How Did We Get The Bible? | Michael Kruger

Well, good evening Christ Covenant. Great to be with you, and so thankful for the invitation to come and spend an evening with you talking about what I think is one of the most fascinating subjects we can think about in the Christian life, which is why we trust the Bible. And in particular, tonight, where in the world did this book come from, anyway? And who put it together? That's what we're here for. And thanks for coming out on a Friday night. I've heard a little bit about your church over the years and was thankful to get the invitation a little while ago. I think you know how these things go. It takes a while to get the invitation, then a year or two before I actually show up. So I'm finally glad, uh, to be here.

I've got a lot of different friends and connections in Atlanta and get down here quite a bit with Reformed Theological Seminary. I don't know if you know, we actually have a campus here in Atlanta. I'm at the campus in Charlotte, so just a few hours away, but we actually have a campus here in Atlanta. So I'm down here a good bit. Just love the city, and it's great to be with you tonight to talk about this subject.

Now, you already heard a little bit in the introduction about this topic because this is one that's near and dear to my heart. It's near and dear to my heart just on a personal level, and I'll tell you more about that later. But it's certainly near and dear to my heart on an academic level. This is what I've devoted my career to: to study this particular question and this particular topic. And I'm looking forward to sharing with you a little bit tonight about why these books, uh, ended up on our Bibles and why we can trust that entire process.

Before we get into that, though, I want to start with one particular story to get us rolling, uh, on this topic tonight. I want to begin with this discussion about the person of Muhammad Ali. Now, I know as we begin, you're like, "Why in the world are we talking about a boxer as we talk about the New Testament canon?" Well, actually, I'm not talking about the boxer Muhammad Ali. I'm actually talking about the shepherd Muhammad Ali. And you've probably never heard of him. Here's his story.

In a little town called Nag Hammadi, Egypt, in 1945, a shepherd by the name of Muhammad Ali was one afternoon digging in the dirt near his home. This was not an unusual thing for him to do because he would dig in the ground there to find a particular soil he could use as fertilizer to fertilize his crops. And one day, he's out there digging with his brother, and as he's digging in the ground, his shovel hit something hard. So he clears away the dirt. Out of the ground emerges this earthenware jar. And he's about to break it open, wondering what's inside, thinking, "Well, maybe it's treasure. Maybe it's jewels and gold, and maybe all my financial woes are, are done with." Here he is, a poor farmer in 1940s Egypt, certainly be glad to find whatever he could find.

But yet, his brother stops him halfway and says, "Don't break it open. There may be an evil genie inside that'll curse us." That's a real conversation they had. And so they debated the evil genie for a while, and then they decided, "Okay, we're going to risk the evil genie. We're going to open up the, the jar and find out what's in there." So they broke it open. And when they did, they were profoundly disappointed because there was no gold. There were no books. There were no jewels. There were only books in this particular jar. In fact, there were 13 codices inside, of which were 52 stories. And Muhammad Ali had no idea what they were. And so he ended up selling them in the antiquities market. And off they went, and really never thought about them much again.

Turns out that day that he had made one of the greatest archaeological discoveries in the modern world. He didn't realize that he had discovered what later became known as the Gnostic Gospels. The Gnostic Gospels are a collection of Christian writings, and I use the term "Christian" here in quotes, that tell a very different story about Jesus. And inside this collection of writings, there were gospels, and there were tractates, and there were theological treatises. And at the center of it was probably one of the most famous documents that we'd ever found, and probably today have ever found like this. And one document you've heard of because the most famous document in this find was known as The Gospel of Thomas.

If you were to read The Gospel of Thomas, you realize, "Yeah, this is a gospel about Jesus, but man, this doesn't sound like the Jesus I know." Because this Jesus talks about not so much salvation coming from outside of you, but how salvation really comes from within you. And the Jesus in The Gospel of Thomas doesn't really talk about how he is divine, but talks about how, sort of, you are divine or you can become divine. And it's a very different version of Christianity.

What Muhammad Ali had found is sort of the biggest collection of what we call "lost Gospels" in the ancient world. And ever since he found it, it has rewritten the history of Christianity. And I'd venture to say, even if you don't know it, even if you never even heard of Muhammad Ali, even if you didn't even know what The Gospel of Thomas is, I'd venture to say that a large reason you're here tonight is because of what Muhammad Ali found, even if you don't realize how the dots connect.

Because ever since that time, there's questions that have been raised about the canon of the Bible. There's questions that you hear or that you know, as you think about the Bible, that pop in your mind when you hear the story of Muhammad Ali, which is, "Well, what about books like The Gospel of Thomas? And why are those books not in our Bibles? And what makes The Gospel of Thomas different than the gospels in our, our New Testaments? And for that matter, who made the decision, anyway? How do we know these are the right books?" All of those questions, which you have, and I have, and most people have, pertain to this issue of the biblical canon.

Now, that's a word that you've already heard tonight. It's a word that was mentioned in the introduction. It's a word in the title of one of my books out in the back that they were so kind to have here tonight. I should know that that word "canon" is spelled C-A-N-O-N, right? That's opposed to the "cannon" C-A-N-N-O-N, which you light a fuse and my cannonball comes out, okay? This cannon is not referring to the boom cannon. This cannon is referring to what is typically a word that means standard or measure. And so when we talk about the canon of scripture, we're talking about that collection of books that is our standard. So the canon is a reference to the 27 books of the New Testament, or the 39 of the Old, or the 66 in totality. That's what we mean when we talk about the biblical canon.

Some of you may know I have a website, which is the whole title of the website's just one big pun. The title of the website is called "Canon Fodder," and it's canon with one N. And if you don't get that, you won't get the pun, right? It's canon, biblical canon fodder. Usually goes with the other canon. You put them together, you have what is supposed to be a funny title. Anyway, um, "Canon Fodder" is about discussing the origins of the canon. Well, that's what we're going to do tonight. We're going to talk about why we have a canon like we do and whether that whole thing can even be trusted.

Now, as I thought about this topic tonight, I thought, "Well, how do you tackle something like this in one session?" Well, the answer is, you really don't. So I want to do it in a little bit of a different way tonight. Actually, what I want to do is work through misconceptions about the origins of the canon. And tonight, we're only going to deal with the New Testament canon. That's my expertise. That's what the book about in the back is about, and the other books I've written are about. And certainly, we could have a whole other session on the Old Testament canon at some other time. But I think you'll discover some of the principles tonight I bring up here apply also to the Old.

But we're going to walk through misconceptions. And here's why: I can't tell you how many times I've heard, both inside the church, outside the church, in a variety of places, and the academy, on the internet, of people who have an idea in their head of how the canon was put together. They have an idea in their mind that this is how it happened, and this is what it means. And what they may not realize is some of the things they've heard, some of the things that their uncle has told them at Thanksgiving, or something they read in The Da Vinci Code, or whatever happens to be, oftentimes it's completely not historically true at all.

And so I want to lay out tonight a number of these misconceptions and answer them. And I think as we do, not only will I hopefully hit some of your questions, but I think you'll see a picture emerge as we go through these misconceptions. A picture that helps you see that the canon is a lot more reliable and a lot more well-established than the critics maintain.

All right, so here's what we're gonna do. We're going to walk through seven misconceptions. Now, don't panic. I know what's in your head. Seven? We'll be here till 11:30. No, we're not. I'm gonna go through these rather quickly. But seven misconceptions. Had to pick a biblical number, right? Seven misconceptions that we'll walk through together that I think are either in your head or that you've heard. And even if you haven't heard it, part of tonight is just learning what's going on out there, right? This is what's happening in the world of biblical studies and canonical studies. And part of the evening is to tell you what's going on out there. And as we walk through these seven misconceptions, I think you'll see why The Gospel of Thomas is not in our Bibles and why we have the Bibles like we do.

Okay, let's start by jumping into the first one. Here's the first misconception. By the way, as I read through these throughout our time together, keep in mind these are misconceptions. Sometimes I have people take a clip out of my talk and say, "Oh, you say you believe this." I'm like, "No, that's the misconception." So keep in mind these are things I don't believe, um, and certainly don't want you to believe, but are out there and I want to give a little bit of response to.

Here's the very first misconception I hear all the time, and it's simply this: Early Christians, who had heard about Jesus and heard the message of the gospel, did not even think there would be a new canon. They had no idea that they would expect a new collection of books. Yes, they had the Old Testament canon, but they figured that was enough. And all they really wanted and all they really needed was oral tradition. All the earliest Christians were concerned about is telling the story orally, passed down the story of Jesus by word of mouth. And it was only later, much later, that the church decided, "You know what? We ought to have a written canon." And then concocted one, created one, and sort of forced it on the church that was quite happy without one and had no reason to expect one.

Now, you may not realize that that misconception is everywhere in the academy. It's actually one of the misconceptions I address in the book that you have a chance to get later tonight. And I want you to see what's inside that misconception. What's inside that misconception is that when you talk about a reliable collection of New Testament books, what we call a canon, all of it, according to this first misconception, is a late imposition on the church. It's something that someone came up with way down the road, long after the life of Jesus, long after the life of the apostles. No one had even ever thought of this, but yet there it is, pushed on the church by the powers that be. So you can realize that this conception of canon, then, is an idea that the canon is a very late idea, and it's an idea that is determined by power plays. It's whoever's in charge, whoever has the authority, sort of makes the decision and forces it on the church.

Now, there's a lot more that can be said about that misconception, but I think it's so mistaken at so many levels. Let me just mention a number of things that I want you to hear tonight about this first misconception: the idea that the canon is a late imposition on the church and no one had the idea that there would be a new collection of books. I think goes quite against the grain of what we see in the early Christian movement. What I want to argue, and what I argue at length in the book in the back, is that actually, I think Christianity was the exact perfect theological soil, if you will, out of which a new canon would sprout. Yes, they already had an Old Testament canon, but all the pieces were in place that you would expect a new testament canon to emerge and emerge very early and very naturally and very organically.

There's lots of reasons I think that. I'm just going to mention one here as a rebuttal to this first misconception, and that has to do with the concept in the early church of what we call a covenant. Let me just say a quick couple words about this. You probably know that when you read your Bibles and it's called the Old Testament and the New Testament, the word "testament" there is just the Latin word for covenant. So you're really reading what's called the Old Covenant and the New Covenant. So we have an Old Covenant, which has 39 books, and of course, we're talking about the New Covenant, which has 27 books in them. Would Christians have expected a new written collection of books in that New Testament time period? I think they would, given their understanding of what a covenant is.

You may know that the Bible is filled with covenants, covenants are arrangements, contracts, treaties that God makes with his people. Here's one thing you may not realize is that when God decided to make a covenant with Israel, the structure of that covenant was very much patterned after treaties in the ancient world. So in the ancient world, one king would want to make a treaty with another king, they would make a covenant. It's effectively a covenant, it's effectively like a treaty. It's an agreement. Here's what you will do, here's what I'll do, here's what happens if you break it, here's what happens if you keep it. There's blessings if you keep it, there's curses if you break it. In the ancient world, this was common. When God gave his covenant to Israel, he used a pattern they could understand. That's the way treaties were done in the ancient world.

Here's what's interesting though about treaties in the ancient world. When you made a covenant, ancient world, guess what you inevitably had? You had written texts. You didn't have just the idea of an agreement. You didn't just have this concept of agreement. You actually had a written documentation of the agreement. And if you think about it, that's exactly what Israel experienced when God started a covenant with Israel at Mount Sinai. What is the first thing God did? He created this time with his own hands, the Ten Commandments. He gave Israel a written text. By the way, you notice that when Moses comes out of the mountain, he's got two tablets. And most artistic drawings you've seen, we assume the reason Moses has two tablets is because, well, God couldn't fit ten on one, so he put five on one and five on the other. Couldn't write small enough or something like this. All right. So, okay, well, that's a possibility.

But when you understand the way covenants were in the ancient world, here's what's interesting about covenants in the ancient world is that each party gets a copy. One king gets a copy, the other king gets a copy. So when God makes a covenant with his people Israel, there's two copies. When Moses comes out of the mountain, he probably has a full Ten Commandments in each hand. He's probably got two full, complete copies of what the written documentation of this agreement God makes with his people.

Now, fast forward to the New Testament time period. What does Jesus say at the Last Supper? "Behold, I am making a new covenant." What would be expected under a new covenant? New written texts, a new documentation that God would declare again what he's done in Christ and how we're to respond to what he's done in Christ. Do you realize when you read the New Testament, you're reading God's covenantal documents, his declaration of what he's done and what he wants us to do in response? All of that would have grown naturally and organically out of the theological soil of early Christianity.

Why does that matter for you tonight? Here's why it matters: It tells you that when we have a New Testament, this was not something made up by human beings. This is not something made up by men. This is not some later idea imposed on the church. This grew up naturally, organically, and here's the key: very early. The idea that it wasn't until the second century that someone said, "You know what? We ought to have a canon," that is completely out of sync with what we know about early Christianity. So the first misconception, the idea there wouldn't even be a mechanic, I think is mistaken. People were looking for written documents from the very start, not just oral tradition.

Okay, let me mention a second of our seven misconceptions. And this one's a big one. I won't take many hand raises tonight, but imagine if I were to ask, I'm not going to do it, but many of you here might even actually have this misconception. Here it is. Second one: Many people believe, I think mistakenly, that the authors of the New Testament did not think they were writing scripture. The authors of the New Testament did not think they were writing scripture.

I do a lot of speaking at churches, college campuses, universities, both about this subject and many other subjects. And one of the things I've picked up on very quickly, and I've seen it in print too, is this idea in people's heads about the way we got a canon. And here's how it goes most of the time: "Yeah, in the first century, Paul wrote some letters. They were just sort of friendly advice to the churches he was writing to. And then some people wrote down what happened in the life of Jesus, sort of as Greco-Roman biographies. And then over time, people really began to love these books. Over time, they're going to think these books are really great. And then somewhere, somewhere along the line, someone said, 'You know what? These letters by Paul, have you read them? They're awesome. In fact, they're so awesome, I think we should make them scripture.' What do you think?" "I think we should make them scripture." "Okay, all in favor of making them scripture, say 'Aye.'" And then someone voted them into scripture.

Now, that whole narrative is interesting because it shows you a couple things. It shows you that there's an idea, people said that when the books were written, they had one purpose, but then later, when the church brought them into the canon, they changed the purpose and used them for something else. In other words, they weren't written with the awareness that they were scripture or intended to even be scripture, but the church later, in one sense, sort of infused authority into them and made them scripture, maybe because they liked them so much. And so this particular misconception, almost can imagine Paul rolling over in his grave, "Oh, I didn't mean that book to be in a Bible. What are you people doing? I just wrote that to the Philippians. It was just my thoughts for the day. Take that out of there." As if Paul had no conception that his books had ever become scripture, nor with the Gospels.

That whole idea, if you have it in your head, and many people do, makes canon this late idea again. And it's not only a late idea. Here's the real problem with this misconception: It gives the idea that the authority of these books is given to them. They didn't have authority inherently. It was authority granted to them and infused in them. And who's the thing or what's the thing doing the infusing or the granting? Well, apparently, a church or the church or a group of people who like these books. In other words, if you believe that these books only have authority because someone voted later to give them authority, then guess where the authority really lies? Not in the books, but in the people who voted.

One of the misconceptions I want to make sure you leave having been done away with tonight is this idea that these books are in the canon because someone decided. I'm going to come back to that later. Here, we're touching the very tip of that idea by this idea that the books were written with one thing in mind, but then later kind of hijacked by the church for an entirely separate purpose.

So, what's our rebuttal to this second misconception? Wow, there's so much to say here. I can say this, though, that when you read the New Testament, you don't get the impression at all that when the, when the New Testament writers are writing, that they're unaware of their own authority or that they expect that you wouldn't be aware, if you read it, of their own authority. For our purposes here, I'll just mention the Apostle Paul. Have you noticed when you read his letters, how often when he writes, he starts off making sure you know his apostolic office? That you know that when he writes, he doesn't just write with friendly advice, that he writes basically as someone who's been given the job to speak for Jesus. That's what an apostle was.

The key to the to the rebuttal of the second misconception is remembering that there was an office of apostle in the early church that were the authorized biographers of Jesus. They were his spokesmen. They represented him when they spoke, he spoke. So if you talk to an apostle who was teaching you in, in the capacity of his apostolic office, you are listening to somebody who was speaking for Jesus with his own authority. And here's the thing: Paul actually repeatedly in his letters tells you that's what he's doing. I don't know if you ever picked up on this when you recall that often he just says, "Basically, I'm speaking the word of the Lord. I'm speaking for Christ. That you need to listen to me. That I'm not just giving you friendly advice. I'm actually giving you divine instruction." In that office of apostle, what you realize then is, think about the way the canon emerges. The canon emerges most naturally, inherently, as if the original authors wrote already with the authority to speak for Christ. So as soon as the ink is dry on the page, it already bears authority from the outset. It doesn't have to wait for a vote. It doesn't have to wait for a council. It doesn't have to wait for a decision. It already has authority by virtue of the fact that it's written by a spokesman for Christ.

Now, of course, not everybody's a spokesman for Christ in the ancient world. Surely there are many people who thought they could speak for God or speak for Christ. But we know a lot about the apostles historically. We know their names, who know who they were, and we know what they wrote. By way of example, I'm just going to read one verse from Paul that highlights that he knew exactly what he was doing when he was writing books and he wanted his audience to know that when he wrote these books, that they bore the very authority of Christ. Listen to this one passage out of 1 Corinthians chapter 14. Here's what Paul says, and listen closely. You've read it before, but now I want you to listen with fresh, fresh ears. Here's what he says: "If anyone thinks he is a prophet or spiritual, let him recognize that the things which I write to you are the Lord's commandment."

I'm gonna say that sentence again: "If anyone thinks he is a prophet or spiritual, let him recognize that the things which I write to you are the Lord's commandment." And if anyone does not recognize this, he is not recognized. What is Paul saying here? It's not just what I speak orally that's coming from Christ. Even the words I'm writing this very moment are coming from Christ. So the very commandments of the Lord. And if you don't see that, if you don't recognize that, Paul actually, in Acts, sort of prophetic rejection here, if you can't see that this is the word of the Lord, then you are not to be recognized. Paul takes his apostolic office very, very seriously.

And of course, we know in the early New Testament that other apostles recognize that their fellow apostles' writings were scripture. You may remember the passage in 2 Peter 3. I won't read it here, but in 2 Peter 3, what does Peter do? He's talking about Paul's letters. And by the way, one of the funny things that Peter says in that passage, if you remember, he talks about how hard Paul's letters are to understand. Should make us all feel a little bit better if you ever read a passage by Paul and go, "Man, what's he talking about?" Peter's like, "I know, guy, tough to figure out." But here's what's hearing: Peter goes on to say, "But people distort Paul's letters as they distort the other scriptures." Peter makes it very clear that Paul's letters, even in his own day, are to be viewed as scripture.

Now, if that's true, just imagine the implications on canon. Not only have we seen that Christians should be expecting, but by way of the covenant, a new deposit of written text, but now you've got people authorized to write them and who say that they're writing them. If someone says, "We didn't have a canon until the fourth or fifth century," and I'll come back to that objection later, you're like, "Well, but Paul says he's writing the very words of Jesus in the 50s of the first century. Why would we need to wait so long to say that we have a canon when you have one almost right from the start?"

Okay, that leads to a third objection here as we make our way through our list. This one's a big one too, and it's out there everywhere. Here's what it is: Number three: Early Christians disagreed widely over which books belonged in the New Testament. Early Christians disagreed widely over which books belonged in the New Testament. I hear this all the time, both in the academy and just even in the church, sadly. This idea that no one could agree on books, everyone had their own canon, no one could get along, everyone had their own little collection of books. Some are reading that book, and some are reading this book. It's a big mess. Everybody's got their own little collections they're using. It's sort of this literary free-for-all. And it wasn't, according to this view, it wasn't really till the fourth or fifth century that finally everyone got a reign on this and solved this problem and finally settled on the books that we really ought to follow. But up till then, it was sort of literary chaos.

Now, if you want good rhetoric and a good story and to write a good book that'll sell a lot of copies, that that will sell. The problem is, it just doesn't historically hold true. Here's the reality on the ground. When you look at the early Christian sources, the reality is Christians didn't widely disagree about the books. In fact, what's interesting is that they were settled on a core collection of books shockingly early. Let me explain what I mean by this. I use this phrase "core collection." So we have 27 books in our New Testament. What's interesting to note is, according to historical sources, is that by the early to middle second century, and this is not far after the last New Testament book was written, really at the end of the first century, by the middle of the second century, it seems like kind of everywhere you look, Christians had settled on a core. And what does that core? About 22 out of the 27. About 22 out of the 27 books are well-established, well in place, well-documented, with little, little disagreement at all about them by the middle of the second century. One of those 22, basically the four gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, Acts, the 13 letters of Paul, and then a handful of other books, usually 1 Peter, 1 John, Revelation.

What are the books that there were continued discussions about? What were the other five that discussions took a little bit longer to settle over? Well, that would be 2 John, 3 John, James, and Jude. Okay, would be typically, uh, in 2 Peter would be typically the five that were more, uh, discussed as time went on. But the core 22 were well agreed upon almost from the beginning. In fact, the evidence for this is so overwhelming that I've written a whole book on this, pretty much, not the one out there, but another, uh, volume.

I'll give you a couple of examples of this. In the second century, you may not realize, our earliest list of canonical books occurs in the second century. It's a list called the Muratorian Fragment. That's a weird name, I know. It's actually named after the Italian scholar that discovered the fragment. But what are the, what are the, it actually is our earliest list of canonical books. And what are they? Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, Acts, 13 Epistles of Paul, 1 John, 1 Peter, uh, 2 John, Revelation, and so on. Pretty much 22 out of 27. Another person from the second century that exhibits this core canon is Irenaeus. He tells us that basically there's 22 out of 27 books that he's aware of that he affirms fully, pretty much the same ones as the Muratorian Fragment. And then you have Clement of Alexandria soon thereafter. How many gospels? Four. Also Acts and 13 letters of Paul and a handful of other books.

So when someone says, "Wow, Christians really couldn't agree on much of anything. They were so disagreed over books of the Bible," you're like, "Actually, it looks like they're pretty, pretty widely agreed on the core books of the Bible." Yeah, there was some discussion about these smaller books. That's a conversation that we can take about another time. Actually, the disagreement over those, even, was not extensive. Here's the other thing to keep in mind: is it, is it interesting to note that when it came to disagreement, it's the little tiny books that almost always are at the center of those, those, those questions. You can imagine why that's the case. If a book is little, it gets used less. And if it gets used less, it's known in less places in the empire. And so one place in the empire says, "I've got three letters from John." Another part of the empire says, "Well, I've only got two letters from John." You could see why there may be some time to work that out.

So the fact is, it's not surprising. It's the little short books at the end that tend to have most of the discussion. I mean, think about it in your own life. When's the last time you heard a sermon from 3 John? Guys, maybe that's the next sermon series here. Where are they? I don't know. When's the last time you heard a, a sermon series from Jude? Was the last time you read Jude? Now, of course, if I were to give you the pop quiz and say, "Is Jude in the Bible?" You'd say, "Yes." "Is it inspired by God?" "Yes." But I haven't read it in a while. Why? Well, there could be lots of reasons. Maybe it's just tucked in a bad location in the Bible. Maybe, you know, you just haven't spent enough time thinking about it. But it's also really short. There's not a lot there in terms of just quantity, and there's a lot less to use.

Here's the other thing: in the early church, it took time for these books to spread across the empire. God delivered his Bible in normal historical channels. Have you thought about that? You know, we tend to think that if God had a New Testament to give the church, that he would lower the New Testament from the sky on golden tablets or something like this, sort of like the Angel Moroni in Mormonism, right? They have the Book of Mormon lowered from the sky to Joseph Smith from the Angel Moroni. But that's not the biblical understanding of the canon. It was put together by God in his providence for his own reasons, through normal historical channels. Somebody had to sit down with a quill and write it, then it had to get copied by scribes, then it had to be carried by a letter carrier to another part of the empire. You may wish God had delivered it on golden tablets, fair enough. But if he delivered it the way he delivered it, it's going to take some time for the dust to settle around some of these smaller books.

Here's the point on this third misconception: Don't let people tell you that it was a total literary free-for-all when it came to the origins of the canon. We have a core very early that tells you that people were recognizing God's word in great numbers with great amounts of unity from a very early time. You know what that means? That means the theological trajectory of Christianity was intact with those books very early. If I told you that you needed to build your theology out of 22 out of the 27 books, you think you could build a pretty good orthodox theology out of that? I think so. It's not that we wouldn't be glad to have the other five, but here's the point: is that the theological trajectory of the church was set with these 22, and that actually helped them solidify the other five in due time.

Okay, so that third misconception, the idea that Christians were widely in disagreement, simply doesn't hold. That leads to a fourth misconception tonight. This is one of the ones that I mentioned a moment ago, and I bring it up now more directly. Number four: There was no canon until the fourth or fifth century. There was no New Testament canon until the fourth or fifth century. Man, have I heard this almost ad nauseam. It's in textbooks. It's certainly all over the internet. I've even heard famous evangelical pastors, let's remain unnamed in this particular talk, that have said, and I've watched it on video, I've said to the congregations, that early Christians didn't have a Bible till the fourth century. There was no canon until the fourth century.

Why do people say this? Why is this a misconception that's out there? If you've taken a university religion class on canon or on the origins of the New Testament, this is standard fare. "All Christians didn't have a canon until the fourth, fifth century." Part of the reason for this is because of a very famous letter in the fourth century by a guy by the name of Athanasius. In 367, he had a letter on Easter, what he called his Festal Letter. He wrote an Easter letter every year. And in 367, in this particular Festal Letter, he decided to write out the books that he recognized as being in the New Testament: 27 of them.

Now, you might think that doesn't sound that significant. Well, here's why scholars jump all over this: because this is the first list, they say, that has all 27 in the history of the church. Before this time, you didn't have a list that included all 27. According to this argument, therefore, since this is the first list of all 27 books, people say, "Well, there's no canon until the fourth century."

Now, if you're tracking with me tonight, and I hope you are, and you've already heard the first three objections, and now we're under the fourth one, you're thinking, "Wait a second. Even what we said in the first three objections, this doesn't work." And you already are piecing together: Is the only way to measure the existence of a canon by lists? Isn't it true? Didn't we just talk about even in the prior point that by the middle of the second century, there's already a core canon functioning by virtue of how these books are used? In other words, they're used like scripture, cited as scripture, regarded as scripture, even though a person doesn't write out a list, "Here are the 27 books." They still use them in such a way that shows you what their canon is.

So the idea that the first complete list has to be the time when we have the first complete canon is simply a poor argument. We already have a functioning canon long before Athanasius, centuries before Athanasius. I mean, could you imagine going up to Irenaeus, we just quoted, and saying, "Irenaeus, I guess you don't have a canon." He'd be, "What? What are you talking about? Have you read my works? Have you read my five books against heresies? I talk about these books all the time. Of course, I have a canon. What are you talking about?" Well, there's a Festal Letter coming and it's a couple hundred years away, and I assume that assumes that means you don't have a canon. No, he wouldn't even recognize that argument. Of course, he had a canon.

So what you realize is, first, it's just a bad way of conceiving on historical evidence. The idea that the first complete list should be the determining factor of when we have a canon. And we already have tons of evidence that a canon existed long before this. But here's the other problem with this fourth misconception: it's not the earliest list. Even though most scholars have argued that Athanasius's Festal Letter is the first complete list of the New Testament, 27 books, I disagree. And I've actually written an entire piece on this that's in an academic journal, so it's not in a book and you can't, uh, get it tonight. But I've made an argument that Origen has done this exact thing more than a century earlier.

Fact, Origen, you remember, is a third-century scholar from Alexandria, who's maybe one of the biggest brains in the history of the early church. I mean, this guy's just a genius times 10. He's so smart, so bright, knows everything, reads everything, very articulate. He actually, in one of his sermons on the Book of Joshua, actually talks about all 27 books of the New Testament long before Athanasius. And here's what's interesting: is that when Origen does it in his sermon on Joshua, he doesn't act like it's a new idea. He doesn't tell his congregation, "Okay, I know this is controversial. Here's the 27 books I think are in the Bible." Now, he mentions it casually. He mentions it sort of offhand in the sermon. He mentions it in a way that's like, "Well, you know this, and I know this, and everybody knows this." Which means that Origen himself wasn't innovative, and it must have even predated him.

So here's the thing I want you to realize: next time you take a religion class or read an article or hear someone say, "There's no canon until the fourth or fifth century," it is a profound misunderstanding of the nature of the evidence. Not only do we have earlier lists, but even the idea of a list being the only way to know is simply false. We have all the evidence I mentioned earlier that by the middle of the second century, there's a core canon well-established, solidly in place. And we'd have no reason to think that we have to wait to the fourth century to get one.

Okay, fifth objection, or fifth misconception, I should say, about the canon. And this one's also big. Here's what it is: Number five: Apocryphal books are just as valid as the New Testament books. Apocryphal books are just as valid as the New Testament books. Okay, so now I've introduced a new word to you tonight. Yeah, I already talked about the word "canon." Now I get to talk about the word "apocryphal." Now, you hear that word a lot, and you probably think of the Apocrypha, which refers to the Old Testament books that Roman Catholics have in their canon and not Protestants. Okay, that's not what we're talking about tonight. The adjective "apocryphal" basically refers to any book not in our Bible. So we have New Testament-like books that never made it into the New Testament that are called apocryphal books in the early Christian movement. There's many of these that we know about. In fact, I started our time out tonight telling you the story of Muhammad Ali and his discovery of The Gospel of Thomas amongst many other things in that collection of books. And that tells you that we know about a number of these so-called lost gospels: Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Peter, Gospel of Philip, Gospel of Truth, Gospel of the Twelve. There is a whole list of these, and we could have a whole lecture just on apocryphal gospels. Some of you've probably taken a religion class and had a professor tell you all about these lost gospels and so forth.

Well, this fifth misconception basically says these lost gospels, think Gospel of Thomas, are just as good and just as valid as the ones in our Bible. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are no better than Gospel of Thomas is no worse. Why is one in our Bible and not another? Politics. One particular group within the early Christian movement proved victorious. They ran the church, and when you run the church, you get to pick the books, and they stuck their own gospels in there. And if another group had won, then you'd probably have a whole different set of gospels. So the argument goes. That is a very common argument in, uh, canon discussions today. This idea that the canon you and I have is simply the result of random historical unfoldings where one group is the winners, and the winners pick the books, and their books get in. And if another group had won, then you'd have a totally different set of books. But at the end of the day, no book is better than any other book.

That plays well rhetorically. Here's the problem: it doesn't play well historically. Once you start looking at the actual evidence of the books, you realize that they're not all the same. In fact, they're not even close to being the same. I could give a whole lecture on this fifth misconception, obviously I'm not going to do it. But let me make a couple quick points here about why our gospels are different than apocryphal gospels.

I don't know if you know this or realize this, that we only have a few gospels that are dated to the first century, the year in which Jesus lived and did the things he did. In fact, technically, we only have four gospels dated to the first century, the year in which the century in which Jesus lived, and that is Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. Do you realize that there's a general academic consensus, and this is true Christian scholar, non-Christian scholar, there's a general academic consensus that the only gospels in our possession that date to the first century, the century in which Jesus lived, are Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John? There's only ones that go back to that. That means every apocryphal gospel, including The Gospel of Thomas, all written in the second century or later.

Now, just on a rule of thumb level, wouldn't you want a gospel to get you as close to the events the reporting to record as you would like? Yes. Okay, so that tells you already, if you only know one fact about the canonical gospels, namely that the earliest gospels we have, that should be enough to get you there. That's, that's enough to know that these are better. But there's another thing. If every other gospel is written in the second century or later, including The Gospel of Thomas, and that means none of them could have been written by an apostle. Apostles are long dead by then. If you want a gospel that goes back to the apostles, the eyewitnesses were there in the beginning, then there's only four options that can even get you there, even have a chance: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.

People ask me all the time, "Well, then, if Thomas didn't write The Gospel of Thomas, why is it called The Gospel of Thomas?" Well, if you're writing a gospel in the second century and you wanted to give it a hearing, I mean, wouldn't you give it a name that would get a hearing? What would you call it? You wouldn't call it Bob's Gospel, right? In the second century, you would say, "Well, it's a, it's Thomas's gospel." And if you, if you haven't noticed, a lot of the apocryphal gospels are named after apostles, hoping to get a hearing. But they're all written well after the first century.

Here's another thing about the so-called lost Gospels. Most people haven't read them. And because most people haven't read them, they don't realize the qualitative difference either between the lost gospels and our Gospels. People don't realize that these so-called lost gospels can be bizarre, strange, weird, filled with...

legendary embellishments and clearly filling in the gaps left by the canonical four. I'll give you an example of this. There's a gospel in the second century known as the Gospel of Peter, not written by Peter, but it's called The Gospel Peter. Do you realize the Gospel of Peter does something the canonical gospels never do? If you ever notice when you read the canonical gospels and you get to the resurrection, when you get the resurrection story in the canonical gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, when the women arrive at the tomb, Jesus is already gone. He's already raised. He's not there. In other words, I don't know if it's dawned on you, in our four gospels, no one is ever an eyewitness of Jesus coming out of the tomb. You don't have an eyewitness of the resurrection. You just have the women showing up after it's already happened.

Now, if you were creating up the story of the gospels and you're making up the resurrection, wouldn't you have positioned an eyewitness right there to watch Jesus come out of the tomb? Wouldn't that be your crowning thing, the sea that I saw him rise from the dead? But that's not what our gospels do. It's almost like they wrote it like it actually happened. But if you want a live shot of Jesus coming out of the tomb, I've got a gospel for you. It's called The Gospel of Peter. Gospel Peter has Jesus coming right out of the tomb, and you can watch him come out.

But here's what's interesting. When he comes out of the tomb, he doesn't look like the Jesus you know. Because in the Gospel Peter, when Jesus comes out of the tomb, he's 60 feet tall. He, his head touches the clouds. I tell my students, he's like Godzilla Jesus coming out of the tomb, giant Jesus coming out of the tomb, flanked by angels on either side. And then as he comes out of the tomb, the second thing that's bizarre about the Gospel of Peter is following Jesus out of the tomb is the cross itself. Now, that's strange on all kinds of levels. First of all, we don't have any evidence that when Romans crucified people, they sent you home with a cross to put in the grave with you. But more than that, why is it following Jesus out of the tomb? Is it walking? Is it floating? We don't know. But then at the end of all that, things get even more strange, because the cross starts to talk. So now you've got this 60-foot giant Jesus with a floating, talking cross. And then someone says, you know, all gospels are the same. All gospels are not the same. We need to realize here is that apocryphal books are not as valid as New Testament books. There's a reason Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are in your Bibles and not the Gospel of Thomas.

Sixth misconception, closely related to the fifth one. The fifth one is apocryphal books are just as valid as New Testament books. The sixth one is apocryphal books were as popular as New Testament books. Okay, someone might concede, maybe they're not as historically valid, but they were read widely. They were popular. They were bestsellers. Everybody wanted a copy of the Gospel of Thomas. Everyone was reading these lost Gospels. It was only those mean people in the fourth century at a church council that decided to force everybody to burn them or get rid of them or whatever. Again, that makes for a good rhetoric, and it's a misconception that we'll, we'll, uh, convince people, but it simply isn't true. Historically, we know that these lost gospels are not nearly as popular as the canonical ones, and it's not even close.

How do we know this? One way to know this is by citations. When a patristic source cites the gospels, which gospels are they citing? And it's, it's statistics. It's mind-blowing. We have some authors like Clement of Alexandria that cite the canonical gospels in the thousands, and they'll say apocryphal gospels like 14 or 15 times. And you're like, which was the most popular?

There's another way we know about popularity in the ancient world, and that is by the manuscripts they left behind. As you might know, we have quite a cachet of New Testament manuscripts. In an ancient world, the number of manuscripts that, that societies and groups leave behind tells you how popular those writings were, because the popular writings got read, and the popular writings got copied, and it got copied in great numbers. So we actually have, through our manuscripts, a, a certain sample, if you will, of popularity of books in the ancient Christian world. And when we compare our gospels to something like the Gospel of Thomas, it's incredibly lopsided. The number of total manuscripts of our canonical gospels now is in the thousands, probably well north of 2,500 copies of just the Gospels in our New Testament, and those are just in Greek. If we were to add other languages, we'd have many more. The total number of copies we have of the Gospel of Thomas is three. Grand total, three. What's interesting is the three are so fragmentary that we didn't even know was the Gospel of Thomas until our buddy Muhammad Ali found it in the sands of Egypt. The copy that Muhammad Ali found wasn't in Greek, it was in Coptic. And once we found it Coptic, realized the fragments we had of, of, uh, of, of the Gospel of Thomas were actually the Gospel of Thomas. What does that tell you? That tells you that, yeah, occasionally apocryphal gospels were read, occasionally they were used, but whoa, it's not even close to the popularity of the canonical four. Once again, there's a reason why you have the gospels in your Bible that you do, because those are the ones that early Christians realized for the voice of Jesus.

That brings us to our last and final misconception, and we're all building up to this one. And as we do, let me just read back through them one more time. First one, early Christians did not think there would even be a canon. They had no idea they should expect new books. We challenge that. Second, authors of the New Testament do not think they're writing scripture. We challenge that. Yes, they did. They had a sense of authority from a very early time. Third, early Christians were widely disagreeing over which books belong in the New Testament. No, they didn't. They had a core from the very start. Fourth, there was no canon at all until the fourth or fifth century because of Athanasius's Festival letter. No, you can major canon in other ways, and we have an earlier letter besides that. Fifth, we just did it. Apocryphal books are just as valid. No, ours, the only one stated in the first century, the only ones that go back to the apostles, are the only ones that have a chance of being written by the apostles, and they don't have the later legendary embellishments. Sixth, apocryphal books were just as popular. Actually, they weren't. By virtue of citations and manuscripts, vastly more popular were our canonical four, and the letters of Paul, I might add.

And now we come to the seventh and final, and it's the biggest misconception of all. The New Testament books were picked by the church. The New Testament books were picked by the church. There's words that come up again and again in discussions of canon: books chosen, books decided, books picked. Now, it's some broad, abstract level, I suppose you could say there's some sense in which that might be the case, perhaps with some of these smaller disputed books. But the idea that you could capture the whole canon by saying the church chose books is maybe one of the biggest misconceptions of all. I don't know if you realize this, the book, the, the church never saw itself as picking books and never even saw it having the authority to do something like that. When we talk about the church picking books, we have this idea of some smoke-filled room somewhere with a group of people around a table debating and then probably voting. I don't want to sort of ruin every conception you have about the canon, but there was no smoke-filled room. There was no vote. There was no sense that, okay, one book barely made it in by a vote. That never happened. Why? Because the church never saw itself as picking books. Yes, there's church councils that list books, but you have to understand the conception of what these councils thought they were doing. They weren't listing books as if they were choosing them. They were listing books by and by doing so, they're saying, this is what the church has always believed. They didn't think that council made these books canonical or decided the books that were canonical. That's just a grand misunderstanding of the way it worked.

The, the best equivalent I can give to you would be kind of asking a person why they chose their parents. What if you ask someone that? What if it went up to your buddy and you met their parents and you're like, huh, these are a couple odd folks over here. Why'd you choose these two as your parents? What would you say? You're like, well, you, that's a weird question. You don't have, you'd be like, I, I don't remember. You, they were this, there, as far as I can remember, right? I remember choosing them. That's the way the canon works. If you were to go up on the street to a Christian in the second century and stick a microphone in their safe face and say, hey, I'm curious, why'd you guys, uh, choose Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John? They probably look at you like you'd look at me if I ask you why you chose your parents. You'd be like, um, we didn't choose Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. These were the books that were handed down to us, and they were handed down from the apostles.

So instead of using the word choose, what word should we use? The church recognized. The church recognized what was already true of these books. These are books that tell us the good news of Jesus. Even more pointedly, these are the books that have the voice of Jesus, because the apostles speak with the voice of Jesus. Remember John 10:27, what did Jesus promise? My sheep hear my voice, I know them, and they follow me. You want to sum up the whole story of the canon, that's the summary right there. Why do we have the canon we have today? Because God's sheep, with the power of the spirit in them, hear the voice of their Lord, and they recognize these are the books that bear the voice of Christ. Yes, there is messiness in the process. Yes, it took time. But the idea of the church voted in some meeting somewhere and then infused authority in these books is simply not the case. These books had authority because they speak for Christ. They were authoritative the moment they were written, and the church came to recognize and receive. And by the way, that's the big takeaway for all of us, isn't it? Big takeaway for all of us tonight, no matter where you are in your own spiritual journey or discussions of the canon, is God asks us to do the same thing the only church was asked to do: recognize and receive. Recognize these books are from him, receive them, and then receive the message in them, because they tell about the good news of Christ.

But don't miss the Q&A. This is where the fun is. Okay, um, I told, I told Graham before we got started, I'd rather just come and do a Q&A. How about I not give the lecture? I'll just come and do Q&A. Um, but I think, uh, he's gonna give you some instructions how to text your your question in at the break, and then I'm going to answer your questions, and we'll get back. Let me pray for us, and then Graham's going to come up and transition us. So don't go anywhere. Let's pray. Lord Jesus, we're thankful for your, your word, all 27 books of them, all 66 books of them in totality. Lord, help us to do what the early church has been called to do, recognize and receive what you've delivered. We pray all this in Christ's name. Amen.