Rev. David Holwick W After Acts: Early Church series #5
First Baptist Church
Ledgewood, New Jersey (well-received)
June 27, 2004
Revelation 22:18-19
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I. Where did the Bible come from?
A. Popular conception - Jesus floated up to heaven, and a Big
Black Book plopped down.
B. The reality is a little messier. Consider:
1) Why do Catholic Bibles have extra books?
a) (so do our old pulpit Bibles, for that matter)
2) Who decided what books got a place in the Bible?
3) Did they make any mistakes?
a) Are there "lost" Bible books?
b) Are some of the ones that are included, actually phony?
C. The Bible matters.
1) Jesus stood on the Bible against his human enemies, and
also against his supernatural enemy - Satan.
2) To Baptists, the Bible is the supreme authority on all
matters of our faith.
3) It is important to know where it came from.
II. It begins with the Jews.
A. God revealed himself to the Jews, and they began writing.
1) Moses is given credit for the first 5 books, the Torah.
2) Prophets and priests wrote much of the rest.
3) By around 400 BC, the Jews felt the Holy Spirit stopped
inspiring prophets.
B. Later Jews in Bible (Ezra) credited earlier ones as inspired.
1) By the time of Jesus, the Hebrew Bible had three sections -
the Law, the Prophets and the Writings.
2) Jesus quoted or alluded to 24 out of 39 Old Testament books.
C. The Old Testament apocrypha.
1) Jews did not stop writing in 400 BC.
a) They kept writing, but in Greek instead of Hebrew.
b) These books are now called the Apocrypha or Deutero-
canonical books.
2) Early Christians quoted from these extra books when they
argued with Jews so the Jews developed an official canon.
a) Canon - a standard of measurement.
b) The Jewish Council of Jamnia, around AD 90, listed
39 books for its Scripture, our Old Testament.
1> The Apocrypha were excluded.
2> Note that Jesus never quoted the Apocrypha.
3) Protestants accept the Jewish OT canon; Catholics don't.
(they add the Apocrypha)
III. History of Marcion.
A. The beginning of the New Testament.
1) The earliest transmission of the gospel was by mouth.
a) Jesus himself never wrote anything, except his
scribbling in the dust before the adulterous woman.
b) His teachings were memorized and passed on.
c) Gospels were written a few decades after Jesus' death
and began to circulate.
2) Paul's letters were collected during first century.
a) They often began as round-robins.
3) No one owned a New Testament in this period.
a) It would not have fit in your pocket!
b) The letters and gospels circulated as individual
books or small collections.
B. The origin of a world-class heretic.
1) Marcion was born in Turkey, the son of a bishop.
2) Wealthy merchant and shipowner.
3) Got kicked out of his home church.
a) (There was a rumor he defiled a virgin.)
4) Moved to Rome around AD 135.
a) Opened his wallet for the church.
1> 200,000 sesterces, a huge amount.
b) Then he opened his big mouth.
C. What kind of God do we worship?
1) Marcion: vengeful O.T. God vs. loving N.T. God.
a) Old Testament God is incompetent and barbaric.
1> NT God is merciful and gracious.
2> (Some of you may have had the same impression when
you first read the Old Testament.)
b) OT God intended to send a Messiah to judge the world,
but the NT God beat him to the punch.
1> The NT God sent Jesus to rescue the people of the
world from the OT God.
2> Jesus only appeared to be a human.
3> There is no Judgment Day or Second Coming or
resurrection.
D. Proving his point.
1) To make his position stronger, Marcion rewrote the Bible.
a) The Old Testament was discarded.
b) Luke was the only gospel he kept, and he cut the Jewish
portions out of that, too.
c) Ten of Paul's letters made the cut, but those had
their Jewish passages cut out as well.
2) His anti-Jewish message was popular.
a) Marcion's group lasted hundreds of years in some areas.
b) But it caused an upheaval among the orthodox.
3) Marcion's ultimate impact.
a) The Church embraced its Jewish heritage.
b) The Church faced the need for its own canon.
IV. The crisis of the canon.
A. Early Christians knew the New Testament was inspired.
1) Jesus made his own words and deeds as authoritative as OT.
Matthew 5:21,27,31,33,38,43
2) He taught that his apostles would carry on his authority
through the work of the Holy Spirit. John 14:26; 16:12-15
3) The apostles recognized the authority of their own writings.
a) Especially Paul - our preaching is not our own words,
but the Word of God. 1 Thess 2:13; see 2 Peter 3:16
B. Early Bibles were fluid.
1) Few complete early Bibles - too expensive and heavy.
a) Emperor Constantine authorized 50 copies to be made in
the fourth century; 2 of these remain.
b) Each copy would have cost the equivalent of $250,000.
2) Some add other books to the New Testament, while others
are missing books.
3) Different areas had favorite books or rejected books.
a) Book of Revelation was loved in the West but suspect
in the East.
b) (much like its reception among Christians today!)
C. Crisis over Marcion led to action.
1) Various councils debated the limits of the canon.
2) Criteria for canon:
a) Apostolic origin, either directly or by association.
1> Apostles: Matthew, John, Paul, and Peter.
2> Associates of apostles: Mark (Peter & Paul) and
Luke (Paul).
3> Relatives of Jesus: James and Jude.
b) Spiritual value of book.
c) Wide acceptance throughout the church.
1> This is why smaller books or letters to individuals
took longer to be accepted.
V. The Church did not produce the canon, but recognized it.
A. God is given the credit for the canon.
1) His Spirit worked through the Church over time.
2) Whole process took several centuries, though the main
outline of the NT is clear from the second century.
B. Today all branches of Christianity accept the same 27 books
of the New Testament.
1) Lost books like Gospel of Thomas?
2) They were never accepted by the church as authentic.
C. The warning of Revelation 22:18-19 originally applied to
that one book, but we often apply it to whole Bible.
1) The Bible will not have more additions.
2) The apostolic age is over, and the Bible is complete.
VI. Modern threats.
A. Rejection of any canon by liberalism.
According to an article in US NEWS & WORLD REPORT:
1) The Bible is the product of a purely human endeavor.
2) The identity of the authors is forever lost.
3) Their work has been obliterated by centuries of translation
and editing.
B. Those who add to the Bible.
1) Mormonism and their Book of Mormon.
C. Subtracting from the Bible.
1) Thomas Jefferson, who cut out verses he liked (mostly in
Sermon on the Mount) and pasted them into the Jefferson
Bible.
2) Jehovah Witnesses.
a) Not subtracting so much as re-translating key verses
so they will reflect Witness teachings.
3) Red-letter attitude among some evangelicals.
a) They treat the red letters (direct words of Jesus) as
being more inspired than the black letters.
b) This should not be the case - every word is inspired,
black and red.
4) Modern translations like the New International Version?
a) They are often accused of "taking the blood out" of the
New Testament, but it is a simple textual issue.
b) Many Christians get upset when the footnotes in their
Bibles say "The earliest manuscripts do not have
this verse" and so on.
c) The existence of these notes is due to the vast amount
of textual evidence for the New Testament.
VII. The text of the New Testament is well-supported.
A. None of the original writings (called autographs) survive.
1) The earliest scrap of the New Testament dates to
A.D. 125 (two verses in John, found in Egypt).
B. More handwritten copies exist of the NT than any other
ancient book, by far.
1) New Testament: Greek manuscripts - 5,300
Latin manuscripts - 10,000+
Early translations - 9,300
TOTAL: 24,000+
2) Homer's Iliad: Greek manuscripts - 643
Many of you saw the recent movie "Troy,"
probably so you could see Brad Pitt's
derriŠre.
Did you realize the New Testament has a superior
text? It does.
3) The earliest copy of the Iliad is 500 years after
than the original.
The earliest copy (portion) of the NT is 25 years
after the original.
C. The text of the New Testament is well attested.
The NT has about 20,000 lines of text, and the Iliad about
15,600.
Only 40 lines (or 400 words, or 0.5%) of the NT are in doubt,
while 764 lines (5.0%) of the Iliad are questioned.
In the Odyssey, 10% is questioned.
As liberal scholar Kirsopp Lake noted, not one major Christian
doctrine is in doubt because of textual problems.
VIII. We need the whole Bible.
A. The whole Bible is our standard of faith and life.
1) Baptists vs. creeds.
a) Biblical truth cannot be distilled into a few
statements.
b) We stand on whole Bible. (used to be just NT)
2) We need a ruler to measure our beliefs against, and Jesus
says it is the Bible.
a) "What does the Scripture say?" is a common question
from him. Luke 10:26, etc.
b) Don't be "ignorant of the Scripture or the power of
God." Matthew 22:29
B. The whole Bible testifies to Jesus.
1) The way of salvation is based on him.
John 5:39 --
"You diligently study the Scriptures because you think that
by them you possess eternal life.
These are the Scriptures that testify about me."
2) Don't believe in the book - believe in the One the book is
about.
a) Jesus is the Word of God in human form.
b) Accept him as your Lord today...
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Most of the facts in the sermon are derived from "The Text of the New Testament"
by Bruce Manning Metzger (Oxford University Press: 1968)
Copyright © 2024 by Rev. David Holwick
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