Codifying the New Testament Canon by Professor JEANNIE CONSTANTINOU
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t is hard to imagine a time when “the New Testament” as we know it did not exist. We are accustomed to turning to the Apostolic writings whenever we wish. But imagine a time when those books had not been written, or when they had not been gathered into a collection, or when easy access to them was not possible because books were rare and expensive. The earliest followers of Jesus, like most other firstcentury Jews, lived outside of Palestine in other parts of the Roman Empire. They did not see themselves as part of a separate religion; they were widely considered a Jewish sect, one of many different varieties of Judaism that flourished during the first century. The only thing that distinguished them was their belief that the Messiah had already come, in the person of Jesus of Nazareth, and had fulfilled the Scriptures. He was both the long-awaited Messiah and the Lord. Nor did these early Christians see any need for a separate body of Scripture. Their Scriptures were the Hebrew Bible (what we now call the Old Testament), whether rendered in the Hebrew language or in a Greek translation known as the Septuagint. As we know, some Apostles wrote letters, accounts of Christ’s life, and other books. Over time, copies of these Apostolic books were copied and distributed throughout the Christian world. Eventually they were read during the Liturgy and respected as the “memoirs of the Apostles,” according to St. Justin the Philosopher and Martyr, who died around the year 165. Apostolic writings became especially important after the deaths of the Apostles, but they were not immediately considered Scripture. For the early Church, even Apostolic writings could not stand alongside sacred books such as Isaiah, Genesis, or the Psalms, which were hundreds of years old.
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The term “canon of Scripture” simply means the list of books recognized by the Church as Scripture. The term “canon” is also used for the decision of a Church council, or a regulation or guideline written by a Church council. The Greek word kanon was the word for a reed which grew in marshes. The segmented reeds were used as measuring rods or sticks, the way we use a ruler or yardstick today. Some scholars believe the list of books recognized as Scripture is called the “canon” because the Church used a measurement or standard for deciding which books would be included. Others say the term “canon” was used because the books of the Bible are the basis for how we measure ourselves. As I explained in my last column in these pages (“Heresy and the Scriptural Canon”, fall 2019 issue), the process of selecting a canon was triggered by the emergence of two heresies: Gnosticism and Marcionism. As the exponents of these false teachings tried to distort or supplant Holy Scripture, ecclesial leaders saw a need to defend the true Christian texts by formally recognizing their authority. In this column I would like to address the question of how the canon was ultimately selected. Once the process of choosing a canon had begun, there was little debate over the books that would form the core. Among the four books we now recognize as the canonical Gospels, the only one that sparked any disagreement was the Gospel of John. It was so different from the other three that it was viewed with suspicion by some. St. Irenaeus (c. 190) championed its acceptance by arguing that God had always intended four Gospels. The number four, he argued, symbolized universality and completeness, like the four corners of the earth, the four winds,
