It is used several times in the Old and New Testaments, both in the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible and in the original Greek of the New Testament. Because he is a minis&r, that is, in the original sense of the word, a 'servant' of the Word.
OLD TESTAMENT
In churches of the Reformed order (such as the Church of Scotland and other Presbyterian churches around the world), the first formal action in a service of public worship occurs when the Bible is carried in from the sacristy and placed on the reading table. It is from the content, the message, of the book that it derives its value, whether we think of the gospel in particular or of the Bible as a whole.
THE LAW
The kingdom was to be bestowed on 'the saints of the Most High'; Daniel in a vision saw how. The books of the Hebrew Bible are traditionally twenty-four in number, arranged in three divisions.
THE GREEK OLD TESTAMENT
In the earliest phase of the Greek version, it may have been attached to the canonical book. Since Stephen was a Hellenist, the Septuagint was the edition of the scriptures that he would naturally have used.
THE OLD TESTAMENT BECOMES A NEW BOOK
In Paul's writings one aspect of the gospel—the mode and purpose of its communication to the Gentile world—is treated as one. But this Christian book contained, just as it did for the Church, the sacred writings of the Jewish people.
IN THE EAST
He is the first extant writer to describe them at length as "the books of the old covenant" (or the Old Testament). However, most orthodox scholars today follow Athanasius and others in placing the books of the.
IN THE LATIN WEST
The Old Latin version of the 'Septuagintal plus' stood on a different footing from the rest of the Old Testament.' Jerome's study of the Hebrew Bible quickly made him aware of the 'plus Septuagintal' issue.
BEFORE AND AFTER THE REFORMATION
However, some of the users of the Geneva Bible had little time for the Apocrypha. This went considerably beyond the position approved by the translators of the Geneva Bible.
NEW TESTAMENT
33 But the greater availability of these books means that there is a better appreciation of their character, and of the issues involved in delineating the canon of the Old Testament. The reviewer cannot have been unaware that the Apocrypha is included in every major Protestant version of the English Bible from Coverdale to the Revised Standard Version.
WRITINGS OF THE NEW ERA
Lightfoot "that the writing of the gospels was an early manifestation of the operation of original sin in the church." In the first half of the second century, then, the collections of Christian LO Quoted by Eusebius, Hisf. In his Dialogue, Justin speaks of "the reminiscences" (reminiscences) of Peter (probably the gospel of Mark)" and in his First Apology he refers to "the reminiscences of the apostles".
Gamble, The Textmzl Histovy of the Letter to the Rottmzs = Sttrdies and Docwnents, 42 (Grand Rapids, 1977).
MARCION
The gospel is described there as 'a mystery hid from eternity in God who created all' (hidden, that is, in the divine mind and revealed only when the fullness of time had come). So Marcion, with a very slight change, made this text refer to "the mystery which was hidden for ages from God, who made all things". The letter to the Romans, for example, is one of the least polemical letters of Paul; but the prologue says that it was sent to the Christians of Rome because false apostles, claiming to have the authority of Christ, had deceived them into submitting to "the law and the prophets."
The addition of 'the prophets' to 'the law' seems designed to exclude the Old Testament writings from any part in the gospel economy.
VALENTINUS AND HIS SCHOOL
This is especially true of one of the most famous of them, called the Gospel of Truth. Some Christian fathers characterize the Gospel of Truth as a manifesto of the Valentinian school.6 Now that it is available for study, its character can be clearly recognized. There is an interesting discussion in Our Lady of Truth about the divine fragrance ('a father's sons are his fragrance') which seems to develop Paul's thought in 2 Cor.
Indeed, in the Gospel of Twtb there is a fascinating account of what is called “the living book of the living,” the “testament (diuthh)” of Jesus, which he seems to have received both from his Father (cf. Rev.
THE CATHOLIC RESPONSE
The fact that this Catholic work is at the head of the New Testament indicates the Catholicity of the canon as a whole and not just the Gospel collection. After two Gospels had already been written - Matthew in Judea and Mark in Italy - Luke, inspired by the Holy Spirit, wrote this Gospel in the region of Achaia. Still later, the apostle John, one of the twelve, wrote the Apocalypse on the island of Patmos, and then the Gospel in Asia.
It suffered some textual corruption in the transmission of both the Greek text and the Latin translation, but necessary.
THE MURATORIAN FRAGMENT
This was also true (though not so naturally) of the Apocalypse of Peter – no doubt in the belief that it was a genuine work of the prince of the apostles. The Epistle to the Hebrews is not mentioned, which is only to be expected in a Roman canon of the second or third century. At the end of the section on Paul's letters, two so-called letters of his are said to be Marcionite forgeries.
At the end of the list, he refers to other works that are completely rejected.
Irenaeus goes on to relate the four Gospels to the faces of the four living creatures of Ezek. As for the Acts of the Apostles, it stands or falls with the Gospel of Luke; that is, it stands. Irenaeus appeals to Acts to refute the Ebionites who refuse to recognize Paul's apostleship.
New Testament Bible recognized in capitaL4' church Perhaps we should be warned against calling it "closed."
He did not use the word 'cannon', but approved the idea which 'cannon' later came to express. This notion was expressed in the first part of the pseudepigraphical book of Enoch (a composite work of the last century BC and the first century AD). Of the remaining Catholic epistles (James, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John) Tertullian has nothing to say; we cannot say whether he knew them or not.
In connection with the investigation, a box, property of the church, was brought to court.
THE ALEXANDRIAN FATHERS
He speaks of the two parts of the Christian Bible as the Old Testament and the New Testament, l6 but has nothing to say about the boundaries of the New Testament. Clement accepted the tradition he had received as to the contents of the two wills, but the question of. He found the thoughts in the letter admirable, no less than those in Paul's recognized 4R SeB.
Such are the Gospel according to the Egyptians, the Gospel according to Twehe, the Gospel according to Basilides and other heretical gospels and the Acts of the Apostles.
EUSEBIUS OF CAESAREA
In one place he gives an account of the New Testament writings that are current in the churches in his own time. 4. Metzger, 'The Lucianic Recension of the Greek Bible', Chuptevs in the Hirtory o/New TrJtmmt Textd Crztzcim, NTE 4 (Leiden, 1963), pp. A related, though less important, question concerns the order of the New Testament books in those copies.
This is the only one of the great uncials that has preserved all the books of the New Testament in their entirety.
ATHANASIUS AND AFTER
John of the golden mouth' (Chtysostom), bishop of Constantinople from 397 to 407, quotes abundantly from the New Testament books apart from the four controversial catholic letters (2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Jude) and the Apocalypse. In Co&x Ciuronlontanxr the letters appear in the same order as we find in most modern editions of the New Testament. In fact, he quotes every book of the New Testament, with the exception of Jude.
Of the New Testament there are the four gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, John); the Acts of the Apostles (written by Luke);.
Paul the apostle gives thanks to the Lord for the Laodiceans and exhorts them not to be deceived by those who
Concerning the apostle’s ‘manifest’ bonds,3’ in which he rejoices and exults
The apostle admonishes the Laodiceans that, as they heard him when he was present with them, so they should
With the invention of printing in the mid-fifteenth century, the Epistle of Laodicea was included in some of the earliest printed editions of the New Testament. This did not happen in England, where printing of the Bible was hampered by the anti-Lollard Constitutions of Oxford (1408): the first printed edition of the New Testament in English (Tyndale's) had to be produced on the Continent (1525/1525 ). 26) and, because it was based on the Greek text, did not include the Epistle to the Laodiceans. 4* The New Testament part of the Kralice Bible (the 'authorized version' of the Czech Bible) was based on an earlier translation from the Greek by Jan Blahoslav (1564).
The mere fact that it was omitted from Luther's New Testament kept it quiet enough in the lands of the Reformation.
OF PRINTING
Ehrhardt, 'Christianity before the Apostles' Creed', in The Framework of the Ntw Trstctmmt Storir~ (Manchester, 1964), pp In the later part of 1525 the printing of William Tyndale's English translation of the New Testament began in Cologne . When the Council of Trent dealt with the canon of Scripture during its fourth session (April 1546), it listed the twenty-seven 'received' books of the New Testament.
These papers may be useful to the student; they are irrelevant to the question of canon.
CONCLUSION
The riches of the letter to the Hebrews provide a further example of the importance placed on apostolic authority (if not authorship). This call for the testimony of the churches of the apostolic establishment was specially developed by Irenaeus. Dahl, "The Uniqueness of Paul's Epistles as a Problem in the Ancient Church," in Neoterranrmtica et Patrika.
Only one of the New Testament writers expressly supports the authority of what he says in prophetic inspiration.
The diversity that K5semann finds in the New Testament is a diverse expression of the gospel. Does the canon of the New Testament constitute the unity of the church?' That was the title of a well-known essay by Ernst Kasemann. I7 What Jesus said about the Hebrew Scriptures applies equally well to the New Testament Scriptures, 'external canon' as well.
In the words of scripture, the voice of God's Spirit continues to be heard.
CANON, CRITICISM, AND INTERPRETATION
Åland; the text is practically identical to the text of the Greek New Testament (United Bible Societies, 1975). In the 'received text' of the New Testament there are some passages which find no place in modern critical editions of the Greek Testament (or in translations based on them). Canonical exegesis can be defined as the interpretation of individual components of the canon in the context of the canon as a whole.
Similarly, when Paul's letters were collected into one corpus, each of them began to be read in the context of the entire corpus.
THE ‘SECRET’ GOSPEL OF MARK
When the first popular English edition of the Gospel of Thomas was published - the excellent edition by R. This was followed by his most popular treatment of the same subject: The Secret Gmpel (London: Gollancz, 1974). They came out of the tomb and entered the young man's house, because he was rich.
It is not unusual to find readings characteristic of the Western text in the Gospel quotations from Clement of Alexandria.
PRIMARY SENSE AND PLENARY SENSE
But establishing the primary sense of a passage of scripture is not always as simple a matter as is commonly supposed. An investigation into the use of the Old Testament in the New, as testimony to Christ, helps to answer this last question. For various forms of the full sense of the narrative we go to later writers.
At the beginning of the nineteenth century, when new critical methods were applied to the biblical records, F.
INDEX
New American Bible 113 New English Bible 113 New International Version 114 New Jerusalem Bible 113 New Testament 180 Newton, I.
HOW DID THE BOOKS OF THE BIBLE COME TO BE RECOGNIZED AS HOLY SCRIPTURE?
WHO DECIDED WHAT THE SHAPE OF THE CANON SHOULD BE?
WHAT WERE THE CRITERIA THAT INFLUENCED THESE DECISIONS?