Canonicity
THE
PERFECT STANDARD
The word “CANONICITY” is derived from the Greek word KANON which originally meant a rod or a ruler — hence, a measuring stick or
norm. This is exactly what the Bible is — a norm or standard — THE divine and absolute standard. Technically, the CANON OF SCRIPTURE is a collection of many books into one Book, our
Bible.
The Bible is the only reliable
source of information with regard to eternal salvation and the alternative —
eternal condemnation (John 3:36). While eternal salvation is as simple as
“Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved” (Acts 16:31), the
study and absorption of its many aspects and ramifications can become very
complex. Most important, the Bible is the revealed “mind of Christ” (1 Cor.
2:16), and as such, contains vital information for the believer in time.
It is my purpose to demonstrate how
we acquired this most vital document, from its very origin to the printed page,
and to present its relationship to history and its effects upon mankind. This
study should give you a deeper appreciation and respect for the Word of God as
your most priceless possession.
PETER’S
LEGACY
Yea, I think it meet [fitting] , as long as I am in this tabernacle,
to stir you up by putting you in remembrance (2 Pet. 1:13).
Peter was a dying man; yet as long
as he had breath left, he considered it imperative to “keep on stirring up”
believers by going over and over doctrines until they could not be forgotten.
With time running out, Peter’s style was elliptical, down to earth and tough.
He wanted no sympathy. He was saying in effect, “I am about to die — so what?
Don’t weep for me. My objective is to leave behind doctrine in your souls, and
I’m going to keep on teaching until the end. So keep on having these things —
doctrine, doctrine, doctrine — in your right lobes!”
Do you see the important point here?
Peter was greatly loved. There had been a tendency to lean on Peter, but soon
he would not be there to lean on. Peter insisted that they must never use him
as a crutch; instead they must learn to lean on the Word of God and the
doctrines it teaches. Peter’s departure from the scene should make no
difference Bible teachers come and go — IT’S
NOT THE MAN BUT THE MESSAGE THAT COUNTS! Don’t get your eyes on man; get your eyes on the
Word of God and keep them there!
Doctrine had sustained Peter through
many trials and persecutions. Before he died, he wanted to leave believers a
legacy which no one could take from them — the reality of the Bible!
For we have not followed cunningly devised fables, when
we made known unto you the power and coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, but were
eye-witnesses of his majesty (2 Pet. 1:16).
What greater way of substantiating the
truth than to say, “We saw it with our own eyes and we heard it with our own
ears” ?The eye gate and the ear gate are the most essential areas for
perception in the system of empiricism. What can be more real than seeing and
hearing? I’ll tell you what SHOULD be — the Word of God!
In this passage, Peter documents an
experience he had shared with James and John the Transfiguration (Matt. 16:28;
17:1-8). They had seen Jesus Christ as He would appear at the Second Advent.
They had heard the Father’s voice; yet Peter wrote with utmost conviction:
But
we have a more sure word of prophecy: whereunto ye do well that ye take heed .
. . (2 Pet. 1:19).
Peter ends his dissertation on the
reliability and reality of these accounts in the Bible by pointing believers
toward the origin of Scripture. So, GOD
VINDICATES HIS WORD, be it in the Scriptures (Psa. 138:2) or in the believer’s soul. Man
comes and goes, but THE WORD OF THE LORD
ENDURETH FOREVER
(1 Pet. l:25a)!
THE
ORIGIN OF THE SCRIPTURES
The Bible is the most precious and
most important record this world has ever known or will ever know. In order to
understand how we got our Bible, it is necessary that we consider the factor
that makes this Book what it claims to be
the written Word of God!
Knowing this first, that no prophecy of the scripture is
of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time by the
will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Spirit (2 Pet. 1:20-21).
In verse 20, we have the negative
origin of the Bible; in verse 21, we have the positive origin of the Bible. A
superficial reading of verse 20 suggests that this verse speaks of INTERPRETATION. In the original language (Greek), the issue is not
interpretation but ORIGIN. The origin of Scripture is
one of the first things every believer should understand in regard to the Word
of God. So let me give you a corrected translation of these two verses:
Knowing
this first, that no prophecy of Scripture originates from one’s own disclosure.
For prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spoke
as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.
This means that God the Holy Spirit
so directed the writers of Scripture that without changing their personality,
their vocabulary, their frame of reference or their emotional pattern, God’s
complete and connected thought toward man was recorded in their own language
and vernacular. As a result, we actually have in Scripture the mind of Christ
the Word of God the divine viewpoint as it is expressed in human terms under
the principle of inspiration. The doctrine of inspiration applies only to the
original languages of Scripture and guarantees their accuracy.
All
scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for
reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness (2 Tim. 3:16).
“All scripture” includes both the
Old and the New Testaments. “All scripture is given by inspiration of God” says
literally in the Greek, “All scripture is GOD-BREATHED.” The true concept of
inspiration is this: God’s thoughts. His doctrines, His plan, His promises and
everything that God wanted us to know was communicated to the human authors of
Scripture. Then, in the power of the Spirit, they recorded this revelation in
writing.
2 Timothy 3:16 lists four categories
of benefits from the Scriptures:
DOCTRINE: Doctrine is the mind of
Christ ( 1 Cor. 2:16)! Doctrine is the sum total of the divine viewpoint of
life (Isa. 55:8,9) and should, therefore, become the basis of our modus
operandi in time and our confidence for the future.
REPROOF: When you study the Bible
and hear it taught, you are often reproved. In fact, people occasionally
suspect that I follow them around to get my illustrations. Of course, this is not
true. An analysis of Scripture usually discloses the areas of weakness where we
have, failed. Just remember that I get my toes stepped on before you do! The
principle is simply that the Word of God does rebuke us, and rightly so. It
shows us where we are wrong as well as where we are right.
CORRECTION: Reproof should always lead
to correction! Biblical correction results in the utilization of unlimited
operating assets by which we can have perfect happiness, peace and stability.
INSTRUCTION
IN RIGHTEOUSNESS:
This involves the entire scope of the Gospel and demonstrates how God can take
a sinner and make him righteous through the work of Christ.
That
the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works (2
Tim. 3:17).
“That” introduces a purpose clause
which sets before us the intent of the profit of the Scriptures. This purpose
is that the believer may become mature and completely equipped unto all good
works. In the Greek, “completely equipped” is in the perfect tense, meaning “equipped
in the past with the result that he keeps on being equipped.” Thus we see that
the divinely inspired Scriptures contain all the information that is necessary
for the production of divine good.
THE
DOCTRINE OF INSPIRATION
1. The principle of inspiration.
The Greek noun, THEOPNEUSTOS, or “God-breathed” (2 Tim.
3:16), entails the principle of inspiration and involves both inhale and
exhale. In the inhale, the Holy Spirit communicated to human authors, like
Paul, God’s complete and coherent message (2 Sam. 23:2, 3; Isa. 59:21; Jer.
l:9; Matt. 22:42-44; Mark 12:36; Acts 4:24, 25; 28:25). In the exhale, the
human writers of Scripture so wrote that without waiving their human
intelligence, their vocabulary, their personal feelings, their literary style, their
personality or individuality, God’s complete message to man was permanently
recorded with perfect accuracy in the original languages of Scripture.
2. The origin of Scripture.
The Scriptures are not human viewpoint, but rather, the Holy Spirit’s use of
human agencies and language (2 Pet. 1:20, 21).
3. The Bible is the mind of
Christ (1 Cor. 2:16). Therefore, it is the absolute criterion for believers
(Psa. 138:2).
4. The Bible existed in eternity
past. As the mind of Christ, the Bible existed prior to the time it was
reduced to written form (Prov. 8:22-31).
5. Pre-canon revelation from God
occurred through the Holy Spirit (2 Sam. 23:2; Ezek. 2:2; 8:3; 11:1,24;
Micah 3:8; Heb. 3:7). There was no written Scripture until the time of Moses.
Prior to that time, God the Holy Spirit revealed doctrine to members of the
human race.
6. Four categories of Old
Testament revelation in addition to Scripture. In Old Testament times, God
spoke in four different ways to prophets and others:
a. The spoken Word Isa.
6:8-10).
b. Dreams (Gen. 15:12;
31:10-13, 24; Num. 12:6; Dan. 10:9).
c. Visions (1 Kgs.
22:19; lsa. 1:1; 6:l).
d. Angelic teaching
(Dent. 33:2; Psa. 68:17; Acts 7:53; Gal. 3:19).
7. The extent of Inspiration:
a. Unknown Past. The
Bible portrays historical statements and details unknown to man and unconfirmed
by human records (Gen. 1:11). Inspiration guarantees the accuracy of these
events. For example, in Isaiah 14 and Ezekiel 28, we have two accounts of the
fall of Satan. Satan existed long before man; yet we have in writing, with
perfect accuracy, all that God wants us to know about Satan’s fall. There are
several accounts of the creation of the universe. These are found throughout
the Scriptures from Genesis to Isaiah, to Colossians 1. Man would have no way
of knowing these events were it not for the fact that God Himself provided the
information through inspiration so that we might know about eternity past.
b. Ancient History.
Although the Bible is not a history textbook, it contains many historical
citations. All of these are necessary and accurate, and form the basis and
background for the communication of doctrine (isagogics). As late as
twenty-five or thirty years ago, many scholars of history teamed up with
certain archaeologists and said that the Bible was in error with regard to
certain parts of its history. Since there were no records to substantiate the
historical authenticity of certain passages, they claimed those events never
occurred. Since then, however, there have been numerous discoveries from the
ancient world, including the translation of Ugaritic (pagan Canaanitish
literature) and the excavation of Troy. These historical records bear out and
actually demonstrate the perfect accuracy of the Scriptures.
c. Objective-Type Law.
In certain portions of the Word you will find laws governing various phases of
individual and national life. For instance, there is the Law of Volition which
is the first of the four divine institutions. Man has a free will, and he is free
to operate under his volition. He may decide to depend upon God or to act
independently of God. We also find the Laws of Marriage, Family and National
Entity.
In addition to the divine
institutions, there are many more laws found in Scripture. For example, the
Mosaic Law contains laws within laws.
Inspiration of Scripture guarantees that these are divine laws. It is to
man’s benefit that they be followed and executed. These laws perfectly express
the essence of God and His will for the people to whom they
were
given. The repetition of these laws in Scripture demonstrates their application
to every generation.
d. Dictation and
Prophecy. Some portions of the Bible contain direct quotations from God. On
occasion, God made known future events which man had no way of forseeing or
understanding at the time of their revelation. When God dictated to the
prophets of old concerning the conquest of the Edomites (Ezek. 25:12-14),
everyone scoffed. Why, the powerful Edomites could never be beaten! Yet their
land became an area of desolation just as God had said it would. Another
example of dictation is the prophecy of the downfall of Tyre, which had been an
impregnable fortress for centuries. The people sneered at the prediction of
troops marching overland. Ridiculous as it seemed, the prophecy was accurate:
Alexander the Great built a causeway from the mainland to the island city. Tyre
fell into his hands exactly as prophesied !
The most significant area of
accuracy in the Old Testament prophecies are those which deal with the Person
and work of the Lord Jesus Christ. For example, God said that Messiah would die
on a cross (Psa. 22:16); yet at the time of these prophecies, crucifixion was
unknown to the Jews. Even as history was the fulfillment of the prophecies of
the past, so will the prophecies of the Tribulation, the Second Advent of
Christ and the Millennium be fulfilled!
e. Devotional
Literature. This includes the Psalms, Song of Solomon, Ecclesiastes and
Job. God uses the problems, the pressures, the prosperity and successes, as
well as the failures of certain believers, to reveal His plan and principles of
grace.
f. Recording of Falsehoods. The record
of human or Satanic lies in the text of Scripture does not imply that falsehood
is truth; but inspiration guarantees the accuracy of the lie. For example, we
have the devil’s conversation with the woman in the Garden (Gen. 3:1-5): while
this is exactly what the devil said, it was not all truth. The Book of
Ecclesiastes lists many erroneous concepts. These did not have the approval of
God, but were the precise thoughts of Solomon
when
he was out of fellowship!
You might think that such vital
communication from God as man had received down through the years would be
carefully laid up for posterity in a place of safety! Far from it; portions of
the Word as it then existed were lost or destroyed. Although some were
recovered as early as the reign of King Josiah (2 Kgs. 22:8), it would take
centuries to find, decipher and piece together the completed Canon of Scripture.
Many tedious years of hard work lay ahead.
THE
ART OF WRITING
There are many avenues of approach
to our study of CANONICITY. Let’s begin with the one
that was absolutely necessary for man to record and thus preserve God’s
thoughts and words for all future generations the subject of writing.
The History of Writing.
Writing did not come into existence by one stroke of the pen of a genius it has
a history in which there are many factors and stages. The first factor is THE SYMBOL OF THE ALPHABET; secondly, THE
WORD; thirdly, THE SENTENCE. The symbols of the alphabet represent sounds; the
word is a representation of an idea, and the
sentence
represents a thought.
The first stage of writing was THE PICTOGRAPH — man’s earliest attempt to register and
communicate his thoughts in written form. He used pictures to depict objects.
For example, in the Hebrew language the letter “aleph” is the sign of an ox;
“both” represents a house; “gimmel” stands for camel; “daleth” for door, and so
on. Originally, these and other letters of the Hebrew alphabet stood for
pictographic concepts.
The next stage in the history of
writing was THE IDIOGRAPH. The idiograph is a picture
of an idea. For example, the Chinese language is idiographic and uses thousands
of characters. Let me illustrate: there is one symbol that stands for a
“house.” Add to it the symbol that stands for “two women,” and you get the word
for “trouble.” This is called
an
idiograph.
In the third stage of writing we
have THE PHONOGRAMS in which a symbol represents
a sound. Actually, there are three kinds of phonograms: a WORD PHONOGRAM, a SYLLABLE PHONOGRAM and a LETTER
PHONOGRAM. In a
word phonogram, a symbol stands for the entire word, and this requires an
alphabet of about two or three thousand symbols. In a syllable phonogram, a
symbol stands for a syllable. This type of phonogram was used in CUNEIFORM WRITING. Cuneiform is the wedge-shaped inscription of the
ancient Assyrians, Babylonians and Persians. A syllable phonogram calls for an
alphabet of some four or five hundred
syllables,
while the third type, the letter phonogram, requires about twenty to thirty
letters.
All of the original languages of the
Word of God are constructed on a letter phonogram or, as we would call it, an
alphabet. The Hebrew, the Chaldean, the Aramaic and the Greek languages are
alphabetical languages. You may have seen their letters from time to time and
perhaps are familiar with them. All these types of writing can be seen in the
archaeological materials that have been recovered, many of which date back
before 250Q B.C.
The Materials for Writing.
Discoveries to date indicate that the earliest writing materials were STONE and CHISELS. Archaeologists have
located and excavated pillars and stones of various types. Among the most
famous is the BEHISTUN ROCK from western Persia
(the modern Iran), which gave us the key to cuneiform writing.
In 1868, the MOABITE STONE was discovered east of the River Jordan by a German
missionary named Klein. Near Dibon he came across what looked like a black
basalt tombstone, half-buried in the sand. He dismounted and curiously examined
the engraved inscriptions. They appeared to be older than anything he had ever
seen; hurriedly, he scratched away the sand. When he looked up, he was
surrounded by a group of local Bedouins. They insisted that this- was their
stone and that they would not part with it. Klein offered to buy the stone from
them, but they named a ridiculous sum far beyond his means. So Klein left for
Germany to try to raise the money he needed.
In the meantime, a French scholar,
Clermont-Ganneau, heard of the stone. He rushed to the site and copied the
writings. It turned out to be the oldest piece of Hebrew literature ever to be found,
and it told the story of 2 Kings, Chapter 3. The French Government immediately
provided the money, and Clermont-Ganneau rushed back to the site. The stone was
gone! The Bedouins, in their greed for an even higher price, had smashed the
stone into small pieces. The French scholar now had to locate the rock
fragments and try to piece them together with the help of the copy he had made
on his first trip. Today, the reconstructed stone is in the Louvre.
Another of these stones, the ROSETTA STONE, is a basalt tablet that was discovered by
Napoleon’s archaeologists in 1799 near Rosetta, Egypt. That tablet held the key
to Egyptian hieroglyphics and is now located in the British Museum. Although
Napoleon’s expedition to Egypt produced no territorial gains for France, it
certainly was a boost for archaeology.
The second medium for writing was CLAY Several forms of clay tablets were in use — cylinders, octagonal
cylinders and small flat tablets, which could be carried easily from place to
place by merchants. These clay tablets were smoothed out perfectly and written
on while still wet. A sharpened stick or an ivory stylus was used to make an
impression on the clay, and then the clay was baked in the sun. Many of these
writings have lasted for over 4500 years and have been beautifully preserved
for us.
Another writing material, which is
even mentioned in the Bible, is LEAD (Job 19:24). Some ancient
writings on lead arc still extant. Other metals used, primarily in the times of
the Graeco-Roman world, were gold, silver and bronze. Several of these are also
in existence today, as are some ivory tablets that came to us from Africa and
Arabia.
The Romans, the Egyptians and the
Etruscans all did some writing on linen. Here, too, some of these “documents”
are preserved to this day. As far as the Old and the New Testaments are
concerned, however, these were written on either papyrus, vellum or parchment.
PAPYRUS, from which we get the word
“paper,” was the most expensive of the three. It was handmade from an Egyptian
reed called papyrus. The pith of the plant was made into strips which formed a
very durable type of writing material. At the time of the writing of the New
Testament, papyrus was widely used. Undoubtedly Paul, Peter, James and the
other writers used papyrus for the autograph of the New Testament.
VELLUM is a very fine type of
skin, which was used by the writers of antiquity. It was primarily made from
the skins of calves and antelopes. PARCHMENT, a less expensive substitute
for vellum, originated in the Greek town of Pergamon from which it got its
Latin name “pergamentum.” It was made from goat or sheep skins that had been
prepared and then polished with a pumice stone. Like papyrus, both vellum and
parchment were written on with pen and ink. These skins were so durable that
the writing could be erased and the skins used over and over again. Were it not
for a relatively recent discovery of science that permits us to trace the
original writings, many an irreplaceable document would have been completely
lost to us.
The inks of the ancient world were
manufactured from soot, lamp black and gum, which had to be diluted with water.
They were permanent, and came in five colors: black (the most commonly used),
red, green, blue and yellow. Some of our inked records are over three thousand
years old, yet the ink is as good now as it was at the time of writing. I doubt
that any of our present-day inks will be as legible three thousand years from
now!
Probably the greatest pen of
antiquity was the CALAMUS. It took its name from a
hollow reed which was ingeniously designed. This reed was cut long-stemmed and
apparently had a little vacuum system through which the ink could be sucked up.
It might well have been the forerunner of our fountain pens. One end of the
reed was sharpened to a fine point and was kept sharp for writing by means of a
small knife which every scholar carried with him for that purpose.
Incidentally, that’s where we got the English word “pen knife.”
In the British Isles, writing on
wood or bark became very common. The Anglo-Saxon word for bark is “BOC.” Although Anglo-Saxon and English are not the same language, it is from
the Anglo-Saxon word “boc” that we got our English word “book.” As the art of writing
developed, wax tablets were eventually used, especially for the purpose of
recording various types of legal transactions.
Then paper was invented by the
Chinese around the second century A.D. It was introduced to Arabia about the
eighth century, but was not used in the Western world until the tenth century.
At first, paper was not utilized in connection with the Bible. By the
thirteenth century a paper mill had been built in Germany; and when Gutenberg
invented movable type printing in 1450, paper came into its own. It was
discovered that by means of the printing press and paper, books could be
produced cheaply and in quantity; so paper was here to stay!
Writing has come a long way since
the days of the early pictographs, and it has been said that the pen is
mightier than the sword! This is indeed true where the written Word of God is
concerned.
For the word of God is quick [alive] and powerful [in its
operating energy], and sharper [more cutting] than any two-edged sword (Heb. 4:12a).
FOUR
TYPES OF ANCIENT MANUSCRIPTS
Ancient manuscripts are classified
into four groups. The oldest of these are the UNCIAL MANUSCRIPTS on vellum or
parchment. They are written in all capital letters with no punctuation or
spaces between words or sentences, or even
paragraphs.
The syntax (sentence structure) alone is the basis of all punctuation. An
Anglicized version of an uncial manuscript would look like this: FORGODSOLOVEDTHEWORLDTHATHEGAVE, etc.
The second type of manuscript is
called the MINUSCULE. It dates back to the tenth
century A.D. You can always tell a minuscule manuscript by its semi-uncial
script. This script was developed by monks during the seventh, eighth and the
ninth centuries and consisted of lower case cursive letters, which now form the
basis of our modern small
Roman
or Greek letters.
Thirdly, we have the LECTIONARIES. They are so named because of the Bible passages
they contain and the purpose they served. For example, suppose a pastor in one
of the early churches wanted to read Romans 5:1-12. He would copy that portion
of the Word from either the original text, from a Latin copy or some other
ancient language. He would then insert this passage in his order of service.
Maybe in the middle of his message he wanted to cover Hebrews 4:1-3; he would
have copied that down, too. Perhaps he wished to close with still another
verse, so that verse also went into his lesson. The grouping of such Bible
passages appointed for reading in worship services became known as
“lectionaries.” Since many of these lectionaries are by far more ancient than
the manuscripts which are presently available to us, they are of great help in
determining the text of the original wording of Scripture.
The fourth type of manuscript was
simply called the PAPYRI. This very delicate “paper”
was too brittle to be folded but could be rolled into scrolls. Fortunately,
little deterioration occurred when this material was stored in very hot and dry
climates: well-preserved papyri has been found dating prior to 200 A.D.
CODEX
SINAITICUS
We owe much of our knowledge of the
Scriptures to a brilliant nineteenth century German scholar, who spent his life
piecing together the original New Testament. At the age of nineteen, young
Count Konstantin von Tischendorf amazed his professors with his fluent
knowledge of the classical languages and dialects of antiquity. Seven years
later, he was appointed lecturer at the University of Leipzig. The following
year, he published a new edition of the Greek New Testament.
In the Spring of 1844, Tischendorf
took a trip to the Near East. In the course of his travels, he journeyed to the
Sinaitic Peninsula in search of an old monastery that had been hewn from the
rock on the side of Mount Sinai. Since there were no hotels or motels in those
days, travelers often spent the night in monasteries. When Tischendorf arrived
at the Greek Orthodox monastery of St. Catherine’s, he was welcomed warmly by
the Russian monks.
After a pleasant meal and a visit
with the Prior, Tischendorf presented his letter of introduction. He was then
given a grand tour of the grounds and buildings and taken to the library.
Tischendorf was disappointed by what he saw, but he kept on digging through
piles of dusty parchments. Then in a small room near the library he saw a large
waste basket filled to the rim with what looked like ancient vellum. The
contents of the waste basket had been consigned to the fireplace some of which
would contribute to the warmth of his room for that night. Tischendorf was
aghast at the thought! Here, if his eyes did not deceive him, was something of
real value! Quickly he started going through the papers. Was there more of this
kind of material around? If so, would they bring it to him that he might
examine it? This is how Tischendorf discovered the 129 pages of what is today
known as the CODEX SINAITICUS, or the Codex Aleph.
Unhappily, Tischendorf did not “play
poker” well. His face lit up in such a way that the monks knew he had found
something priceless in those waste baskets. So he had to tell them of his discovery
of a manuscript that possibly dated back to the second century. Would they let
him have it? Immediately the attitude of the monks changed; the answer was NO! Tischendorf could not take the papers with him, but he would be
permitted to stay on and take some notes. Tischendorf did more than that; he
copied the manuscript. In the end, after prolonged bargaining, he was allowed
to take 43 of the 129 pages he had found.
Almost fourteen years would pass
before all the negotiations for the transfer of this and other priceless
ancient documents — among them THE
EPISTLE OF BARNABAS — were concluded. England’s interest in the manuscripts was made
known. The monks were shocked. What, sell their precious papers to English
heretics? They would rather give them to Russia on loan, of course!
Triumphantly, and with the full backing of Russia, Tischendorf carried off his
prize for further study. He published his findings in 1862. CODEX SINAITICUS is still one of the finest and most accurate texts
available to us today, and it became the basis of many revisions and
corrections of earlier editions of the Bible.
Years passed. Then in 1933, the
Russian Communists decided they had no need of Bibles, old or new, so they sold
Codex Sinaiticus to Great Britain for 100,000 pounds sterling. The crumpled
pages were restored and bound in two volumes and placed in the British Museum.
Later they were photostatically reproduced and the copies sent to libraries
through-
out
the world.
CODEX
VATICANUS
With Tischendorf’s findings made
available to the scholars of the world, a new interest in ancient manuscripts
was kindled. Someone remembered his history and wondered what had become of the
old manuscripts which Napoleon’s scholars had discovered in the Vatican library
when the Pope had been captured.
Actually, CODEX VATICANUS, also known as Codex B, was known to be some
fifteen years older than Codex Sinaiticus (Codex Aleph). Vaticanus dated back
to 325 or 350 A.D., and had probably been brought from the East by Pope
Nicholas in 1448. Until the Napoleonic Wars, the manuscript had been hidden
from the outside world. In 1809, when Napoleon exiled the Pope to Avignon
(later to Savona), it took about fifty wagons to transport the Pope’s library.
With the fall of Napoleon in 1815, the papers were returned to the Vatican
before anyone had a chance to examine them carefully. Once more in the Vatican
library, they were jealously guarded by the Roman Catholics.
Tregelles, another great scholar and
friend of Tischendorf’s, decided to investigate the Codex Vaticanus in the
Vatican library. He applied to the Pope for permission to examine the
manuscript and was promptly refused. When he explained that he was a professor
of New Testament Literature at Leipzig University, the Pope gave permission for
Tregelles and Tischendorf to study the manuscript for six hours only. That was
in the year 1843. Two years later, Tregelles was again permitted to examine the
manuscript for some days, six hours at a time. Of course, he had to submit to
stringent security measures. He was searched on his way in and on his way out.
He could bring no writing materials and could take no notes. The manuscript was
laid out on a large table and he could read it for no longer than the time
specified. Furthermore, there would be guards watching him all the time he was
reading.
Tregelles agreed to the Pope’s
ground rules. He was searched as he went in and out; no scrap of paper or
writing tool was ever found on him. Tregelles MEMORIZED
a portion of the text each day, not only in the Greek but also in Hebrew and
Aramaic! Since he was a genius in all three languages, this presented no
problem. When he returned home, he would sit down and write out that part of
Scripture which he had memorized. The next day he would go back to the Vatican
to master the next portion of the Word. This went on for the summer holidays,
and in three months Tregelles had memorized the entire text of Codex Vaticanus.
This was one of the greatest memory feats of all time! Upon his return to
Leipzig, Tregelles published the result of his finding. So close was his text
to the original, that Pope Pius IX ordered the manuscript
photographed in 1859. In that way it became public property for the world at
large. Code Vaticanus is still one of our most valuable manuscripts of the
Word
of God.
CODEX
ALEXANDRINUS
A third very interesting manuscript,
which very few people knew about, is the CODEX ALEXANDRINUS. This Greek language manuscript had been written
about 450 A.D. in Alexandria, Egypt. Apparently no one paid any attention to it
in the years that followed. In 1621, when Cyril Lucar became the Patriarch of
the Greek Orthodox Church, he transferred the manuscript to Constantinople.
He had succumbed to the influence of
Calvinistic teaching, and was corresponding with leading churchmen in the
Western world. That’s how he learned of England’s keen interest in ancient
Biblical manuscripts. So, when the British ambassador, Thomas Roe, was
scheduled to return home, Lucar sent with him the manuscript as a gift to King
Charles 1. The beautiful document, Codex Alexandrinus, was presented at court
in 1627, just fifteen years after the King James Version of the Bible had been
completed. What a pity that it had come so late, because this very ancient
manuscript would have helped immensely in the correct rendition of the English
text.
EPHRAEMI RESCRIPTUS
It is fascinating to learn what
happened to some of the great libraries of the past and to trace their
disposition throughout history. For example, we know that Cleopatra was very
fond of reading and that Marc Antony was extraordinarily fond of Cleopatra.
When he heard of her love for books, Marc Antony took his army to one of the
great libraries of Asia Minor. There he “liberated” 400,000 volumes of
literature and took them down to Egypt as a gift for Cleopatra. An act like
this would be tantamount to the Library of Congress being stolen and moved to
another country! Many of the great libraries of the ancient world have
disappeared, and we know of their existence only because history has recorded
it for us.
It is equally interesting to
discover that some ancient manuscripts, thought to be lost, were eventually
recovered. One of these is known to us as the EPHRAEMI RESCRIPTUS, or Codex C. This recovery in the sixteenth century involved Catherine
de Medici, who was as ambitious as she was clever. Catherine was a member of
the colorful Italian family that had risen from obscurity to immense wealth and
fame. Over a period of nearly three hundred years, the Medicis had made a name
for themselves which ran the gamut from popes to poisoners, to patrons of the
arts. They had affiliated them- selves with the great houses of Europe through
marriage, and Catherine had become the wife of King Henry II, of France. She bore him four sons who eventually, through her constant
manipulations, became kings. Catherine de Medici was an avid, if somewhat
superficial reader, who treasured her books and took them wherever she went.
Among her favorites were the sermons of a Syrian
theologian,
Father Ephraern. When Catherine died, her books went to the French National
Library in Paris. They were stacked away and ignored for a long time 245 years
to be exact.
In 1834, a student of theology
decided to write a thesis on the sermons of Father Ephraern. He went to the
French National Library and asked permission to check out some of the Medici
books. He was told that they could not be removed from the premises, since the
collection had great historic value; however, he was permitted to examine the
books. While he was reading, the light fell on the page in such a way that
indentations in the vellum were visible. What appeared to the student as so
many indentations were, in fact, inscriptions made prior to those of Father
Ephraern. What actually had happened was that in 1553, when Father Ephraern
wanted to record his sermons, paper was very scarce and hard to obtain. He
found some used vellum in an ancient Syrian monastery and simply erased the
writing. True, the indentations were still there, but his own sermons could be
written over them. Without realizing it, Father Ephraern had erased one of the
finest of all Bible manuscripts in order to write his own sermons!
Immediately, the alert student
became far more interested in what Father Ephraern had erased than in what he
had written. Through the use of chemicals, the original manuscript was
restored. We call this type of manuscript a ‘TALIMPSET,” which means “erased and written over.” This particular one became
known as ‘’EPHRAERN RESCRIPTUS”; in other words, “Ephraern wrote over it.” Since its
discovery, the manuscript has been removed from the Medici stacks of literature
and placed where it belongs — in the Bible stacks at the library in Paris.
THE
PAPYRI
The Oxyrhynchos Papyri. Archaeological
findings have provided us with additional priceless manuscripts of the past.
About 1900, Oxford University professors, Drs, Grenfell and Hunt, went to
Oxyrhynchos in Upper Egypt, west of the Nile. They were searching for ancient
treasures and trinkets of silver and gold that lay buried in the tombs. During
the course of their excavations of the one-time provincial capital, they came
upon a tremendous hall filled with stuffed, mummified crocodiles. They were
baffled and disappointed; they had expected to find priceless art treasures and
jewels in the great chamber, not two thousand stuffed crocodiles! Possibly on
the other side of the chamber they would find what they were looking for and
indeed they did! They recovered many valuable artifacts which are still in
British museums today, estimated to be worth millions of dollars. This find can
scarcely be compared, however, to their discovery of far greater riches a
discovery which came about quite by accident.
To reach the other side of the great
chamber, the crocodiles had to be moved out of the way. It was a tedious job,
but it paid off handsomely. When one of the native workers stumbled and fell,
the crocodile he was carrying hit a sharp rock and broke open. Dr. Grenfell’s
eyes widened in amazement at what he saw: inside that crocodile were papyri!
Upon investigation, they found inside the crocodile mummies an entire library
of the ancient world not just one, but many different kinds of manuscripts.
These included some Biblical manuscripts from the second century practically
the same time of the autograph of the New Testament Scriptures. Here also were
grammar and etymology books which led
to further discoveries of principles involved in the syntax and grammar of the
Koine Greek, which we still use today. The OXYRHYNCHOS
PAPYRI can be
seen in museums in both Egypt and Britain. However, all the studies concerned
with those papyri have never really been completed.
The Chester Beatty Papyri.
There was increasing excitement over these discoveries, and everyone began
searching for papyri! Countless small hills and sand dunes were dug up, and
many turned out to be only rubbish heaps of the past, which contained bits of
slates, vases, broken pottery reminders of a life long ago. The Arabs, not to
be outdone, began their own treasure hunt. They carried off many valuable
treasures and peddled these to any and all buyers. So, here and there,
fragments of Biblical writings turned up. Among these was an ancient Jewish
temple library of the seventh century B. C., discovered at Elephantine, Egypt,
during the years 1906 to 1908.
Another great discovery came on
November 19, 1931, when the CHESTER
BEATTY PAPYRI were found. Chester Beatty was a millionaire from Philadelphia, who
made a tour of Palestine and Egypt. He had heard that some Old Testament papyri
in Greek were being offered for sale. Even though the price was exorbitant,
Beatty paid it immediately. He then turned the entire collection of documents
over to two scholars, F. G. Kenyan and H. A. Sanders. A detailed study of these
second and third century papyri revealed some of the missing papers of the
Codex Sinaiticus, portions of Paul’s Epistles and the four Gospels. The “haul”
was well worth the price he had paid for it after all! This collection is now housed
at the University of Pennsylvania.
The work of Deissmann. The
ever-increasing supply of newly recovered papyri furnished abundant material
for research and evaluation by knowledgeable philologists. We owe much to a
group of very famous German scholars who, under the leadership of Adolph
Deissmann, shed new light on the language of the New Testament. His studies
clarified the vocabulary, grammar and syntax of the Koine Greek. Light from
the Ancient East, translated from the German, is a fascinating book on this
subject and contains some of Deissmann’s findings.
The Dead Sea Scrolls. In 1947, a
fifteen-year-old Bedouin boy followed a goat which had strayed. When he
casually threw a pebble into the cleft of a rock, he was startled at the sound
of breaking pottery. Later he returned with a friend to explore the cave. Here
they stumbled upon several earthenware jars that contained dirty,
musty-smelling parchment. What seemed like an accidental find turned out to be
Biblical manuscripts antedating the oldest known Old Testament manuscripts by
one thousand years. This included the complete book of Isaiah. It would take
many years and a small fortune to acquire these scrolls from the Arab “black
market,” and even more patience to piece them together and to decipher. There
could be no doubt, however, the scrolls were genuine. In the following years,
many additional caches were located, including the main library of the Essenes,
a Jewish sect. THE DEAD SEA SCROLLS were named after the area
in which they had been found.
What do these discoveries prove to
us? That God provided for the preservation and the recovery of His written
message, the Canon of Scripture.
THE
NEED FOR THE CANON
Why does the believer need a Canon
of Scripture? Why were the various portions of the divinely inspired Word of
God collected and bound into a book called “the Holy Bible” ?Let’s consider
four reasons why there was a very definite need for the Canon.
1.
So that believers in every generation might have complete revelation
from God. They need to understand the predesigned plan of God, the
dispensation in which they live, their relationship to the angelic conflict, as
well as many other principles of doctrine. To operate in the devil’s world,
believers must have a norm or standard of absolute authority.
When it comes to absolutes, no
ordinary human being can speak with authority — no matter what title or office
you may give him. Every human being has some area of limitation because he
possesses an old sin nature. No matter how capable he may be or how excellent
his judgment, there cannot be absolute authority vested in any individual.
Absolute authority is a divine prerogative.
There has been only one Member of
the human race to whom absolute authority was given — the God-Man, the Lord
Jesus Christ (Matt. 28:18). Because He is absent from the earth and at the
right hand of the Father, He must leave behind a standard which carries the
same authority with which He spoke during His incarnation. That absolute
standard of authority is found only in the Word of God (1 Cor. 2:16). I
personally have no use for the red-letter edition of the New Testament, which
supposedly marks the words of Christ. The entire Bible is the Word of God! Just
remember that our Lord said to His disciples, “I haven’t time to explain to you
all these things now. Furthermore, you are not able to understand them at this
time. But when I leave, I will send the Holy Spirit, and He will teach you the
things that are so vital for you to know” (John 16:12, 13). So rest assured
that the New Testament epistles carry the same weight as those words which the
Lord spoke in Person! They are addressed to you and to me!
2. A Canon was necessary so that
people might have God’s Word in writing. Whether you realize it or not, you
happen to be one of the generations of believers who has in your possession the
greatest treasure of all time — the completed Canon of Scripture! There is
nothing more rewarding and profitable than to go “prospecting” in the Word of
God. In addition to Bible doctrine, the Word contains thousands of promises to
which God has put His signature. All are guaranteed by the very essence of God,
and you and I have them in writing!
This has not always been the case,
since revelation from God in the past dispensations came to man in other ways.
Since the completion of the Canon of Scripture in 96 A.D., all extra-Biblical
revelation has ceased. Today, if anyone claims that God speaks to him in a
dream or trance, he is out of line; God speaks to us only through His Word!
Therefore, in order to learn, understand and apply God’s Word, Bible doctrine
must be taught exegetically, categorically and isagogically. God made every
provision necessary for our assimilation of the content of the “Divine
Textbook.” Once you have accepted Jesus Christ as your Savior, that Book should
become your manual for living. So you see, there should be no such thing as a
drab, depressing, miserable existence for any believer. Life should have
meaning, purpose and definition; God has a special plan for you. Everything
that you will ever need in life for inner peace and happiness, for blessing and
strength and stability is found in the completed Canon of Scripture. There is
no substitute for Bible doctrine or for positive volition toward it on your
part!
3. There was a need for the
preservation and circulation of the sacred writings. For example, in 320
A.D., the Roman Emperor Diocletian ordered the destruction of all sacred books
of the Christians. Although Diocletian was not aware of it, his persecutions
acted as a catalyst to precipitate the necessary settlement of a grave dispute.
Theologians had been arguing over the inclusion of James, Hebrews and Second
and Third John into the Canon; but now that controversy had to be resolved in a
hurry! The Roman soldiers were on their way to carry out the order, so
Christians attempted to determine what was sacred and what was not.
4. That people might know which
writings were canonical. There had to be some norm or criteria for
canonicity. The inspired writings had to be protected from the infiltration of
non-canonical books. A tremendous mass of literature had appeared in the first
three or four centuries, all of which claimed to be authoritative and inspired.
Much of this literature was promoted by various cults in an attempt to prove
their false theology or heretical ideas. They even went so far as to maintain
that some of these were Paul’s lost messages. Something had to be done to
determine which books were “in” and which were “out” of the Canon.
After the Roman Emperor Constantine
became a Christian, he was so eager for doctrine that he ordered fifty copies
of the Scriptures for the churches of his new capitol — Constantinople. Again
the question: what is Scripture and what is not? This had to be settled once
and for all! The scribes began their mammoth task of writing out by hand the
fifty copies that the emperor had ordered. The job was completed before
Constantine’s death.
THE
CRITERIA FOR OLD TESTAMENT CANONICITY
With the awareness of the need for a
Canon, five criteria were agreed upon. On this basis, the inclusion or
exclusion of certain books into the Canon was eventually determined.
1. The question of inspiration.
Was the book of divine origin? (2 Pet. 1:21). Every extant book of an acknowledged
messenger of God, commissioned by God to make known His will, was immediately
accepted as the Word of God.
2. The principle of internal
evidence. Was its claim to inspiration adequately sustained by the awareness
of the writers that this was indeed sacred Scripture? There are certain
passages of Scripture which explain this principle of canonicity. For example:
Deuteronomy 31:24-26; Joshua 1:8; Judges 3:4; Jeremiah 36.
Nehemiah 8:1-8 is a critical passage,
which presents the facts that the people were taught the Word of God. When
Daniel went into captivity, he took with him a copy of the Old Testament as it
then existed. By reading the prophecies of Jeremiah 25:11-12 and 29:10, he
discovered that Israel had a future. This is brought out by Daniel 9:2, 5, 6.
Another passage which is especially clear on the first two criteria for
canonicity is Zechariah 7:12:
Yes, they made their hearts as an
adamant stone, lest they should hear the law, AND THE WORDS WHICH THE LORD OF HOSTS HATH SENT IN HIS SPIRIT BY THE
FORMER PROPHETS:
therefore came a great wrath from the Lord of hosts.
3. Documentation by quotation.
The New Testament contains quotations from the Old Testament made by Jesus
Christ and others who declared it to be the Word of God. We have many such
passages, among them Matthew 22:29’, John 5:39 and 10:35.
4. The law of public official
action. This is an historical law which required that public action be
taken immediately to solemnly declare a portion of Scripture to be the Word of
God. We have an illustration of this in Nehemiah 8:5:
And Ezra opened the book in the sight of all the people;
(for he was above all the people;) and when he opened it, all the people stood
up.
When liberalism, socialism, religiosity
and legalism gain a foothold in a nation, that national entity invariably
declines. This pattern of apostasy was followed by the Jews many times, with
resultant discipline from God (Lev. 26:14-39). Often military defeat (Deut.
28:25) served to awaken the Jews to a realization of their spiritual status and
an awareness of their need for Bible doctrine. The prophets or priests would
publicly read and teach the Word of God. To do so, they had to know which books
to read on such occasions.
5. The law of cause and effect.
The cause is the existence of the Canon, and the effect is the recognition of
the Canon. The Old Testament books are not canonical because Israel recognized
them as such but because they were of divine origin. Inspiration was the
mechanics by which they had come into existence, and that is what made certain
books canonical! So we might say that canonicity is a recognition of what God
has done in the field of communication. Passages like 2 Kings 22; 23:1, 2; and
Nehemiah 8 are NOT historical accounts of the
ratification of the Canon but the result of the existence of the Canon! In
other words, the Canon existed; therefore, it was recognized!
6. The principle of external
evidence. There are also some extra-Biblical evidences which led to the
completion of the Canon. The year 586 B. C. saw God’s administration of the
fifth cycle of discipline of Judah. Jerusalem and the Temple had been
destroyed, and the Jews had gone into the Babylonian captivity (2 Chron.
36:11-21). During their captivity (586-516 B.C.) the Jews realized why they had disintegrated as a nation. This
led to a resurgence of the study of Bible doctrine. At last the Jews became
aware of the importance of the written Word as a part of their spiritual
heritage — so much so, that we have extra-Biblical evidence with regard to
their consciousness of the Canon as it then existed. There were men like Ezra,
Nehemiah, Haggai, Zecharaiah and Malachi, who kept reminding the people of the
importance of the Scriptures. There were other outstanding leaders like Joshua
the high priest and Zerubbabel, who led the advance column out of captivity
back to Jerusalem. They all recognized that they had the Canon. By the year 425
B.C. all the Old Testament books had been written, and the Old Testament Canon
was collected and closed.
More than that, apparently these
same Jewish leaders invented a marvelous system for the preservation of the
Canon. They counted every letter in every book. They knew the middle letter of
the Canon. Now whenever copies were made of the Scriptures and a scribe arrived
at the midpoint of the text, they would check him out by counting the exact
number of letters. The same was done upon the completion of the text. As a
result, we are assured that the Old Testament we have today is precisely the
same as at the time of its original writing.
THE
ORGANIZATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT CANON
In content, the Hebrew Old Testament
Canon is exactly the same as our Old Testament in the English, but the number
of books and their arrangement in the Hebrew Canon is different. We have, first
of all, a threefold division of the Canon: THE TORAH, THE PROPHETS and THE
WRITINGS.
We’ve already seen that every writer
of the Old Testament had the gift of prophecy. Moses, for example, was the
unique prophet — the greatest prophet who ever lived — until the coming of
Jesus Christ. Moses wrote the first five books of the Bible. They are called THE TORAH, or THE PENTATEUCH, and consist of Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers
and Deuteronomy.
The second group of books in the Old
Testament Canon are THE NABHIIM, or the Prophets. All of
these men had the gift of prophecy, but some were called the Former Prophets
and others the Latter Prophets. The Former Prophets preached before the
Babylonian Captivity, and the Latter Prophets preached after the Babylonian
Captivity. In the Hebrew Canon, there are eight prophetical books, four in each
category. Among the Former Prophets we have Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings.
There was no breakdown into First and Second Samuel or First and Second Kings
as we have it in the English Bible. Joshua is the human author of the last
chapter of Deuteronomy and of the Book of Joshua (with the exception of the
last five verses). Samuel wrote Judges and First and Second Samuel. The human
author of Kings is anybody’s guess. What matters is the principle of
inspiration (2 Tim. 3:16).
The Latter Prophets are commonly
known as the Major and the Minor Prophets. They are not “major” or “minor” in
content or importance, but only in length. The three Major Prophets are Isaiah,
Jeremiah and Ezekiel. Isaiah wrote in classical Hebrew; Jeremiah wrote in
“everyday” Hebrew, and Ezekiel struck a happy medium between the two; yet each
one wrote under the principle of inspiration (2 Pet. 1:21).
The Minor Prophets, which we divide
into twelve separate books, are all one book in the Hebrew Bible, called “The
Twelve.” Apart from the book of Daniel, “The Twelve” includes everything from
Hosea to Malachi.
It is important that you have some
understanding of the arrangement of the books of the Hebrew Canon for this
reason: occasionally Jesus would quote a passage from the Old Testament. He
might then say, “As Jeremiah said . . .” when in reality He was quoting
Zechariah. Had Jesus made a mistake? No! Jesus knew what He was saying. He was
quoting on the basis of a system that the Jews used for locating a passage.
Remember that modern books did not exist in those days; they used scrolls
instead. Often a scroll contained more than one book, but the entire scroll was
identified by the name of the first book. In our example, it would be called
the “Jeremiah Scroll.”
The third section of the Hebrew Old
Testament is called THE KETHUBIM or “The Writings.” Its
writers had only the gift of prophecy but did not hold the office of Prophet.
“The Writings” were divided into three sections: THE POETICAL BOOKS, THE FIVE ROLLS (also called THE MEGILLOTH)
and THE HISTORICAL BOOKS.
There are three books of poetry:
Psalms, Proverbs and Job. The “Five Rolls” or Megilloth are five separate
books, each of which is read at a different feast. The first of these five
books is Song of Solomon, always read on the Passover. The Book of Ruth is read
on the Day of Pentecost. After Ruth came Ecclesiastes, which is read at the
Feast of the Tabernacles. Then Esther is read at the Feast of Purim because it
contains the origin of that holiday. The last of the Megilloth is Lamentations,
also known as “The Five Rules.” Jeremiah wrote Lamentations in the form of a
funeral dirge on the occasion of the destruction of Jerusalem by the besieging
armies of Nebuchadnezzar. As one might expect. Lamentations is read annually on
the anniversary of that sad day. The three Historical Books are found at the
end of the Hebrew Canon: Daniel, Ezra and Nehemiah (one book), and Chronicles.
As is the case with Samuel and Kings, there is no division of Chronicles into
two books in the Hebrew. When we add the number of books in the Hebrew Old
Testament, we have only twenty-four books compared to our thirty-nine. Their
arrangement of the Canon is better than ours in every way.
THE
TESTIMONY OF JOSEPHUS
The generally accepted date for the
completion of the Old Testament Canon is the year 425 or 424 B.C. The fact of
its existence was recognized by the Jews but blatantly denied by a bombastic
character by the name of Apion. He flatly declared that there was no such thing
as the sacred Scriptures! I don’t know what believers of his time did about
this attack on the Word of God, but I do know what one unbeliever did — he came
to the defense of Scripture promptly and in no uncertain terms!
Flavius Josephus was an unbeliever.
By race he was a Jew; by mannerism, adoption and citizenship he was a Roman;
and by profession he was an outstanding soldier and eminent historian. From the
time that Josephus had been promoted to the rank of a Roman general, he was
pro-Roman all the way. Yet for all this, he simply could not let this
scurrilous accusation against the validity of the Canon go without a formal
objection. He sat down and refuted Apion’s claim, point by point, in a book
called Contra Apion.
Keep in mind that Josephus was an
unbeliever; he was not emotionally involved and therefore could write clearly,
objectively and concisely on this matter. He had one passion in life accurate
presentation of history! He once said that an historian should record the facts
of history without interpreting the facts. He must report accurately what was
said, what was done, what was expressed. So, while Josephus had little or no
love for his own people, the Jews, he could not let Apion get away with
historical inaccuracy.
In Contra Apion, Josephus
describes the sacred books of the Jews. He states that the time during which these
books were written extended from Moses to Artaxerxes I, who reigned from 465 to
424 B.C. Furthermore, he demonstrates that there never was a time that the Jews
did not accept this text as the Word of God. Canonicity was, in fact, a
definite part of Jewish history. He further states that nothing was ever added
to the Canon after the death of Artaxerxes in 424 B.C.; the line of prophets
had ceased to exist, and no one dared make any addition, subtraction or
alteration to the Canon of Scripture.
But make no mistake! Josephus was
not personally interested in defending the Canon, but only in proving
historically the existence of the Canon. And so, quite unintentionally, an
unbeliever provided us with reliable extra-Biblical documentation of how the
Canon was completed and recognized — hence, of its existence!
THE
DEMAND FOR THE SEPTUAGINT
In the centuries which followed the
Baby Ionian Captivity, many changes took place for the Jews. The Persian
Empire, which had been favorably inclined toward the Jews, collapsed. Alexander
the Great extended his conquests. He, too, was pro-Semitic, and the Jews
prospered during his reign and under his successors, the Ptolemies.
At that time the largest group of
Jews in the world had settled at Alexandria in Egypt. The city had been founded
by Alexander the Great, and the Ptolemies had made it their capital. They loved
books and collected them. During their dynasty, they had built one of the
finest universities of the ancient world in Alexandria, the Museion, which contained
an immense library. Alexandria was the home of many brilliant Greek
philosophers, scientists, mathematicians and writers. No wonder the city became
a great center of learning and culture! It was here that the first translation
of the Hebrew Canon was made.
By the year 280 B.C., the large
Jewish community al Alexandria had been influenced by Greek culture to such an
extent that its citizens had adopted the Hellenistic Greek, of Alexander the
Great as their own language. They could no longer read the Scriptures in the
original Hebrew. (Hellenistic Greek was the transitional Greek between the
classical Attic Greek and the Koine Greek of the New Testament.) True, they
still tried to adhere to the legal code and observe their holy days, but now
they clamored for a translation of the Holy Scriptures into Greek.
This required real experts!
Seventy-two Alexandrian Hebrew scholars gathered together and produced an
amazingly accurate translation from the manuscripts in their possession. It was
named in their honor and memory ‘THE
SEPTUAGINT” or
“The Seventy” after the number of translators. The Septuagint was then
circulated among the Greek-speaking Jews. It was also widely used in Palestine
during the incarnation of Jesus and in the time of the Apostles. So the
existence and acceptance of the Septuagint in the year 280 B.C. gives us yet
another historical proof of canonicity!
CANONICITY-CONSCIOUSNESS
The Talmud. This is the
written opinion of the Rabbis, recorded from 400 B.C. to 500 A.D., over a
period of nearly 900 years. The word “Talmud” comes from another Hebrew word, LAMAD, meaning “to teach.” Picture it as a quarterly magazine with hundreds
of Rabbis for contributors. Many of these Rabbis were unbelievers, but they all
agreed on one thing — the extent of the Canon. Throughout the Talmud there was
always canonicity-consciousness. The Canon was recognized and its human authors
and their books listed as follows:
AUTHORS BOOKS
Moses
...................................................................… Torah and
Job
Joshua
....................................................................…
Deuteronomy 34:5-12 and Joshua
Samuel
....................................................................… Samuel, Judges, Ruth
David ....................................................................… Part of the Psalms
Jeremiah
...................................................................… Jeremiah,
Kings and Lamentations
Hezekiah
and School ................................................… Isaiah, Proverbs,
Canticles, and Ecclesiastes.
Men of the Great Synagogue
....................................… Ezekiel, The Twelve, Daniel and Esther
Ezra
...........................................................................…
Ezra, Nehemiah, Geneologies of Chronicles
as far as himself.
The Endorsement of the Canon by
Jesus Christ. Jesus Himself swept the entire range of the Old Testament
books and endorsed them all in one statement in Luke 11:51:
From the blood of Abel unto the blood of Zacharias which
perished between the altar and the temple: verily I say unto you, It shall be required
of this generation. (See also Matt. 23:36.)
This endorsement of Scripture takes
us all the way from Genesis 4:10 to 2 Chronicles 24:20-21. Remember that
Chronicles was the last book in the arrangement of the Hebrew Old Testament
Canon.
The Endorsement of Eusebius.
Eusebius, the famous historian of the Patristic era (fourth century A.D.), was
a Christian historian. Yet he stated that the entire Old Testament Canon was
recognized and accepted in his day, although he personally questioned the inclusion
of Esther into the Canon. He catalogued the books of the Old Testament in his
Ecclesiastical History, but omitted the Book of Esther.
The Endorsement of Tertullian.
Tertullian, another famous historian of that same era and one of the Patristic
writers, did not agree with Eusebius. He reasoned that if the Jews included
Esther in the Canon, the book belonged and should be listed among the inspired
Scripture. Out of that disagreement came one good thing the classification of
the Old Testament Canon under four categories.
THE
CLASSIFICATION OF THE CANON
The Homologoumena. These were
the books which in the third, fourth and even fifth centuries had been accepted
as undisputedly canonical by the Patristic writers. “Homo” means “the same,”
and all were of the same mind regarding the books in the first section.
The Antilegomena. The books
in the second section caused a good deal of argumentation among the Patristics.
The following were disputed canonical books: Esther, Canticles, Ecclesiastes,
Ezekiel and Proverbs.
The Book of Esther had been accepted
as part of the Canon for over one thousand years. Suddenly its place in the
Canon was questioned. Why? Because the name of God is not once mentioned in the
entire book! Or take Canticles, also known as Song of Solomon the Patristics
did not want to accept that one either. They had a trend toward asceticism, and
Canticles dealt with a love affair. Perhaps these men had never experienced
Category Two love and were shocked. So they debated whether or not such a book
should really be in the Canon.
As for Ecclesiastes, they argued
that the philosophy of this book simply could not be reconciled with Bible
doctrine and Judaism. Of course, there is a simple answer to this apparent
problem Solomon was looking at life from the human viewpoint at this period of
his life! The Patristics either did not know this fact or completely failed to
recognize it.
They questioned Ezekiel because
Chapters 40-48 seemingly contradicted the Mosaic Law. Here, too, is a simple
explanation: Ezekiel 40-48 deals with the Millennial use of the animal
sacrifices, not with the Levitical offerings. The presence of Proverbs in the
Canon disturbed them because apparently one proverb contradicted the next. The
truth was that these men did not understand the Book of Proverbs. And what
easier way out is there (without losing face) than to say, “This appears to be
contradictory” ?Had they discovered the system under which Proverbs was
written, the Patristics would have agreed that the proverbs were far from being
contradictory. They were merely two-line poems, recording various experiences
on different occasions, and they were designed to communicate doctrine. So you
see that the problem lay with the Patristics and not with Scripture. God is not
the author of confusion ( 1 Cor. 14:33).
The Pseudepigrapha. Next, we
have the category of spurious writings, which was developed by the cautious
Patristics to keep any and all forgeries of the Scriptures out of the Canon. At
that time, “ancient” scrolls were being "discovered'''' and were claimed
to have Old Testament authors. Various cults wanted Old Testament
substantiation for their beliefs. For example, they might say, “You are not
saved simply by faith in Christ; in addition, you must DO various things.” When challenged with “Where do you find that?” they
would produce a book called “The Penitence of Jannes and Jambres” as a proof
text.
Where had they gotten the idea? They
had lifted it right out of 2 Timothy 3:8. All we know about Jannes and Jambres
is that they opposed Moses at the court of Pharaoh, and that they are called
magicians in Exodus 7:11 and 8:7. But look what these forgers had done! They
had embellished the known facts to make a fantastic tale of penitence.
Supposedly, Jannes and Jambres had felt sorry for what they had done; they
renounced their sins and had become ascetics. This, then, was one type of book
which tried to infiltrate the Canon.
Another such book was “The Magic
Book of Moses.” Its erroneous claim to fame was the fact that Moses actually
spoke in tongues. In reality, the book was sponsored by a group of people who
were promoting the tongues movement; so they “uncovered” this scroll and
attempted to peddle it as Scripture. The Patristics branded these books “PSEUDEPIGRAPHA.” They said, in effect, ‘This is a phony forgery!” I
realize that this is redundant in our language, but it wasn’t in theirs. I like
the strength of their language in condemning those faked writings. “Pseudo”
means “false”; “pigrapha” means “forgery” (grapha — to write). And with those
words, everything that was not canonical was once and for all rejected. This
third category was absolutely necessary so that all those books written by
unknown persons between 200 B.C. and 200 A.D. might be classified under the pseudepigrapha
and not be included in the Canon.
The Apocrypha. Some of you
may have Bibles that have the Apocrypha inserted between Malachi and Matthew.
Does it belong in our Bibles? It does not! The Apocrypha are books which were
written after the Canon was closed around 425 B.C. Although they were asserted
to be canonical, these books were rejected as being spurious and fraudulent and
definitely NOT a part of the Word of God!
As a matter of fact, the principles of Canonicity were reviewed when the
Apocrypha was introduced. The word “apocrypha” means “hidden” or “secret,” but,
due to their doubtful authenticity, the word has come to mean “spurious,”
“fraudulent” or “forged.” Their proposed addition to the Canon was nothing
short of an attempt on the part of the devil himself to infiltrate God’s Truth.
The Apocrypha includes fourteen
books which are found in the Septuagint and the Vulgate but never in the Hebrew
Canon! They were originally written in the Greek language, except for
Ecclesiasticus, First Maccabees, part of Baruch, Judith and Tobit. These latter
were written in Aramaic. While they are not canonical, they do fill us in
historically on the four hundred silent years between the Old and the New
Testaments.
THE
REJECTION OF THE APOCRYPHA
1. THE APOCRYPHA WAS NEVER IN THE HEBREW CANON. Every card-indexing
catalogue of the Canon of Scripture in the ancient world listed only the
twenty-four Jewish books of the Old Testament (thirty-nine as we have them
today), but it excluded the Apocrypha in toto.
2. NEITHER JESUS CHRIST NOR ANY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT WRITERS EVER QUOTED
FROM THE APOCRYPHA.
Never even once!
3. JOSEPHUS EXPRESSLY EXCLUDED
THEM FROM HIS LIST OF SACRED SCRIPTURE IN HIS BOOK. He explained that these
books were excluded from the Canon because they were spurious!
4. NO MENTION OF THE APOCRYPHA WAS MADE IN ANY CATALOGUE OF CANONICAL
BOOKS IN THE FIRST FOUR CENTURIES A.D. It was not until the fifth century that a
well-known organization slipped them into the catalogue!
5. THESE APOCRYPHAL BOOKS WERE NEVER ASSERTED TO BE DIVINELY INSPIRED, OR
TO POSSESS DIVINE AUTHORITY IN THEIR CONTENTS!
6. NO PROPHETS WERE CONNECTED WITH THESE WRITINGS! Each Old Testament book
was written by a man who was a prophet, either by office or by gift, or both.
7. THESE BOOKS CONTAINED MANY HISTORICAL, GEOGRAPHICAL AND CHRONOLOGICAL
ERRORS. They so
distorted and contradicted Old Testament narratives that in order to accept the
Apocrypha one had to reject the Old Testament.
8. THE APOCRYPHA TEACHES DOCTRINES AND UPHOLDS PRACTICES WHICH ARE
CONTRARY TO THE CANON OF SCRIPTURE! Documentation regarding the false doctrine found
in the Apocrypha is as follows:
a. Prayers and
Offerings for the Dead. In 2 Maccabees 12:41-46, not only are prayers, offered
for the dead, but monetary offerings are brought on their behalf and even
recommended! I am quoting from the Douay version (the authorized Catholic
Bible) of the Old Testament, which is a revised version of the Latin Vulgate:
It is therefore a holy and wholesome thought to pray for
the dead, that they may be loosed from sin (v. 46).
This is contrary to all Scripture
(John 3:18, 36)! You simply cannot buy the unsaved dead out of their unsaved
status, nor
can
you improve their condition by prayer!
b. Suicide Justified.
2 Maccabees 14:41-46 deals with a revolt against the Syrians, led by the
Maccabean brothers. Here we find an attempted suicide that was not successful
until the third try. The sacred Scriptures would relate such an incident
without praise and without the implication that it should be admired or
imitated. The Bible teaches that to take one’s own life is to superimpose human
volition over divine volition (Psa. 31:15); but the Apocrypha justifies this
suicide and calls it a noble death.
c. Atonement and
Salvation by Almsgiving. At least two of the books in the Apocrypha state
that sins may be atoned for and salvation may be obtained by giving large
donations. Interesting, isn’t it? Especially in view of 1 John 1:9 and such passages
as Ephesians 2:8, 9 and Titus 3:5! Ecclesiasticus 3:33 (must be distinguished
from Ecclesiastes) speaks of atonement by almsgiving. Tobit 4:11 states that
salvation can be purchased:
For
alms deliver from all sin, and from death and will not suffer the soul to go
into darkness.
d. Cruelty to Slaves
Justified. In Ecclesiasticus 33:25-29, we read that the best way to treat a
slave is to pile the work on him, and that, if need be, cruelty to slaves is
fully justified. How does that compare to God’s admonition in Deuteronomy
23:15,16?
Thou shall not deliver unto his master the servant
[slave] which is escaped . . . unto thee. He shall dwell with thee . . . thou
shall not oppress him.
e. The Doctrine of
Emanations. This is a cosmological concept characteristic of Neo-platonism
and Gnosticism. It explains the world as an “outflowing” from One Absolute
source but never uses the word “God.” This is frequently encountered in Indian
metaphysics. In contrast to “creation,” “emanation” is entirely impersonal and
metaphorical.
Nowhere in the Word of God is there
any teaching on emanation; but you find it in the Apocrypha, in the Wisdom of
Solomon 7:25, where we read that “ .. . she [wisdom] is a vapour of the power
of God, and a certain pure emanation of the glory of . . . God.”
What we have here is a rehash of
Neo-platonism. Platonic philosophy presented the idea of a material universe
and the Demiurge as its creator but explained the physical world as possessing
only relative reality. Plato also taught that knowledge is partly a matter of
recollections of a previous life with all souls preexisting.
f. The preexistence
of souls is also mentioned in the next chapter, 8:19, 20. This is the
teaching of the doctrine of TRADUCIANISM which claims that the soul,
as well as the body is produced in procreation by the parents. Now we know that
ultimately only God can give soul-life.
g. Other Fallacies
and Blasphemies in the Apocrypha. Just in case you aren’t convinced that the
Apocrypha has no place in the Scriptures, let’s note a few additional things.
If you want to take the time, you can dig them out of the Apocrypha for
yourself.
The Apocrypha advocates hatred of
the Samaritans. So, if you follow the teachings of the Apocrypha, you must hate
the Samaritans before you can be saved. Since there are no Samaritans left
today- for us to hate, where does that put us as far as salvation is concerned?
In Proverbs 6, lying is second on the list of the seven “worst” sins; in the Apocrypha,
lying is sanctioned. The Bible strictly prohibits anything connected with
witchcraft (Dent. 18:10-12), but magical incantations are encouraged in the
Apocrypha. Assassination, in violation of the laws of divine establishment
(Matt. 19:18), is also suggested. In the Apocrypha, seven angels are said to
have the power of intercession. In view of Romans 8:34, 1 Timothy 2:5 and
Hebrews 7:25, this is outright blasphemy!
Now, where do you find all these
things — including Purgatory — mentioned? Only in the Apocrypha! Is it any
wonder, then, that the Apocrypha was rejected?
THE HISTORY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT CANON
The Canon of Scripture would be
incomplete without the writings of the New Testament. The history of the New
Testament Canon can be divided into three periods. The first period began in 70
A.D. with the fall of Jerusalem.
70 - 170 A.D. was the period
of circulation of the separate New Testament writings among the churches and
their gradual collection into one book — The New Testament Canon. Up to that
time, the poor communication systems, plus the preference of the people for the
oral testimony and face-to-face teaching of the Apostles, hindered the
formation of the Canon.
We have a number of historical
statements of that early period regarding the Canon. For instance, CLEMENT OF ROME (96 A.D.) recognized the divine authority of the
New Testament and often quoted from many of the epistles.
In THE EPISTLE OF BARNABAS, the writer quotes from both the Old and the New Testaments, stating
that these were canonical. Another early Christian work that was written in
Greek — THE DIDACHE (also called “The Teaching
of the Twelve Apostles”) — contains twenty-three quotations from Matthew and
Luke alone, declaring them to be divinely inspired.
There are still others who mentioned
the Canon: POLYCARP, the Bishop of Smyrna; PAPIAS, the Bishop of Hierapolis; JUSTIN and TATIAN; IGNATIUS, the Bishop of Antioch. All quoted Matthew, John and
the Pauline epistles, and referred to them as Scripture. From these men and
their writings, we can establish the fact that the formation of the New
Testament Canon was a foregone conclusion. The early Church fully recognized
the authority of Christ and of the Apostles, giving the Gospels and the
epistles the same rank as the Old Testament Scriptures. These were read in
their worship services and preserved in their archives.
170 - 303 A.D. was the time
of the early Church Fathers. Some of the well-known men of their day, who
historically referred to the Canon, were
IRENAEUS, CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA, TERTULLIAN and ORIGEN. The fact of the existence of the New Testament Canon was definitely
and clearly established. Now a controversy began over certain New Testament
books. The canonicity of Second Peter was questioned since it was so different
in style from Peter’s first epistle. They argued over Hebrews because no one
could determine the author. Second and Third John were too short. No one really
liked the Epistle of James; besides, they didn’t know which James (there are
four mentioned in the New Testament) wrote it. Jude had to go, along with
Second and Third John, because of its brevity. As for Revelation, they could
not decide whether the author was John the Apostle or John the Presbyter. This
great debate went on from 303 to 394 A.D. until the problems were finally
resolved.
As in the case of the Old Testament,
there was an attempt to infiltrate a number of previously rejected writings
into the Canon of the New Testament. These included The Acts of Paul and Thekia
and The Epistle of Barnabas. You will recall, this was discovered by
Tischendorf at St. Catherine’s Monastery in Sinai. There was The Gospel of
Thomas (a real hair-raiser) and The Acts of Andrew. Both read like the
proverbial dime novel. So here, too, some criteria had to be set up to specify
once and for all which books were to be excluded and which were to be included
in the New Testament.
THE
CRITERIA FOR NEW TESTAMENT CANONICITY
1. Apostolicity. Every book
of the New Testament must either be written by an apostle or someone closely
associated with an apostle (i.e., Mark was under Peter, and Luke was associated
with Paul).
2. Reception by the Churches.
The books must be universally received, by the local churches as authentic at
the time of their writing.
3. Consistency. They must be
consistent with the doctrine that the Church already possessed namely, the Old
Testament and Apostolic teaching.
4. Inspiration. Each book
must give evidence, internally and externally, of being divinely inspired. The
spiritual gift of discernment was used to determine canonicity (1 Cor. 12:10).
5. Recognition. Each must be
recognized as canonical in the catalogues of the Church Fathers and must be
used by those who had the gift of pastor-teacher.
6. Internal. To be canonical,
each book must contain exhortation to public exegesis of the Word (i.e., Col.
4:16; 1 Thess. 5:27; 1 Tim. 4:13; Rev. 1:3; 2:7, II, 17,
29; 3:6, 13; also, Peter’s famous statement at the end of his second epistle.
Although Paul had thoroughly braced Peter in Galatians 2:6- 14, Peter places
Paul’s writings on a par with the Old Testament Scriptures in 2 Peter 3:15-16).
303 - 379 A.D. Largely
instrumental in determining the extent of the Canon were two events in history:
THE DIOCLETIAN PERSECUTION, during which every attempt
was made to destroy the Scriptures, and the EMPEROR CONSTANTINE’S order for fifty copies of the Bible for use in the
churches of Constantinople.
It was during this final period, and
in the years shortly thereafter, that the great Church Councils were held. They
resulted in the formal ratification of the Canon, which by then had been in
existence for several hundred years.
Eusebius (270 - 340). This
great historian, as a trusted friend of the Emperor Constantine, enjoyed access
to all the church archives. He promptly set about to record the history of the
Church. With scholarly precision, he set up a system for classifying the New
Testament books. This would eventually solve the entire problem of Canonicity.
He used the same categories that were set up for the classification of the Old
Testament.
The Acknowledged Books
(“Homologoumena”) .Into this first category Eusebius placed the four Gospels,
Acts, the fourteen Pauline epistles, First Peter, First John and Revelation.
Regarding Revelation, he stated that its place in this category was doubted by
some, and then qualified his remark with a question mark.
The Disputed Books
(“Antilegomena”). The next category was made up of bona fide scriptural books
that had been a source of disputation. We have already seen the objections to
James, First and Second Peter and Second and Third John. It is interesting to
learn that Martin Luther called James “a right strawy epistle”; he would have
thrown it out of the Canon, could he have done so. Hebrews was not mentioned at
this time; it had been accepted upon the decision that there must have been
some good reason why the author remained unknown.
The Spurious Writings (“Apocrypha”)
.As in the case of the Old Testament, there was a New Testament Apocrypha,
which included The Acts of Paul, The Epistle of Barnabas, The Shepherd of
Hermas, The Revelation of the Twelve and The Revelation of Peter. (If you think
that some of our modern cults are “way out,” you should read The Revelation of
Peter!).
The Heretical or Absurd Writings
(“Pseudepigrapha”) .This fourth category contained, most of the known
forgeries, among them: the Gospel of Peter, the Gospel of Thomas, the Acts of
Andrew, etc.
The Church Councils. About this
time it was decided that a Church Council should be called to settle the matter
of the Canon once and for all.
There were four sessions:
The Council of Laodecia (336 A.D.)
The Council of Damascus (382 A.D.)
The Council of Carthage (397 A.D.)
The Council of Hippo (419 A.D.)
The Council of Laodecia recognized
and accepted all books of the New Testament Canon except Revelation; but at the
following three Councils, Revelation was accepted.
As far as canonicity is concerned,
one of the greatest things ever to be discovered was the MURATORIAN FRAGMENT.
This was found in the Ambrosian Library, Milan, in 1740 by a librarian named
Muratori. Although it was mutilated at both ends, the fragment showed that
cataloguing of the New Testament had been done as early as the second century.
This particular “card index” of the books of the ancient world lists all the
New Testament books beginning with Luke, referred to as “the third Gospel”; it
omits Hebrews, James, the epistles of Peter and Second and Third John. The
unknown writer then goes to great length to distinguish between the writings
which should be accepted by true believers and those which should be rejected.
The question of canonicity never
came up again until the rise of liberalism in the nineteenth century, which led
to our twentieth century modernism. All this background information is
necessary in order that you might know how we acquired the Bible in its present
form.
THE
EARLY HISTORY OF ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS
Caedmon (died in 680 A.D.).
The Bible in the English language is not as new as some may think; it has a
history that goes back to a stable boy turned singer, by the name of Caedmon.
He became known as the first English Christian poet. It seems that Caedmon was
a member of the abbey at Whiteby and apparently also a soloist in the choir. In
those days, Latin was the official language of England. Although the common
people spoke Anglo-Saxon, the aristocracy and priesthood spoke Latin, and all
church services were conducted exclusively in Latin. The common people never
understood what was said or sung. Caedmon resented the condescending attitude
of the aristocracy and determined that he would henceforth sing only in his own
glorious Anglo-Saxon language. But what would he sing?
Caedmon had a great idea: he would
sing Bible stories in the language of the people! While Caedmon could neither
read nor write, he found a monk who was sympathetic to his idea. The monk
agreed to translate the First Chapter of Genesis into Anglo-Saxon. Caedmon
memorized the words, paraphrased them and set them to music. He traveled all
over the country, and wherever he went he sang, “In the beginning God created .
. . .”
The response of the British people
to hearing God’s Word in their own language was tremendous! Caedmon increased
his repertoire with accounts of the beginning of man, the stories of Genesis,
the deliverance of the Jews from slavery in Egypt, Daniel, and passages dealing
with the resurrection, Second Advent, heaven and hell.
Caedmon is said to have been one of
the greatest singers of that time. Was it his lyric tenor that charmed his
audience? Perhaps, but the real impact was the content of his message the
people were literally starving for God’s Word in their own language. It will
never be known this side of heaven how many people found Jesus Christ as their
Savior as they listened to the songs of this unique troubadour!
Aldhelm (640 709). News of
Caedmon’s unusual songs had spread to the south of England. Aldhelm, the bishop
of Sherborne, a great Latin scholar and student of the classics, was also a
“poet” in his own right. He had written prose, mostly in the form of letters,
riddles and short poems. Aldhelm was so fascinated by the work which Caedmon
had done that he decided to translate the Psalms into Anglo-Saxon. This work
was finished before his death and published on a limited scale.
Bede (647 735). About one
generation after Caedmon, there lived a man who became known in English history
as “the Venerable Bede.” He was the most learned man and the most famous writer
of Anglo-Saxon times. Although he wrote a number of Latin commentaries on many
books of the Bible, his most substantial and noted work is “Ecclesiastical
History of the English People.” Bede was well acquainted with both Caedmon’s
and Aldhelm’s efforts. As a believer, he was convinced that the people needed a
translation of the Gospel. After some deliberation, he settled on the Gospel of
John and began work immediately, for he knew his life was ebbing away.
We are told that as he lay dying, he
dictated the last verse of John’s Gospel to his scribe. With his last breath he
said weakly but happily, “Now my sons have the Gospel in their own language.”
Thus another phase of the Bible in the language of the people had been
realized. However, there would be no complete Anglo-Saxon Bible until the time
of King Alfred, roughly 150 years later.
Alfred the Great, King of England
(871- 901), is famous for many accomplishments. He not only drove the Danes
out of England, but he also deserves the credit for giving his subjects the
Bible in their native language. It is interesting to note that Alfred, who did
not learn to read or write until he was twelve years old, grew up to be a great
king and a great scholar. So impressed was he by the grace of God and the
Scriptures that he wrote, “I, Alfred, by God’s grace dignified with the title
of King, have perceived and often learnt from the reading of sacred books, that
we, whom God hath given so much worldly honour, have particular need to humble
and subdue our minds to the divine law.”
In an all-out effort to educate his
people, Alfred saw to it that everyone learned to read his native Anglo-Saxon
language. The primer they used was a translation of the Bible, much of which
was the king’s own work. It was his wish that all “freeborn youths of his
kingdom should employ themselves on nothing till they could first read well the
English
Scriptures.”
This meant that a young man could neither serve in the army, enter business,
nor follow a profession until he had passed a reading test based on the Word of
God. Under these conditions, it stands to reason that everyone in the realm
would be eager to master the art of reading. In so doing, the reading of
Scripture became almost mandatory, and Alfred’s subjects were “without excuse”
(Rom. 1:20). Never before was the Bible so easily available and so widely read.
And we know, of course, that God’s Word shall not return to Him void (Isa.
55:11)!
From 902 - 1380. Alfred the
Great had left his people a great heritage. But, unhappily, things did not stay
as he would have wished. In 1066, the Normans invaded England. Actually, the
Normans were Norsemen who had lived in France for some two hundred years. By
this time, they spoke a combination of Scandinavian and French. Once they had
conquered England, the language of that country underwent a tremendous change.
The Normans did not like the Anglo-Saxon language and, over a period of about
one hundred years, the two languages were blended into one totally different
English. If you were to hear it spoken today, you wouldn’t have a clue as to
what was being said.
If that were not enough, the rise of
Romanism eventually began to supplant the great system which Alfred had
instituted. The Vulgate — the Latin translation which Pope Damacus had
commissioned Jerome to make in 382 — officially became the “common Bible of the
people.”
Wycliffe (1330 - 1384). Let’s
skip down to the time of John Wycliffe, a born-again priest who began to see the
inaccuracies of the Vulgate. Not only had the Apocrypha found its way into the
Vulgate, but also many interpretations of Hebrew expositors had been
incorporated into the text. Since the Alfred translation could no longer
communicate and the Vulgate was
unsatisfactory,
Wycliffe decided it was necessary for him to come up with a new translation.
From his own study of the
Scriptures, Wycliffe strongly believed that Christ and His Word alone were
man’s supreme authority NOT the church at Rome! He frequently
attacked the orthodox doctrine which the Roman church had formulated, and
insisted that all men had the right of access to the Scriptures. The Pope tried
many times to put Wycliffe on the spot, and finally condemned him as a heretic
in 1380, when Wycliffe published his English translation of the New Testament
from the Latin. He was again condemned in 1382, when his Old Testament
translation came out These translations were a step in the right direction and
would ultimately break the power of Romanism in England. Hence, Wycliffe became
the forerunner of the Reformation.
Tyndale (1494 1539). Nearly
two hundred years passed, and again the English language underwent drastic
changes. At that time, William Tyndale, a linguistic genius, began work on still
another translation of the Bible. I say this man was a genius because he
mastered eight languages — Hebrew, Greek, Latin, Italian, French, Spanish,
Dutch and English! He wrote great literature in all these languages.
Because of fierce persecution and
opposition from the established church, Tyndale was forced to flee to Germany.
In a matter of months, his translation, based on Erasmus’ edition of the Greek
New Testament, was completed. His English translation of the New Testament was
printed in part at Cologne and finished at Worms. In spite of the opposition by
Cardinal Wolsey and King Henry VIII, six hundred copies were
smuggled back into England in 1526. The Tyndale Bible was promptly denounced
and suppressed.
While Henry VIII ruled over England, Charles V, through inheritance, reigned over most
of Europe. Charles V was a zealous Catholic and violently hostile toward the
Reformation movement. He instigated the arrest and death of Tyndale. Tyndale
was found and seized at Antwerp, where he was secretly revising his
translations. He was confined in prison in 1535, tried and convicted of heresy,
and condemned to be strangled and burned at the stake in 1536. Just before he
died, Tyndale looked toward heaven and cried out in prayer, “Lord, open the
eyes of the King of England.”
Why am I telling you all this? So
that you might know what it took to bring about the very freedoms we enjoy
today — to own, to read and teach God’s Word without outside interference or
coercion.
Coverdale and Matthew’s Bible.
Tyndale was not the only one who worked on an English Bible. The Coverdale
Bible, which came out in 1535, fared much better. It was even dedicated to the
King! The Matthew Bible, a combination of the Tyndale and the Coverdale
translations, was published in 1537. This had been compiled and edited by John
Rogers, who used the pseudonym of Thomas Matthew. Strangely enough, this was
the first Bible authorized by the king for sale and for reading. Matthew’s
Bible forms the basis of all other revisions, including the Great Bible, the
Geneva Bible, the Bishop’s Bible and the King James Version.
HOW WE GOT OUR KING JAMES BIBLE
By now the rift between Protestants
and Catholics had widened considerably. In England, where Parliament consisted
primarily of Puritans, Protestants and Anglicans, the people began to talk
about a new standard translation. James I was on the throne, and it seemed that
Tyndale’s prayer was being answered.
It is necessary, however, that you
understand some of the background connected with the, reign of King James 1.
Elizabeth, Queen of England, had a beautiful cousin, Mary Stuart, who had
returned from France in 1561 to take her rightful place as Queen of the Scots.
Scotland was in a state of turbulence: the clans fomented discontent; the new faith
preached by John Knox swept across the chilling lochs; and Catholic Mary was
held in contempt, not only for her presence in Scotland, but for her continuing
claim to the Tudor crown of Elizabeth. Then Mary unwisely married the Scottish
Lord Darnley. This created further antagonism, both to the English because of
his Tudor connections, and to the Scots because he was Catholic.
The Scots had become Calvinistic in
their beliefs and resented Mary’s Romanism and the influence of her French
court. The people were determined that never again should the Roman Church be
allowed to gain and hold political power in their nation. After a series of
indiscretions and acts of poor judgment, Mary was forced to abdicate in favor
of her infant son, who then became James VI of Scotland. Fleeing the
wrath of the Protestant nobles, Mary sought refuge in England.
Elizabeth was in a quandary. She
dared not send Mary back to Scotland, for the Scots might execute their divine
right monarch; she was equally afraid to give her sanctuary in England where
Mary was certain to be a rallying point for all manner of malcontents.
Therefore, Elizabeth was obliged to keep her “guest” strictly confined and thus
began a kaleidoscope of intrigues and plots that was to span almost two decades.
Eventually, Mary’s continued sedition left Elizabeth
no
other alternative. Mary was executed in 1587.
James VI,
Mary’s son by Lord Darnley, who had been King of Scotland since 1568 under the
regency of the Earl of Moray, was reared a Protestant. He was taught
Calvinistic theology, Greek, Latin and Hebrew. Jamie was quite a student! He
could discourse on theological subjects in both English and Latin. When
Elizabeth died, she left no heirs, thus ending the House of Tudor. James VI was brought down from Scotland and crowned James I of England,
beginning the reign of the House of Stuart.
The Millenary Petition. The
year was 1603. James had led an uneasy life in Scotland and actually looked
forward to coming to England. However, he soon found that England, too, had its
troubles; the Puritans were in revolt against the established church. One
thousand Puritan preachers had gathered together to write a petition. They
beseeched his noble Majesty and Parliament for a change in the established
church service and the removal of such superstitions as the sign of the Cross.
Furthermore, the Puritans refused to use the prescribed Prayer Book because of
its corrupted translations.
This petition became known in
history as the MILLENARY PETITION because of the thousand signatures
affixed o it. It resulted in the Hampton Court Conference on January 14, 1603,
over which King James himself presided. It was during one of the endless
debates that the leader of the Puritans, John Rainolds, said, “May your Majesty
be pleased, that the Bible be new translated, such as are extant not answering
to the original.”
Immediately Rainolds’ request ran
into opposition from Bancroft, the Bishop of London. The Bishop claimed that if
all who wished were permitted to come up with translations, the country would
be swamped with Bibles. So the talks dragged on.
The Royal Order for a Uniform
Translation. Finally the King of England grew weary listening to the
debates in Parliament. He sided firmly with Rainolds in favor of a new Bible.
He admitted that he had “never yet seen a Bible well translated into English,”
and he wished that “some special pains were taken for a uniform translation . .
. done by the best learned of both Universities . . . lastly ratified by royal
authority . . . to be read in the whole Church and no other.”
James was vitally interested in
theology and in languages. He was knowledgeable in the Scriptures and in Bible
doctrine. Besides, the thought that a new and better translation of the Bible
should be published during his reign appealed to James tremendously. He made
but one condition: he would hand-pick the translators himself. Although the new
translation had his complete backing and would eventually be ratified by him,
he did not contribute one penny toward its expense. It is said to have cost
3500 pounds sterling a considerable sum in those days!
The Appointment of the
Translators. On July 22, 1604, the King announced that he had appointed
fifty-four men to make the new translation. How did he select the scholars? His
only requirement was that they must be good linguists. Half of them were Hebrew
experts and the other half experts in Greek. The list included Anglicans and
Puritans, believers and unbelievers. Of those selected, seven men died before
the work was begun, including John Rainolds, who had asked for this
translation. Actually, only forty-seven men worked on what we call today “The
Authorized” or “King James Version of the Bible.”
It was a perfect time for the
translation to be undertaken, for the English language had been greatly
improved by men like Shakespeare, Donne and Spenser; classic literature had
reached its peak. The beauty of the English language of that day and its power
of expression are thus preserved for us in the King James Bible. Thus, a style
of language which would otherwise be long outdated has come down to us fresh
and, with the exception of some words, very much to the point. Personally, I
love the THUNDERING DICTION of the King James Version.
The Work Begins. The scholars
were divided into six teams; two teams worked at Oxford, two at Cambridge and
two at Westminster, with the work portioned among them. In each of the groups,
the teams were further broken down into an Old Testament team and a New
Testament team. All worked independently of each other.
That explains, of course, why the
word PNEUMA was translated “Spirit” in one place and
“Ghost” in another. It was simply a matter of esprit de corps school spirit!
The Westminster group used “Ghost,” and the Oxford group used “Spirit.” Each
put down what he preferred. One of the teams worked entirely on the Apocrypha,
which as you know, is no longer included in the King James Version of the
Bible.
Sources of Translation. The
teams translating the Old Testament used the MASORETIC
TEXT as their source. Work on this text had begun in the
fifth century A.D. and was completed in 1425. It was an accurate rendition of
the original Hebrew Scriptures. For the Greek, the TEXTUS RECEPTUS (“the text received by all”) was used. This edition
was based on tenth-century manuscripts that had been put out by Erasmus of
Rotterdam in 1516 and published by Elzevir. In its second edition, a Latin
preface containing the words “textum receptum” had been printed, from which it
apparently received its name.
The Work Completed. It took
the scholars three years to finish their work of translating the Bible and an
additional nine months to revise the text and put it together. To every- one’s
satisfaction, the old ecclesiastical words of the Bishop’s Bible of 1568 were
all retained. Surely four years or less is not too long for a work of such
magnitude. The preface says, “ . . matters of such weight and consequence are
to be speeded with maturity: for in a business of moment a man feareth not the
blame of convenient slackness.” All in all, the 1611 edition was a good
translation from the manuscripts that were then available. The majestic
Anglo-Saxon, with its clarity and style, its directness and force, have made
the King James Bible an English classic and a model for hundreds of years.
The Reception of the King James
Bible. Yet upon its release, the Authorized Version turned out to be the
most unpopular and universally condemned translation that had ever come off the
printing press. It caused the biggest ruckus ever raised over an edition of the
Bible in the English-speaking world. Some criticism was justified because, in
the process of printing, over four hundred typographical errors were made which
had to be corrected. For the most part, however, the criticism was unfounded
and biased. The Catholics condemned it for favoring the Protestants. The
Arminians thought it favored Calvinism. The Calvinists claimed that it favored
Arminianism. The Puritans objected to the church polity and the ritual, as well
as the use of such words as “bishop,” “church,” “ordain” and “Easter.” In
short, everyone who considered himself to be an expert on the subject screamed
in protest and began to write pamphlets condemning the new version of the
Bible. No one liked it except King James 1.
So, his Majesty intervened to settle
the argument. He took the bit in his teeth and the pen in his royal hand and
wrote in so many words: “This is it, whether you like it nor not!” He wrote in
defense of the truth and ratified the Authorized Version, to the immense relief
of the translators. As a result, everyone swallowed hard and said, “Yes, Your
Majesty,” and that was that! Right down to this hour, the King James Version is
still the most widely used translation of the Bible and one of the finest. I
have often been asked which edition of the Bible I personally recommend. I
think that every believer should have a copy of the King James Bible,
preferably a Scofield Edition. Although he was not a language scholar, Dr.
Scofield was a genius in his summary of doctrine. Apart from four or five
erroneous footnotes (Gen. 6; Heb 6 and Rev. 2 and 3), the Scofield Edition of
the King James Version is still one of the best up to this time. The New
American Standard Bible, recently published by the
Lockman
Foundation is also an excellent translation.
While other translations made a
fairly good contribution in some fields, none came close to the King James
Bible. If you like good English, I suggest that you read the translation of the
New Testament by Richard Francis Weymouth. Another good translation of the New
Testament was done by Williams; it takes cognizance of the Greek tenses.
Kenneth W. Wuest is a fine orthodox scholar and knows the original languages.
His amplified version is good.
The Revised Standard Version uses
the words of the original manuscripts and puts in italics, or in fine print,
those passages which are not found in the better manuscripts. Most other modern
translations are so bad that we wonder why they were ever called translations.
No matter how beautiful their English, they are interpretations an
interpretation and a translation are two different things! What we need is more
communication of doctrine and less rhetoric! This is where Textual Criticism
comes in.
THE
HISTORY OF THE MODERN PERIOD
The Vogue of the Textus Receptus.
Obviously the King James Version had been translated very well at the time of
its release; but it wasn’t long until very definite problems were detected in
its text.
About fifteen years had passed when
Thomas Roe brought back from Turkey that beautiful manuscript Codex
Alexandrinus. Since then, and up to the present, over five thousand manuscripts
of the Bible have been uncovered, all of them more ancient and more accurate
than those that had been used as the basis for the Authorized Version. Upon
closer examination and comparison, a great number of discrepancies as well as
mistakes showed up in the content. Textus Receptus had been in vogue from 1516
to 1750; now it was challenged.
The Period of Struggle.
Naturally, the backers of the Textus Receptus strongly opposed those
philologists who favored the newly discovered, more ancient manuscripts. Here
is the interesting thing: these five thousand manuscripts in question, when
compared to the Textus Receptus (the basis for the New Testament text of the
King James Version), had less than one percent difference in text. This is
absolutely fantastic!
Textus Receptus, for instance, had
included the last half of Mark 16; Codex Sinaiticus made no mention of it, nor
of the last half of Romans 8:1. There were other discrepancies as well, and
scholars began to realize that over a period of some thousand years, apparently
mistakes had been made in copying one manuscript from another.
You realize, of course, that in the
ancient world all copies of the Scriptures had to be made by hand. If you think
that is easy, I suggest that you try it for yourself. Write out the Book of
Romans. Then check through it and see how accurate you were. Perhaps then you
would understand that in writing Hebrew or even Greek for twelve hours every
day, the scribes might make a mistake especially when there were no spaces
between phrases, paragraphs or words all of them in capital letters!
The period of struggle over the
correct text of the English Bible lasted from 1750 till 1830, and it gave rise
to a new science in philology Textual Criticism. Finally, in 1830, the Textus
Receptus proponents conceded, and the struggle for the recognition of the older
manuscripts was won. What amplifying I do, what corrections I make, go back to
the work of over five thousand manuscripts that precede the Textus Receptus.
These changes are necessary so that you can be taught with perfect accuracy
what God intended to communicate to you!
We might well call the years
following 1830, right up to the present, the period of the improved text. These
years produced the unraveling of the true text and its meaning. We owe our
technical knowledge of the language of the Scriptures to brilliant scholars who
carried on the work of their predecessors. Among those great men was Dr. Carl
Lachman of Berlin, who sought to restore the earliest manuscripts, and who led
others in the quest for ever greater advances in Textual Criticism. In addition
to Tregelles and Tischendorf, three outstanding English scholars contributed
immeasurably to our understanding of the critical exegesis of the New
Testament. They were Dr. Henry Alford, B. F. Westcott and Dr. F. J. A. Hort.
Westcott and Hort worked together for thirty years and produced an excellent
text.
Another fine edition of the New
Testament (one which I personally use) was published by Dr. E. Nestle at the
turn of the century. But perhaps the two most distinguished philologists of all
time were Adolf Deissmann and Van Soden. Their tireless studies resulted in
important advances toward our complete understanding of the Koine Greek. Van
Soden’s life was cut off in 1918, at the Hindenburg Line, before his work could
be finished properly; but Deissman lived to publish his findings. It is to men
like these that we owe a debt of gratitude for furthering our knowledge of the
original Scriptures and their communication and interpretation according to the
time in which they were written.
THE
PRESENT PROBLEMS OF THE KING JAMES VERSION
Reconstructing the Autograph.
We have already seen that the discovery of more ancient manuscripts created
controversy over the King James Version. Other problems arose as brilliant
philologists clarified the grammar, syntax and etymology of the Greek language.
Many of the corrections I make do
not imply errors in the text but are due to anachronisms. You see, over the
past few hundred years the English language has undertone further changes.
Words no longer convey the same meaning they once did. Let me illustrate: in
the year 1611, “Enter into thy closet” (Matt. 6:6) referred to a private room
or a bedroom. Today we think of a closet in terms of a clothes closet. Although
it is ridiculous and hard to believe, I bump into people occasionally who still
pray in their clothes closet. This is not what that verse says at all!
Let’s take another example: “And now
abideth faith, hope, charity, these three; but the greatest of these is
charity” (1 Cor. 13:13). Today “charity” means simply an expression of
benevolence toward those who are less fortunate. In 1611, “charity” was the
strongest English word for “love.” When you said, “I cherish thee” in 1611, you
put yourself on the line. If you merely said, “I love thee,” you were just
trifling; therefore, no one took you seriously. So you can see that the meaning
of the word “charity” has changed considerably over the years.
We find many of these anachronisms
in Scripture. Since they tend to make the King James Version a bit obscure,
they need to be corrected. This in no wise indicates that there was any error
in the manuscripts: it only indicates that language has changed. We see that
even in our day just listen to the “now generation,” and you’ll see what I
mean! In spite of all this, the Bible is the most up-to-date, pertinent book
for everyday living. It is applicable to EVERY generation of believers.
EXTERNAL
BIBLIOLOGY
There is a tremendous amount of
external evidence for the existence of the Canon, of which these are only a
few.
1.
CONTINUITY. This is a very important word in connection with the Canon of
Scripture. By continuity, we mean that over a period of sixty generations
(roughly 1600 years) the Old and the New Testaments were produced and put together.
The forty human authors of the Bible included kings, peasants, philosophers,
fishermen, physicians, poets, statesmen, scholars men from all walks of life
and with all concepts of living. Yet they had PERFECT ORGANIZED CONTINUITY, PERFECT AGREEMENT OF TYPE AND ANTI-TYPE,
OF PROPHECY AND FULFILLMENT, OF HISTORICAL SEQUENCE AND THE PROGRESSION OF
DOCTRINE IN THE ORIGINAL LANGUAGES. There can be no doubt that Someone greater than
these men was responsible for the origin of the Scriptures!
There is no other book that was
written over a period of 1600 years which has ever stood up under the extremes
of persecution for several thousand years and survived all attempts to destroy
it. You simply cannot ignore that kind of evidence; you must admit that the
impact of continuity is tremendous and cannot be denied!
2. INEXHAUSTIBLE EXTENT OF REVELATION. In addition to continuity, the Bible covers
everything that God deems necessary for mankind to know and which could never
be known apart from divine assistance and revelation. No man could clearly
delineate such invisible things as heaven, hell, eternity, or the soul; yet all
are adequately and accurately described.
3. DISTRIBUTION. The Bible is the most widely circulated book in the world and has
been translated into nearly one thousand languages and dialects. That may not
sound very impressive until you realize mat this includes practically every
language which has been reduced to writing. The work
still
goes on with Bible translators and Bible Societies endeavoring to bring God’s
Word to a lost and dying world. Just think of the giant strides that have been
made in that direction. In 1600, only eleven years before the King James
Version, there were only forty translations of the Bible in existence!
4. UNPREJUDICED AUTHORITY. Have you noticed that the Bible does not compliment man but instead
records his sins, his weaknesses, his doom? For example, Solomon was the
richest king and the wisest man who ever lived. His fame was known throughout
the world. Yet he was told, as were many others, to record his failures.
Normally, kings recorded their exploits (often exaggerated), but no man would
voluntarily write about his failures. Least of all would he record how he, the
“Lover-Boy of the Ages,” was jilted. God said, “Write in detail,” and Solomon
recorded how the most beautiful woman in the world, whom he loved, rejected
him. As a result, we have the Song of Solomon NOT
pornography a beautiful love story with great doctrinal applications.
Without God’s direction, Hosea would
never have written how his wife ran away with a prince. He loved her so deeply
that he would not have wanted to embarrass her by disclosing how he got her
back he found her in a slave market and bought her for the price of a slave
that had been gored by a bull. So please note that all through the Bible we
have this fantastic principle of unprejudiced authority!
5. ATTACKS ON THE BIBLE. We have already seen some of the attacks that have been made upon the
Bible. We mentioned the Emperor Diocletian’s order for the destruction of the
sacred writings of the Christians. He was but one of the many who tried to
destroy God’s Word. Apion attacked the sacred writings of the Jews, and
Josephus came to their defense.
One of the greatest attacks that has
been repeatedly made on the Bible throughout the centuries is summed up in a
phrase in 2 Peter 1:16: “CUNNINGLY
DEVISED FABLES.”
Stated in modern terms, the attack would go like this: “The accounts in the
Bible are mere figments of someone’s imagination; this is folklore; these are
fables or, at best, they are true events which have been embellished over the
years in the retelling.”
In some instances people would try
to explain away miracles or even entire books of the Bible. This was the case
with the Book of Revelation. Those who attacked the Bible claimed that John was
indeed on the Island of Patmos, but the truth of the matter was that John had a
sunstroke. This resulted in hallucinations, and John only imagined all of those
things he wrote in Revelation!
6. THE INFLUENCE ON INDIVIDUALS AND SOCIETY. No other book has influenced the course of
history as much as the Bible. Biblical principles saved the Roman Empire when
nothing else could have done so. The genius of Julius Caesar devised a system
based on the principles of divine establishment. Although Caesar was an
unbeliever, he had excellent norms and standards and, therefore, had the good
sense to recognize the concepts provided by God for all mankind.
A period of civil war followed the
assassination of Caesar. When the nation was in the process of disintegration,
when the socialism of that day had all but destroyed free enterprise, when
Rome’s gold reserves had been exhausted, and all these factors began to
accumulate to spell disaster, what happened? Bible doctrine came to the rescue!
A maximum number of believers learned doctrine and under that influence the
world enjoyed the greatest period of prolonged peace and prosperity during the
“Golden Age” of the Antonine Caesars. These Caesars, like Julius Caesar, were
unbelievers, but they understood establishment.
The German historian, Theodor
Mommsen, the author of the History of Rome, and the English historian, Edward
Gibbon, the author of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, both agreed
that the best time to have been alive was the period of the Antonine Caesars
(96 192 A.D.).
In
the past, as well as the present, women were considered chattel and on a par
with a fair horse or with cattle in many countries. This was seldom true where
the influence of the Bible was felt. During the reign of the Antonine Caesars,
womanhood was protected and the position of women was never better. Wherever
Bible doctrines and Christianity have made their inroads, the role of the woman
is elevated. I don’t suppose there is one woman in a thousand who appreciates
exactly what is meant by the freedoms that are provided by the Word of God.
Certainly the U.S.A. in this century, and England in the last century, are
perfect illustrations of the influence of Christianity and the Scriptures.
Modern historians with a liberal
slant ridicule the era of the British Empire under Queen Victoria, Disraeli and
Gladstone all of them believers. Those were the years when the sun never set on
the Union Jack. Wherever the British went, they sent their missionaries; consequently,
they had a fantastic outreach of evangelism. Wherever Bible doctrine exists,
the living standards are greatly improved. Bible doctrine motivates the
production of divine good. Often the concern over the spiritual welfare of man
overflows into concern for man’s physical well-being. I call this principle
“blessing by association.”
Think what the British did for India
and Africa in the last century. Exploit those countries? Far from it! Britain
brought Africa out of the stone age, broke up the whole system of anarchy which
existed among the tribal factions, and made it possible for millions of
Africans to accept Jesus Christ as Savior. There may have been individual cases
of exploitation, for, remember, man has an old sin nature.
Freedom can only be maintained by
adherence to the Biblical principles of divine establishment. Apostasy and
neglect of Bible doctrine curtail evangelism and freedom in any national
entity. Jesus Christ alone can free man from the bondage of sin and the yoke of
religion (John 14:6; cf. John 8:32). And it takes Bible doctrine in the
believer’s soul, established as norms and standards, to appreciate and remain
in that status of freedom (Gal. 5:1).
7. SCIENTIFIC DATA. This next approach has to do with a principle of inspiration which is
rather significant in our day of “science-consciousness.” While the Bible is
not a textbook of science, whenever it deals with scientific subjects, it is
one hundred percent accurate in its statements. Immutability, which is an
integral part of God’s essence, is the basis for all scientific phenomena. The
only reason why the law of gravity continues to operate is simply the
immutability of God. Divine faithfulness is the sole basis for all “laws” of
science. There is no such thing as a scientific law only
IMMUTABILITY IN ACTION!
Static Electricity (Jer. 10:13).
In this verse we have a very interesting illustration of static electricity.
Those of you who have been in academic classrooms know that static electricity
may be formed by the condensation of vapor. Is this knowledge comparatively
new? Indeed not! Jeremiah had it long before modern man discovered it!
The Earth Is Spherical (Isa.
40:22). Two thousand, five hundred years ago, Isaiah stated that the earth
is spherical. The same thing is taught in Proverbs 8:27. In both passages the
Hebrew word CHUG is found. It should have
been translated “spherical,” but was rendered “circle” in Isaiah and “compass”
in Proverbs.
Just think of all the people who
stubbornly maintained that the earth was flat! They insisted that if you sailed
through the Gates of Pericles (Gibraltar), you would drop off into nothingness.
“Don’t get out of the Mediterranean” was the law until the Phoenicians became
bold enough to sail around Africa.
The Earth Rotates on its Axis
(Luke 17:31-36). The statement that the Second Advent of Jesus Christ is to
occur simultaneously “in that day” (v. 31) and “in that night” (v. 34),
describes one and the same event and can only be explained on the basis that
the earth rotates on its axis.
Air Has Weight (Job 28:25).
No scientist before Galileo (1630) was ever aware of or accepted the principle
that air had weight. Yet we are told explicitly in Job 28:25 that this is so.
The Hebrew word for “wind” is RUACH, which is also translated
“air.”
Winds Have Circuits: the Laws of
Evaporation and Precipitation (Eccl. 1:6-7). The heading for verse 6 could
well be “Winds Aloft.” In 1630, Galileo discovered that winds have regular
circuits. Was he the first to make this discovery? Solomon said, CC . . there
is no new thing under the sun” (Eccl.
l:9b). Ecclesiastes 1:7, in which Solomon makes a clear declaration of
winds aloft, also gives the principle of evaporation and precipitation.
Radiation and Polarization of
Lights (Psa. 65:8). “ .. . thou makest the outgoings of the morning and the
evening to rejoice.” The Hebrew word for “outgoings” is “radiations.” The
significance of the word “rejoice” is that electric lights will play music;
this is what this passage says in the Hebrew. As you may already know, there
have been demonstrations of polarization of light playing music in the physics
laboratory.
Messages Arc Sent by Lightning
{job 38:35). Who invented telegraphy? God did, for here we have the first
mention of messages being sent by electricity.
The Circulation of the Blood
(Eccl. 12:6). This verse describes the circulation of the blood long before
Dr. Harvey discovered it.
Quarantine for Communicable
Diseases (Lev. 13:45-46). Centuries before it was developed in medical
research, the principle of quarantine for communicable diseases existed as laws
laid down by God for His people Israel.
In summary, the few areas we have
examined demonstrate the accuracy and trustworthiness of the Scriptures. But
even if there were no such proofs, God’s attitude toward His Word (Psa. 138:2b)
and the testimony of Scripture concerning itself (Psa. 19:7-11) should be more
than convincing that
our
Bible is a priceless treasure.
THE
IMPORTANCE OF THE WORD OF GOD
The
Lord gave the word: great was the company of those that published it (Psa.
68:11).
All who were convinced of the power
of the Scriptures tried to impress believers in their generation of the
importance of the Word of God. Moses stressed the necessity of spiritual
nourishment (Dent. 8:3); Job considered Bible doctrine more vital to his soul
than food for his body (Job 23:12); Jeremiah found happiness through the intake
of the Word (Jer. 15:16), when by human standards he should have been
miserable.
Throughout the Bible, there are
passages of Scripture which stress the importance of the Word of God in the
believer’s life.
SOLOMON’S
QUEST FOR HAPPINESS
Solomon had everything that life
could offer. He was prominent, brilliant, wealthy beyond our wildest
imagination; in short, Solomon should have reached the peak of happiness and
contentment. Yet Solomon was miserable. Why? He thought that he could find
happiness outside the plan of God and apart from the Word of God. I will not
exegete Ecclesiastes, as it is covered in another study. We are interested only
in a principle at this point.
In his frantic search for happiness,
Solomon tried many experiments which, he hoped, would provide contentment. He
started out with academic training, followed by the “eat-drink-and-be-merry”
route. This didn’t work! Perhaps he would be happy if he had a progeny to whom
he could leave his vast possessions. Well, that wasn’t the answer either!
In turn, he tried philosophy and the
humanities, as well as varied business ventures. But he found out, like so many
who accumulate wealth, that money isn’t the key to happiness. He decided to add
to his harem, but it didn’t take long to learn that promiscuity brought nothing
but disappointment. He wrote in Ecclesiastes 7:28 that the one “which yet my
soul seeketh . . . I find not.”
Don’t misunderstand me concerning
the details of life. They have their proper place; but they do not bring
happiness when you use them as a substitute for fellowship with God through His
Word! That, too, was Solomon’s conclusion. His experiments had failed; his
frantic search for happiness was a disaster. Once he was restored to
fellowship, he knew that he must warn others not to make the same mistakes. It
remains for us to profit from his experience!
Just as Peter left us the legacy of
the REALITY of the Word, so Solomon leaves us a legacy
the IMPORTANCE of the Word. Solomon was an
old man and much wiser when he wrote Ecclesiastes and recorded his own failures
no ruffles and flourishes, no attempt to whitewash his past or to justify
his
actions just a forthright statement of the facts. Inspired by the Holy Spirit,
Solomon recorded his human viewpoint efforts for finding happiness and the
dismal, frustrating and disappointing results. Finally, he emphasized the grace
solution and ended by showing the importance of the Word, in
Ecclesiastes
12:9:
And moreover, because the preacher [man with a message]
was wise, he still taught the people knowledge [the importance of doctrine];
yea, he gave good heed, and sought out, and set in order many proverbs. [These,
by contrast, are the expression of divine viewpoint.]
Then he drove home his point that
the only answer for the believer in time is DOCTRINE not money, not prominence,
not power, not success, not anything that we count as important, but THE WORD OF GOD! God gave us His Word that
we might learn to know and love Him and that we might function according to His
predesigned plan (Dent. 29:29). More than that, He intends for us to advance to
spiritual maturity through the daily intake of doctrine thus glorifying Him in
the Angelic Conflict. Of course, whether or not you ever reach that goal,
depends entirely on your volition on your attitude toward the doctrine
contained in the CANON OF SCRIPTURE.