Back to: How We Got The Bible
The skeptical scholar says…
(The Gospels were) written thirty-five to sixty-five years after Jesus’ death, not by people who were eyewitnesses, but by people living later. … After the days of Jesus, people started telling stories about him in order to convert others to the faith. … Stories were changed with what would strike us today as reckless abandon. They were modified, amplified, and embellished. And sometimes they were made up.
– Bart Ehrman, Peter, Paul, and Mary Magdalene (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), 259;
Reliability of an Oral Culture
Illiteracy + Writing Technology
The Roman Empire was in control of the area where Jesus and His disciples walked and ministered. This continued into the era of the early church and rise of Greco-Roman culture under Alexander.
Most of the population at this time were slaves who were illiterate with no writing skills. As a result, they relied heavily on memorization and oral communication skills to pass down and retain information.
With this in mind, we can be confident that the teachings of Jesus through His disciples/apostles were accurately conveyed over time.
People in oral cultures were capable of recalling and repeating oral histories accurately
- trained from childhood to memorize libraries of laws, stories, poetry, songs
- Rhythmic patterns and mnemonic devices used to effectively memorize and recite testimonies
Christian communities worked together to keep oral histories true to their sources
- Christians lived enmeshed and in close community with each other. This type of fellowship facilitated and enhanced the sharing and memorization of teachings/stories
- If anyone’s retelling was misconstrued or given in error, others were quick to correct the record.
Eyewitnesses kept testimonies connected to the original events
- With the amount of eyewitnesses to Jesus’/apostles’ ministry still living and circulating abroad, falsehoods and embellishments of retellings would be curtailed.
So were the oral histories about Jesus “modified, amplified, and embellished” over the years, as skeptical scholars claim? Not even close. In fact, evidences from the first century AD show that testimonies about Jesus remained remarkably stable as they spread across the Roman Empire.
-Jones, Timothy Paul. How We Got the Bible . Rose Publishing. Kindle Edition.
Ichtus
(You may also want to check out the book: https://rts.edu/resources/icthus/)
Roman Persecution
Because of the hostility and persecution of Christians, particularly by the many emperors from Nero to Diocletian, not many manuscripts survived or circulated.
In fact, the historian Eusebius was told to burn all copies of the scriptures by Diocletian. Ironically, the next emperor, Constantine, ordered Eusebius to immediately produce as many copies of the scriptures as possible for widespread distribution.
Constantine Converts
Constantine’s conversion to Christianity – involving a vision of a flaming cross in the sky – not only brought persecution of Christians to an end (for a time), but also conditions that elevated it to a favored position within the state.
Whether or not Constantine was truly a devout and committed follower of Christ, or found socio-political value in espousing Christianity remains a debated topic. Whatever the case, His desire to unite factions of Christianity led to the first ecumenical Council of Nicea.
It is at Nicea where Athanasius gave a successful defense of the deity of Christ against Arius, the Nicene Creed was born, and church fathers/leaders recognized the need to collectively affirm the canonicity of the new covenant. Not long after Nicea is when Eusebius was commissioned to produce fifty copies of the Scriptures.
We’ll discuss creeds and councils in more detail later in the study.
Canonicity
By its very nature, Holy Scripture, whether Old or New Testament, is a production given of God, not the work of human creation. The key to canonicity is divine inspiration. Therefore, the method of determination is not one of selection from a number of possible candidates (there are no other candidates, in actuality) but one of reception of authentic material and its consequent recognition by an ever-widening circle as the facts of its origin become known.
-Comfort, Philip W.. The Origin of the Bible (p. 75). Tyndale House Publishers. Kindle Edition.
In the previous section we discussed deconstruction by way of undermining the veracity of scripture.
Oftentimes, those seeking to discredit scripture from the Old Testament will focus on the Genesis account of creation, or historical timelines.
New Testament skeptics and detractors generally seek to deny the deity of Jesus Christ.
It is in the context of dealing with this heresy that the New Testament canon will begin to be recognized and accepted.
(T)he basic principle of canonicity for the New Testament… is identical to that of the Old Testament, since it narrows down to a matter of divine inspiration.
Whether we think of the prophets of Old Testament times or the apostles and their God-given associates of the New, the recognition at the very time of their writing that they were authentic spokesmen for God is what determines the intrinsic canonicity of their writing.
It is altogether God’s Word only if it is God-breathed. We can be assured that the books under question were received by the church of the apostolic age precisely when they had been certified by an apostle as being thus inspired.
-Comfort, Philip W.. The Origin of the Bible (p. 66). Tyndale House Publishers. Kindle Edition.
Comparison: OT vs NT
The history of the New Testament canon differs from that of the Old in several respects.
- In the first place, since Christianity was an international religion from the beginning, there was no tightly knit prophetic community that received all inspired books and collected them in one place.
- Local and somewhat complete collections were made from the very beginning, but there is no evidence of a central and official clearinghouse for inspired writings.
- Therefore, the process by which all of the apostolic writings became universally accepted took many centuries.
- Fortunately, because of the availability of source materials more data is available on the New Testament canon than the Old.
- Another difference between the history of the Old and New Testament canons is that once discussions resulted in the recognition of the twenty-seven canonical books of the New Testament canon, there have been no moves within Christendom to add to it or take away from it.
- The extent of the New Testament canon has met with virtually universal agreement within the Christian church as a whole.
– source: Geisler, Norman L; Nix, William E.. From God To Us Revised and Expanded: How We Got Our Bible (p. 131). Moody Publishers. Kindle Edition.