Development of the Canon

The authors of our New Testament books did not know that they were writing Scripture—our current books of the Bible. They did not know that a New Testament would ever exist, much less that their writings would be a part of it. Nevertheless, these writings owe their prominence and influence to the fact that they came to be included in that corpus.

To understand this significant point, let us imagine for a moment that Paul’s letter to the Romans had simply come down to us as an independent writing, a document from antiquity presenting the thoughts of a Christian missionary at the height of his career. Who would read it, and why? In all likelihood, it would be an interesting work to scholars who wanted to reconstruct the early history of one of the world’s major religions.

But elderly men and women would not be reading it in nursing homes, business professionals would not gather weekly to read it at prayer breakfasts, and teenagers would not memorize passages from it at summer camps. It would no doubt be regarded as a classic of ancient epistolary literature (like the letters of Cicero), and it might get quoted now and then, but it probably would not have inspired hundreds of paintings, thousands of hymns, and millions of sermons. The impact and significance of all New Testament writings is owed in large part to their inclusion in the Christian canon.

The word canon literally means “rule” or “standard,” but it is used by religious groups to refer to a list of books that are officially accepted as Scripture. In the early years Christians simply gathered together writings that they found to be helpful and shared them with one another. Paul encouraged the churches to which he wrote letters to exchange those letters with one another so that they could read what he had written to other congregations as well as to their own community (see Col. 4:16). Likewise, we are reasonably sure that multiple copies of Mark’s Gospel were produced and distributed to different parts of the Roman Empire a few years after it was written (both Matthew and Luke appear to have had copies). Since there were no printing presses at that time, the production of manuscripts was a costly and time-consuming process; nevertheless, Christians throughout the world wanted copies of these documents, and they seem to have done a remarkable job of making and sharing copies with one another.

At first there was no need for official agreement as to which books were to be read; for the most part, the works that circulated were the writings produced by people who had founded or led the earliest churches, people such as Paul and the original disciples of Jesus, or at least people who had known Paul or those original disciples. This chain of connection to Jesus and/or to Paul would come to be known as the “apostolic tradition,” and as long as churches were copying and sharing writings that stood within this tradition, there was little need to decide which of those writings was worthy of being labeled “Scripture.”

Almost from the start, however, there were voices within Christianity that were in tension with that developing tradition. From many of Paul’s letters, we learn that there were people arguing for versions of the Christian faith that Paul himself rejected; these people were preaching a message that they thought was “the gospel” but that Paul claimed was a perversion of the gospel (see Gal. 1:6– 9). Some of these alternative voices in the Christian movement probably produced writings as well (see 2 Thess. 2:2), but their works do not appear to have been preserved or included in the New Testament. In one sense, then, the New Testament is not just a collection of early Christian writings; rather, it is a selection of those writings.

The New Testament contains those works that were considered to be most representative of what became mainstream and orthodox. The process through which such selections were made was complex, and there is controversy among

modern scholars as to how the judgments were made. By the second century, however, two developments made the question of canon a pressing one for Christians.

First, there were now Christians who wanted to exclude writings with ties to the apostolic tradition that were not to their liking. The most prominent figure in this regard was the Christian scholar and evangelist Marcion (ca. 110–60), who came to prominence in the first half of the second century. Marcion appears to have been influenced by a movement called “gnosticism,” which valued what was spiritual but despised anything material or. He also wanted to purge Christianity of Jewish influences and make it into a more purely gentile religion. Marcion urged his followers to reject writings that taught a version of the faith different from what he was promoting. Eventually he came up with an approved list of writings that he thought should be considered Scripture for Christians: ten letters

of Paul (all but 1 Timothy, 2 Timothy, and Titus) and a copy of the Gospel of Luke. He also edited these eleven books to remove positive references to the Jewish God, or to the Jewish Scriptures, or to other matters that did not fit with his anti-Jewish, hyperspiritual version of the faith (he claimed that the writings had been previously modified by heretics and that by editing them he was merely restoring them to their original form).

In any case, many writings currently in our New Testament were rejected by Marcion and his followers not because they were considered to be out of step with the apostolic tradition but rather because that tradition itself was considered to be corrupt (steeped in Jewishness and overly concerned with physical life in a material world).

Second, there were Christians in the second century who began producing new writings and attributing these to people who had belonged to the original circle of apostolic witnesses. In virtually every case these new writings were copycat versions of books that had been written in the first century: someone would write a letter promoting gnostic ideas and claim that it was a newly discovered letter of Paul; someone else would write a gospel portraying Jesus as a major supporter of gnosticism and claim that it was a newly discovered work by one of his twelve disciples. These books continued to be produced well into the fourth century. Their anachronisms and idiosyncrasies make the fictional attributions of authorship readily apparent today, but the production of such writings did cause confusion among Christians in the first few centuries.

Thus the twofold problem: on the one hand, most Christian churches wanted to use only those writings that could be reasonably connected to the apostolic tradition; on the other hand, they wanted to use all the writings that were connected with that tradition, not just ones that fit with some particular teacher’s ideological preferences. Thus by the end of the second century lists began to appear specifying which writings were thought to meet these criteria. From these lists it becomes apparent that most of the writings now found in our New Testament were universally accepted as reliable witnesses to the apostolic tradition. Seven books, however, had a more difficult time gaining such acceptance: Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, 2 John, 3 John, Jude, and Revelation. We have no indication that these books were ever denounced or rejected outright, but the more cautious church leaders seem to have been reluctant to regard them as being on a par with the others (i.e., as being works that should be regarded as Scripture). Eventually, however, a consensus emerged, and by the beginning of the fifth century our current New Testament canon of twenty-seven books was well established.

Two conclusions regarding the canon of New Testament writings would be accepted by most scholars today. On the one hand, all the books in our current New Testament are ones that were deemed compatible with what came to be regarded as “apostolic Christianity”: there are certain, basic matters of faith on which they seem to speak with unanimity. On the other hand, the selection of canonical writings was not a narrow one that eliminated diversity of opinion: the twenty-seven New Testament writings present a wide variety of viewpoints, including positions that sometimes are difficult to reconcile. Indeed, if all the authors of these writings had been gathered into a single room at a given place and time, they almost certainly would have argued with one another over many matters that have continued to be of interest to Christians throughout the centuries. In short, the New Testament writings evince a basic unity but also remarkable diversity.

From Jesus to Us: Six Stages in the Transmission of the Gospel Tradition

Stage One: Historical Jesus

Jesus says and does things that are considered remarkable.

Stage Two: Early Tradition Oral and/or Written

People remember what Jesus said and did and share these memories with others.

People write down brief accounts of things that Jesus said and did.

Stage Three: Composition of the Gospels

The Gospel writers compile their books, drawing on both oral tradition and early written sources to form narratives of Jesus’s life and work.

Stage Four: Preservation of Manuscripts

People make copies of the Gospel narratives and distribute them.

Stage Five: Translation

Scholars translate copies of the Gospel narratives into other languages, including, eventually, our own.

Stage Six: Reception

In modern editions of the Gospels we hear or read about what Jesus said and did.