76. Character of the New Testament

langen, 1845. (Against Baur and the Tübingen School.)— Edward C. Mitchell: Critical Handbook to the New Test. (on Authenticity, Canon, etc.). Lond. and Andover, 1880; French translation, Paris, 1882.—J. P. Lange:Grundriss der Bibelkunde. Heidelberg, 1881.—Philip Schaff: Companion to the Greek Testament and the English Version. N. Y. and Lond., 1883, 3d ed. revised 1888.—G. D. Ladd: The Doctrine of Sacred Scripture, N.York, 1883, 2 vols. The same, abridged, 1888.

IV. The works quoted below on the Gospels and Epistles.

V. On the Canon of the New Test., the works of Kirchhofer (Quellensammlung, etc. Zürich, 1844,

Engl. transl. enlarged by Charteris: Canonicity, etc. Edinb., 1881); Credner (Zur Gesch. des Kanon. Halle, 1847; Geschichte des Neutest. Kanon, herausg. von Volkmar. Berlin, 1860); Gaussen (Engl. transl., London, 1862; abridged transl. by Kirk, Boston, 1862); Tregelles (Canon Muratorianus. Oxford, 1867); Sam. Davidson (Lond., 1878, 3d ed., 1880); Westcott (Cambridge and London, 1855; 6th ed., 1889); Reuss (Histoire du canon des S. Écritures. Strasb., 2d ed., 1864); Ad. Harnack (Das muratorische Fragment und die Entstehung einer Sammlung Apost.-katholischer Schriften, in Brieger’s “Zeitschrift f. Kirchengeschichte,” 1879, III., 358 sqq.; comp. 595 sqq.); F. Overbeck (Zur Geschichte des Kanons. Chemnitz, 1880); Réville (French, 1881); Theod. Zahn (Forschungen zur Geschichte des neutestamentl. Kanons, Part I-III., 1881–84; and Geschichte des Kanons d. N. T., Leipz., 1888 sqq., 3 vols). Comp. Harnack: Das N. T. um das Jahr. 200, Freiburg, 1889 (against Zahn), and Zahn’s reply, Leipz., 1889.

§ 75. Rise of the Apostolic Literature.

Christ is the book of life to be read by all. His religion is not an outward letter of command, like the law of Moses, but free, quickening spirit; not a literary production, but a moral creation; not a new system of theology or philosophy for the learned, but a communication of the divine life for the redemption of the whole world. Christ is the personal Word of God, the eternal Logos, who became flesh and dwelt upon earth as the true Shekinah, in the veiled glory of the only begotten from the Father, full of grace and truth. He spoke; and all the words of his mouth were, and still are, spirit and life. The human heart craves not a learned, letter-writing, literary Christ, but a wonder-working, cross-bearing, atoning Redeemer, risen, enthroned in heaven, and ruling the world; furnishing, at the same time, to men and angels an unending theme for meditation, discourse, and praise.

So, too, the Lord chose none of his apostles, with the single exception of Paul, from the ranks of the learned; he did not train them to literary authorship, nor give them, throughout his earthly life, a single express command to labor in that way. Plain fishermen of Galilee, unskilled in the wisdom of this world, but filled with the Holy Spirit of truth and the powers of the world to come, were commissioned to preach the glad tidings of salvation to all nations in the strength and in the name of their glorified Master, who sits on the right hand of God the Father Almighty, and has promised to be with them to the end of time.

The gospel, accordingly, was first propagated and the church founded by the personal oral teaching and exhortation, the “preaching,” “testimony,” “word,” “tradition,” of the apostles and their disciples; as, in fact, to this day the living word is the indispensable or, at least, the principal means of promoting the Christian religion. Nearly all the books of the New Testament were written between the years 50 and 70, at least twenty years after the resurrection of Christ, and the founding of the church; and the Gospel and Epistles of John still later.

As the apostles’ field of labor expanded, it became too large for their personal attention, and required epistolary correspondence. The vital interests of Christianity and the wants of coming generations demanded a faithful record of the life and teaching of Christ by perfectly reliable witnesses. For oral tradition, among fallible men, is liable to so many accidental changes, that it loses in certainty and credibility as its distance from the fountain-head increases, till at last it can no longer be clearly distinguished from the additions and corruptions collected upon it. There was great danger, too, of a wilful distortion of the history and doctrine of Christianity by Judaizing and paganizing errorists, who had already raised their heads during the lifetime of the apostles. An authentic written record of the words and acts of Jesus and his disciples was therefore absolutely indispensable, not indeed to originate the church, but to keep it from corruption and to furnish it with a pure standard of faith and discipline.

Hence seven and twenty books by apostles and apostolic men, written under the special influence and direction of the Holy Spirit. These afford us a truthful picture of the history, the faiths, and the practice of primitive Christianity, “for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness.”835 835 2 Tim. 3:16. It applies to “every Scripture inspired of God,” more immediately to the Old Test., but a fortiori still