Ankerberg Show

Dr. John Ankerberg: Welcome to the John Akerberg Show Classics Edition. For decades, we've been privileged to host esteemed scholars discussing a wide range of topics, from apologetics and science to biblical prophecy and beyond. Join us as we revisit these timeless conversations and make them accessible to you wherever you are.

Announcer: Today, network television specials and best-selling books are causing Christians and non-Christians to ask many questions about the accuracy of the Bible. For example, how did the early Christians know which books to include in the canon of the New Testament and which to keep out? What about the other missing gospels that never made it into the Bible? And if we don't have the original manuscript copies of the New Testament books that the apostles wrote, how do we know that we have what they originally wrote? And how can we know what Jesus truly said if church scribes intentionally tampered with the words in the scriptural text as they were handed down to us?

Well, today you'll find out. My guests on the John Ankerberg Show are two well-known scholars. First, Dr. Darryl Bock, professor of New Testament research at Dallas Theological Seminary. He has appeared on NBC, ABC, CNN, Fox, and the Discovery Channel as an authority on the historical Jesus. Second, Dr. Daniel B. Wallace, one of the world's leading authorities on textual criticism and the Greek manuscript copies of the New Testament. He is director of the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts, is the senior New Testament editor of the Net Bible, and is professor of New Testament studies at Dallas Theological Seminary.

Listen as they present the evidence that every Christian needs to know to answer the questions of those who are trying to discredit the Bible.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Welcome to our program. Let me ask you this question. How do you think that the early Christians picked out the 27 books that now form the New Testament canon? I'm sure that you've been listening to television, you've been reading books, you've been hearing specials on television that talk about a myriad of ideas of how that information came down to us. Some say that we lost all the original stuff that the Christians said, and Constantine had the scribes write up a new one in the fourth century. others are saying, no, but it wasn't that bad, but we don't really have the good stuff. What we want to ask these men who are leading scholars in the world is how do you answer that question, especially to students that are listening?

Darryl Bock is professor of New Testament research at Dallas Theological Seminary. If you look at him carefully on our show today, you will recognize he's been on ABC and NBC and Fox and CNN almost every time you see a historical special about Jesus. And Dr. Daniel B. Wallace is professor of New Testament Studies at Dallas Theological Seminary. He's one of the world's leading authorities on textual criticism and the Greek manuscript copies of the New Testament. He is director of the Center for the Study of New Testament Manuscripts. He is the senior New Testament editor of the Net Bible in his spare time.

He has also written Standard Greek Grammar Beyond the Basics, an exegetical syntax of the New Testament. These are the top guys. Dan, let me start with you. How did the early Christians pick out which books would go into the New Testament canon?

Dr. Daniel B. Wallace: That's a great question, John. I think there were three basic criteria that they began to think about as they wrestled with what goes in and what doesn't go in. The first one is what we might call apostolicity, or we might call it antiquity. And apostolicity means, is it written by an apostle or an associate of an apostle? But if we add the term antiquity, it tells us it has to be written before AD 100. It has to be a document by either an associate of apostle, an apostle, or one of those eyewitnesses or second generation Christians at the very most.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Or it didn't have the credentials.

Dr. Daniel B. Wallace: Or it didn't have the credentials. And you get a lot of scholars today to say the canon was wide open till the 4th century or 5th or 6th century, which means there's no closing of the canon. It means there's no one who says these 27 books and only these 27 books go in. Well, the impression that the untrained reader is going to get from that is that, oh, then that means they could have picked the Gospel of Thomas, Gospel of Mary, Gospel of Philip, Gospel of Peter, you know, all sorts of documents that came around in the 2nd century, some of the apostolic fathers' writings, they could have put those in the canon, but that's not true.

The fact is that the church began to realize very early on that it's only those documents that had the mark of apostolicity or antiquity. You get the Muratorian fragment, which I know we're going to talk about later, but in the Muratorian fragment it says, in our time the Shepherd of Hermas was written. And he says, in our time, so he's talking about the second century, and he says, this is a good book, and it was. It's one of the Apostolic Fathers' writings. It's a good book, it's edifying, but it shouldn't be read publicly in church because it doesn't have the same stamp of authority as these other books I've talked about.

So there's a demarcation that says AD 100, no more is this possible to be in the canon. Before AD 100, it is possible. The second criterion would be Catholicity, and that doesn't mean that it's Roman Catholic, it just means that it's universal. It's a book that would have been accepted by the churches, and from the tradition of the apostles telling, teaching these bishops who then train other bishops after them, right on down the line, they say, we know this goes back to these men. We know that this is telling us what orthodoxy is about. This goes back to the apostles or goes to their friends.

We know that this is a book that is really telling us what Scripture is all about.

Dr. John Ankerberg: And we recognize that even in the second century, the fact is they were concerned about that issue. That's what they said.

Dr. Daniel B. Wallace: Yeah, they were concerned about the authority of the apostles. In the first half of the second century, I'm not so sure they even recognized that much that the New Testament should be regarded as Scripture. That's a different issue I think we'll take up a little bit later, I suppose. But in terms of the authority of these documents, it had to be something that was widespread accepted by the churches. And then the third issue is it had to be orthodox. That is, it had to conform to the other books that we knew would already be telling the truth about Jesus.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Darrell?

Dr. Darryl Bock: Well, and I think the important point about the third category, this idea that it had to be orthodox, is that you had the teaching of orthodoxy in terms of what its core was, moving through the church in the way that we've already talked about on earlier shows, that is through the schooling, through the doctrinal summaries, through the hymns, through the singing, through the sacraments, so that there was a rule of faith, we sometimes use the phrase regula fide. There was a rule of faith, and these books lined up with that. Many of the books that ended up not being in the canon, not being recognized, had problems with the regula fide.

They had trouble with the rule of the faith.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Let's stick with that point. What made some books unorthodox, and what was the core beliefs that the Christians held to that made them reject everything else but these books?

Dr. Darryl Bock: Well, the core beliefs that exist had to do with God being the Creator, that that creation was good, that Jesus was both really truly human and truly divine, that the creation was something that needed redemption, and not just the person, not just their soul, but even down to the material elements. There was something physical about the creation that needed redemption, and even creation itself groans for redemption. There's a famous passage in Romans 8 that says that the creation itself groans for the redemption of the sons of men. And so there's this idea that that salvation is going to extend to the entirety of the creation, that the resurrection has a physical element to it, that it's not merely immortality of the soul or something like that.

So when these extra biblical documents hold to a creation that is flawed at the beginning, that God isn't directly responsible for, but some underling God is, that Jesus is oftentimes not completely human. Usually the problem in the early church wasn't the belief that Jesus was divine, interestingly enough, it was the problem that Jesus wasn't human enough. You know, he left footprints in the sand, but it was more an impression that his soul left.

Dr. Daniel B. Wallace: That he never even left footprints in the sand.

Dr. Darryl Bock: Exactly right, or that he walked on the beach and there were no footprints, that when he died on the cross, his presence that was residing within a human body left, so he never genuinely suffered. The moment you did something like that, you were out of here. And then the idea that there is no physical aspect to the resurrection, out of here. And so, there are certain elements of content that disqualified these books because the teaching that the church had already established even before, in many cases, these books were even written, had been passed on, and they knew what that was, and so they said, this doesn't match up.

Dr. John Ankerberg: All right, I love that. Let's go to the fact of when were certain books included? A lot of talk is about the Gospels, the four Gospels. You know, Dan Brown had that whole deal in the Da Vinci Code. There was really 80 Gospels and only four were picked out, and that was political and blah, blah, blah. The fact is, let's talk about what actually happened in history. When did the early church start to recognize, how early did they recognize these four gospels were the four gospels they were going to include?

Dr. Daniel B. Wallace: Well, if you start with Dan Brown's list of 80, I have no idea where he got that number. For one thing, we're not really sure how many gospels there were that were circulating. However, what he's also suggesting is that this belongs in the earliest period when it doesn't. What we have in terms of documents are the four canonical gospels from the first century. After that, we have gospels that are written in the second, third, all the way up through the ninth century. And if you count all those documents from the second to the ninth, is it even to the eleventh maybe? For one of them. I know you have pseudo Matthew that's ninth century. we're talking about 45 to 60 gospels, something like that, but they're all later.

That's the point. Now, that's the first thing I would argue is that let's look at the earliest materials we've got, those four gospels. And one of the things that many people don't realize is that the modern book form we have today that is binding on the left side where you turn the pages, it's called a codex. That was invented probably the last decade of the first century. And we have very firm evidence that it was Christians who popularized this first, and they just took off with it. For the first five centuries AD, Christians had 80% of their books written on a codex, while as the rest of the world had only 20% of their books on a codex.

So the Christians were the ones who were really using this far more than others. And some have suggested that perhaps the codex form was invented because it could incorporate more than one book, while as a roll or a scroll could only have something like the size of Luke in it. You couldn't put all four gospels on it. So there's a suggestion that the original codex form used by Christians was to put all four gospels on it, and therefore you're able to spread this collection and get the news out about these are the books that we actually prize and treasure.

Dr. John Ankerberg: What are some of the statements that stand out to you as you go from the apostles to their students to the students of the students, and then you get these church leaders that are coming down the pike in this flow of consistent doctrinal belief? When did they start making statements to the effect that we recognize we've got four gospels and four gospels only?

Dr. Darryl Bock: Okay, well, what's happening in the second century is this. If you look at the early portion of the second century, talking now about the Apostolic Fathers, the generation that begins with First Clement, you know, studied under an apostle, but not an apostle themselves, and go to Justin Martyr, who's generally called to be the first of the apologists. There's a collection called the Apostolic Fathers that represent those books. If you look, and they generally represent the early part of the second century, first half of the second century. If you look at those works and you ask, how often are books that now end up in the New Testament, how often are they cited?

The answer is not as often as you would think. they're not cited that often. Now, there's a lot of material that's like what we see in the New Testament in there, so sometimes we can't tell, are we citing a biblical book, or are we citing a representation of the tradition that's represented in the biblical book, that kind of thing. That's not to get more complicated, but it's simply to say that people aren't citing books yet, they're simply presenting theology. We get to Justin Martyr and we get to Irenaeus. What's happened is, is that other movements have started to surface. As other movements have started to surface, they're writing books themselves that they are treating as authoritative for their kind of theology as a way of buttressing their theology.

And so now we've got to begin to ask who's got the real deal and who doesn't. And so that process of dialogue starts to happen, and you start to get a sense of what the books are that represent what we believe.

Dr. John Ankerberg: All right, we're going to take a break. We're going to come back. We're going to continue this and actually give the time periods leading up to the Council of Nicaea and later on Athanasius, where he said, this is it. How did they get from we got these books to sorting them out and down to this is it, okay? And how early did some of them get to this is it? All right, we'll talk about that when we get right back.

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Dr. John Ankerberg: All right, we're back. We're talking with two of the great scholars in the world, Dr. Darrell Bock, Dr. Daniel B. Wallace, and we're talking about the key question: how in the world were these books that form the New Testament canon today, how did the early Christians know which to pick out? You have this information coming down from the apostles and from the companions of the apostles, but somewhere along the line they said, this is it and this is only it, and it became the canon, the authoritative books that the Christians held to. And there was a way of saying this other stuff is not part of that.

All right, pick it up right there. How did they include this stuff in? What were the marks in history that tell us this?

Dr. Darryl Bock: Well, we begin with Justin Martyr, who actually begins to cite these works in extensive portions, and it's, there's no debate, it's coming from this material, etcetera, and he's using it to buttress his argument as he's defending Christianity. Then you come to someone like Tatian. I like Tatian. Tatian had a great idea. He said, you know, it's confusing to have four gospels. Why don't we tell it in one story? Let's have one mega gospel, and we'll call it, we'll call it the Dia Tesseron. Now, that doesn't mean anything to anyone because no one knows Latin, but if you know Latin, it means through the four.

So what he does is he combines the story of the four, plus a few other things, puts them into one running account, and issues it to the church as the new industrial strength gospel that tells the story in one sitting. And it's supposed to simplify things. And although it did get picked up for liturgical use in certain contexts and was improved valuable to the church, it never replaced the four gospels. Why? Because the four gospels were too well established to be replaced. And so that's in 170. In 180, we get Irenaeus writing. He says there are only four gospels. End of story. so that by the time we get to the end of the second century, we have the core of the canon in place.

You know, sometimes people say, well, you know, the canon wasn't fixed until the middle of the fourth century. Technically speaking, that's correct, but it's also misleading because 20 or 21 books of the New Testament, by the time we get to the end of the second century, are in place. We have our four gospels, we have Acts, we have the many epistles of Paul, we probably have First Peter as well. And so you put that all together, that's a huge core collection that's in place by the end of the second century. Then the rest of the discussion that runs out until the middle of the fourth century is about books that were perceived for one reason or another to be on the fringe because there were questions about them.

The books were short or they were a little different, like the book of Revelation, short like Philemon, Jude, Second Peter. Second Peter and Jude are a little more apocalyptic, so that's a little different, so that's a little... So it took a while for those to settle in, plus some other books that didn't make it in, First Clement, the Didache, Shepherd of Hermas, which some people at certain points treated as authoritative, but never got the corporate recognition that the other books did. And so eventually we come to 367, Athanasius writing what's called a festal letter, and he names the 27 books, and then that gets reasserted or reaffirmed in councils that extend to the end of the 4th century and the beginning of the 5th century.

Dr. John Ankerberg: All right, go back though. The fact is we started this whole series of programs where we saying there was Jesus. He picked out 12 guys. Those were the apostles. They preached at Pentecost 50 days after Jesus was put into the grave, and then they were the living apostles, and they wrote the letters and books. All right, now when you get down to what's in the canon right now that we're carrying around, the New Testament, all right, that Athanasius said, this is it, boy, nothing else gets in there. And what you're saying is, basically was already in place by the end of the second century. Long before Constantine.

That's important. That's the key point. Okay. But the fact is, go back to where the sources of these books. It's really mind blowing when you say this. Just spit it out here.

Dr. Darryl Bock: Well, the key source, the key source that lets us know that this is beginning to fall into place at the end of the second century is Irenaeus. He's writing and describing the four gospels, and he says, now he makes an argument we would never make, okay? It's a rhetorical argument. He basically says, just like there are four corners, the four winds of the world, so there have to be four gospels, you know. So, but the point is it shows how well established this is. This is like nature, OK? That's what he's saying.

Dr. Daniel B. Wallace: He's not coming up with something new. This is, he can't just make that kind of a statement up. It has to have a long tradition.

Dr. Darryl Bock: It has to have something rooted in truth, and well, people, wait a minute, wait a minute, no, it's not just 4. I got, I know about 5, 6 others over. No, he's, the only way he can get away with making that statement is because it's got to reflect something like what's going on.

Dr. John Ankerberg: But there were 9 sources that the 27 books came out of. What were they?

Dr. Darryl Bock: Yes, they are, they're basically 9 people who contributed to what ended up in our New Testament. They are Matthew, Mark, Luke is responsible for Luke, Acts, John responsible for the gospel and revelation, the Johannine epistles. Some people will dispute that, but many people think it's all one person. you've got Acts that's tied to Luke. So you've got Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and of course Acts goes with Luke. Then you've got Paul, and then you've got James, you've got the author of Hebrews, as Origen says, only God knows who that is, and then you've got Peter, Jude at the end. Okay, so 9 people contribute these 27 books.

Dr. John Ankerberg: They were either apostles or the companions of the apostles, end of the discussion.

Dr. Darryl Bock: Right, exactly.

Dr. John Ankerberg: What else would you contribute to this in terms of how would students know this is correct, they picked out the right stuff?

Dr. Daniel B. Wallace: I think you have discussions of the authorship of these books that goes very early on into the second century. We have discussions from Papias, we have discussions from Irenaeus that go beyond that. Ignatius talks about the apostles, Clement does, and those discussions are telling us that these books were written by these people. And even though they did not yet perceive of the New Testament as scripture, not at that early stage, they are still saying these are the authoritative guys who wrote this stuff. And one of the things for us to wrestle with is, today, if someone came along and said, you know, there's 66 books in the Bible, but I think I want to add a 67th, and I just wrote this thing, who should I get this published with?

And you get some people that are probably should be put in an asylum that are making those kinds of claims every once in a while. But when you get the New Testament documents, it would be that kind of a statement as well. How long is it going to take for the church to say, what we have today is an addition to our complete Bible, namely the Hebrew Bible. By the second century, they're already viewing that Hebrew text as a complete text, and now you've got New Testament documents.

Dr. John Ankerberg: All right, again, the contemporary question is, didn't the powerful write history the way they wanted it to? What's your response to that?

Dr. Daniel B. Wallace: I would say it wasn't the powerful who did it, but it was those who knew the truth and conveyed the truth and persuaded people because the message that they had was so unbelievably persuasive and because it changed lives. And I think it's important to recognize that the core of this canon is in place before the political powers of Rome are Christians. So, Exactly. So, so that we've got, we've got this period at the end of the second century where Irenaeus and others are writing certainly in defense of orthodoxy. They are bishops, they have some authority in the church while there's a larger discussion going on.

But what would cause that to be persuasive? What would cause that to be persuasive is that that material and those claims are rooted solidly in the tradition. And you've got surprising choices within this. I mean, we talked on an earlier show about how Luke wouldn't be the normal Pauline companion you would attach to a gospel if you just could pick someone who was a Pauline companion. Mark wouldn't be the person that you'd have write the gospel associated with Peter. After all, he failed in a Pauline mission and went home. He chickened out, and then Paul wouldn't even take him on the next mission.

So if you were picking out of the blue, you wouldn't pick someone like that. So there are these disconnects, as I say, these what we call these embarrassments in the midst of the tradition that point to its authenticity. Give me a wrap up statement, Dan. What I would say is the fact that these early church writers recognized that these documents were written by the apostles gave them, apostles and their associates, gave them an authority that could not be matched from the second century on, and ultimately they recognized that those are the books that belonged in the canon.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Terrific stuff. Now, we've got one more broadside that's come, and that is basically, didn't the scribes tamper with the text? And Bart Ehrman would say, in misquoting Jesus, that there are 400,000 manuscript variants, differences in the copies that have come down. There's only 136, what, thousand verses?

Dr. Daniel B. Wallace: 138,162 words.

Dr. John Ankerberg: Okay, so you got three variants for every word in the New Testament. How do you know you got the original words the apostles used? That's our topic next, Hear It From the Authorities. I hope that you'll join me. Now, stay tuned as we revisit these timeless discussions, and join us in celebrating the wealth of knowledge that continues to encourage and educate. To learn more, please visit JAShow.org. That's JAShow.org, or subscribe to us on YouTube.