God watches over His Word

Originally posted on November 17, 2008 – by Andre Piet

remarkable…

Following a study I recently gave, in which I put forward that the canon of the New Testament came into being through the apostles themselves, before the year 70, I received the following short email:

written before 70 AD?

Yet it is at the very least remarkable that Paul nowhere gives any indication of knowing anything at all about the Gospels. And it remains just as striking that we first know of a list of “holy writings” in the year 367 that corresponds to the canon as we know it.

no longer… Christ according to the flesh

It is indeed remarkable that Paul rarely refers to Jesus’ walk here on earth. Paul himself says about this: “Even if we have known Christ according to the flesh, yet now we know Him so no longer” (2 Cor. 5:16). Paul proclaimed Christ as he had come to know Him on the road to Damascus: as the Risen One who is seated in heavenly glory at the right hand of God.

unknown to Paul?

Did Paul not know the Gospels? In any case, we know that the writer of the Gospel of Luke and Acts was for a long time Paul’s close coworker (“the beloved physician”). Moreover, when Paul, shortly before his death, was busily engaged in completing his library (2 Tim. 4:13), it was also Mark who proved very useful for the service (2 Tim. 4:11).

Gospels: Scripture

Incidentally, Paul writes in 1 Tim. 5:18: “For the Scripture says, ‘You shall not muzzle an ox while it is threshing,’ and, ‘The worker is worthy of his wages.’” Paul here quotes respectively from Deut. 25:5 and Matt. 10:10 or Luke 10:7. Paul calls both quotations “the Scripture”! By this it is said that Paul at that moment was indeed well aware of (at least one of) the Gospels.

fourth century

The first official list of canonical books known to us that corresponds to our canon indeed dates from the fourth century. It is the same century from which the oldest manuscripts of the New Testament known to us also date. But it is also the century in which the great errors of Christendom (think of the doctrine of the Trinity) were officially declared to be benchmarks of orthodoxy. Is that not remarkable?! While on the one hand Christendom departed from Scripture as never before, on the other hand that same Scripture emerged from the struggle as a unity as never before!

monuments

God Himself stands surety for the preservation of “the holy Scriptures.” The great Greek manuscripts are one of the monumental witnesses of this. As is demonstrated in the aforementioned study, the New Testament Greek canon in every respect displays the design of the final editor, Paul.
God watches over His Word!

Delen: