how the New Testament took shape. Edgar Johnson Goodspeed (1871-1962) theorized that the surviving Pauline letters were first collected after the publication of the Books of Acts, about 95 CE and the Epistle of the Ephesians was compiled as an encyclical or “covering letter” to head this collection, being paraphrased from several of the authentic letter. This theory was widely accepted among New Testament scholars.
Basing on this theory, the original nucleus of the New Testament was the epistle of Paul, to which was added the “catholic” epistles written by James, Peter, John and Jude and the Pastoral Epistle, a supplement to the Pauline collection dating from 100 -105 CE. The Gospel was added later…they were gathered together into a “four fold evangel” about 150 CE. The whole New Testament was known as the Evangelion (Evangel) and the Apostolos (Apostle).
The first generation of the Church fathers such as Ignatius (35-107), Papias (60-130) and Justin (100-165) were more concern with the Old Testament compare to the New Testament. In fact, a definitive list of the canonical book for the New Testament came from a heretic named Marcion (d. 160).
Marcion, a shipping magnate in the Black Sea port of Sinope, traveled to Rome in about 139CE. He taught that many of the Christian literature were corrupted by Jewish ideas and that the Jewish God of the Old Testament was strict and had condemned all humanity. According to Marcion, Jesus Christ who was absolutely unrelated to the Jewish God will released Christians from this god’s clutches.
Marcion compiled only the letters of Paul (Galatians, I and ii Corithians, I and ii Thessalonians, Colossians, Philemon and Philippians) and a “purified” version of Luke’s gospel. If it’s not for Marcion, the Christian Church never would have possessed a “New Testament”.
By 95CE, there are still evidence of apocryptic books being included in the New Testament. The Codex Sinaiticus includes the book Shepherd of Hermas and the Gospel of Barnabas. The Codex Alexandrinus contains the Epistle of Clement, which was said to be written by Clement, Bishop of Rome to the Corinthian church.
The Muratorian Fragment, discovered in Milan by L.A.Muratori and was published in 1740 – was said to be written in 200CE and have rejected most of the apocryptic book, yet it also rejected I and ii Peter, Hebrews, James and iii John. It also included the Apocalypse of Peter, a book that tells the story of how Peter was granted a vision of heaven and hell.
According to Papias (c 60-130) Bishop of Hierapolis, Mark got his information from Peter himself. Papias also said that the authority of the gospel of Matthew and Mark was base on a certain John the Presbyter.
Clement of Alexandria (150-215 CE) said that the earliest gospels were those with Jesus’ family tree.
Irenaeus (c.130-200) Bishop of Lyons, gave the first historically documented list of the four gospels and its authors in 180CE. In all the many available gospels in that time, he chooses only 4 which according to him, “As there are four winds, there should be four Gospel.”
Irenaeus believed that Matthew published his gospel among the Hebrews in their own tongue, when Peter and Paul were preaching the Gospel in Rome and founding the church there. After their departure, Mark, the disciple and interpreter of Peter, himself handed down to us in writing the substance of Peter’s preaching. Luke, the follower of Paul, set down in the book the gospel preached by his teacher. Then John, the disciple of the Lord, who learned on his breast himself, produced his gospel when he was living in Ephesus in Asia.
Irenaeus was also the first to give a chronological sequence of the writing of the Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. He also drew up a list of writing he considered as canonical. His list consist of 22 books which includes The Shepherd of Hermans but he left out Philemon, ii Peter, ii and iii of John, Hebrews, Jude and Revelations.
But even with Irenaeus’ list, Origen (185-254) who in 230 CE defined what he believed to be the cannon of the scripture for the New Testament included the four Gospels, Acts of the Apostles, Paul’s 13 Epistles, I Peter, I John and Revelation. He also stated that the first gospel was written in Hebrew by Matthew.
Augustine of Hippo (354-430 CE) stated that Mark copied and abbreviated Matthew.
The truth in this matter is that Mark is the first Gospel, with Matthew and Luke borrowing passages both from that Gospel and from at least one other common source, lost to history, termed by scholars ‘Q’ (from German: Quelle, meaning “source”).
In the Festal Letter of Athanasius (c. 296-373) Bishop of Alexandria to the Egyptian Churches in 367 he said that there are only 27 books considered as canonical. Athanasius list was confirmed by a council under Pope Damasus.
Pope Damasus (304-384 CE) proclaimed the list of the canonical books in the New Testament which was identical to the modern Bible we have now in 374 CE. Over a period of time, at the Council of Laodicea (363) the bishop agreed to the list and his cannon was later been approved by the Council of Rome in 383 and was reconfirmed at the Council of Carthage in 393, 397, and 419 CE.
However, some churches disagreed. The Book of Revelation for example, was not considered divinely inspired until the 8th century. In the Codex Claromontanus, a 6th century manuscript, the Book of Hebrews was omitted while the Epistle of Barnabas was included and placed between the Epistle of Jude and the Book of Revelation.
Even today, some Christian church, with very old roots, has different set of New Testament books. The East-Syrian Nestoriam Church has cannon of only 22 books. The Ethiopian Church has 38 books which includes the Shepherd or Hermas, i and ii Clement and the Apostolic Constitution.
Would be nice to state the sources of your information.
And to add a little further to the dates:
Jesus birth assumed to be anywhere between Herod the great (4BCE ala Matthew) and Quirinius taxation count (6AD ala Luke).
Jesus alleged death and resurrection any-when during Pilates term (26-36 AD) term, estimated 28-30 AD.
Saul of Tarsus (the center of superstition and idolatry worship in Asia Minor) or Paul’s epistles written 50-55 AD. Only half of the originally attributed to Saul/Paul are thought to be genuine from him, half are forgeries under his name, and even the possibly genuine ones are tempered with.
Now about the Gospels, well as the scholarship is plastered with the faithful, it is difficult to get an objective date as the faithful are strongly pushing for an ‘eyewitness status’ of writers. Especially with life expectancy in the first century AD to be around 40 years this results to earlier dates just for this reason. Still suddenly half a century after the alleged events the eyewitnesses suddenly all start writing in old age.
Gospel of Mark: earliest 70 AD (after fall of the temple during the Roman – Judean war), specials : no birth narrative, no resurrection mentioned.
Gospel of Matthew : earliest 80 AD, nearly identical copy of Mark with randomize spreading of Q-Gospel add-ons, added birth narrative (copy of Moses story) and added supernatural resurrection with earthquakes, solar eclipse, thousands of zombies storming Jerusalem etc..
Gospel of Luke: earliest 85 AD, huge parts of Mark’s Gospel as backbone of the story, with randomize spreading of Q-Gospel add-ons (to different events like Matthew) , added the famous birth story inspired by Mithras mystery cult, just to get the heir of the Davidic throne somehow born in Bethlehem the city of David, also added a resurrection story to Mark of course different than Matthews .
Gospel of John: earliest 95 AD a Gnostic teaching hailing the beloved disciple against the Jerusalem tradition of Peter, heavily modified to fit into the canon centuries later.
Act of the apostles, author of Luke, date ?? Much later than the Gospel of Luke and now it gets tricky an eyewitness of 28 or 29 AD events (and birth narrative of 6AD) writing in 85 AD (aged at least 75 ?) now is writing again to merge different religious teachings namely Paul’s Christ redeemed of sins versus Jesus heir of the Davidic throne (Jerusalem tradition of Peter) brought to a boil from Marcion after 140AD. So a story to join Peter and Paul was needed e.g. the invention of the Acts of the apostles travelling together to Rome to found the RCC. Some scholars without faith bias claim content wise 150 AD as date for the ‘Acts of the apostles ‘ from Luke, now the proponents of the 85AD date Gospels are pushing for a date of 125AD, so Luke the 75 year old eyewitness writer of Luke’s gospel, is suddenly a young person in 85AD and writes the Acts in 125 AD old aged. And now the most ferocious eye-witness proponents seems to propose the date 95AD for the Acts (Luke writing at 85 years of age ?).
Now with all this wishful dating based on agenda rather than on content and facts, lets to stick to the evidence:
None for the existence of Jesus at all outside the Gospel, written based on myth and gossip or totally invented from persons living outside Judea. Then a vague mentioning of Christ from a few faithful Christians centuries after the events based on hearsay gossip or gospel myth.
A clumsy forgery into Josephus ‘antiquities of the Jews’ to insert one sentence about Jesus, likely from Bishop Eusebius, but not a single Jewish or Roman historian wrote about the alleged events and miraculous happening at all.
The oldest fragment of a gospel is a part of John’s gospel, too sacred to get a small piece analyzed for proper C14 dating, dated based on writing style alone assumed to be 125 AD, some scholars mentioned it can be as good 175AD.
Very thin ice to build the foundation of a believe system, ruling the entire life of a person.