As we write these words, even the last book of the Bible is almost two thousand years old. The earliest book would be over 3500 years old. Perhaps no other book of such antiquity enjoys the same widespread use or such spiritual status. This makes it a book frequently attacked by rationalists and the so-called "modernists".

True, many other books also claim such ancient origin but there is a difference between them and the Bible. First, the claimed antiquity of these books has not been sufficiently established. Second, these books (such as the Vedas) deal primarily with philosophy and not with history. The historical content of these non Christian books is minimal, and these historical passages have almost no bearing upon their philosophical message. Their philosophical message is not dependent upon the reliability of their historical content.

On the other hand, the theology and philosophy of the Bible is intricately and inseparably linked with the reliability of its historical narrative. The history in the Bible might perhaps be able to survive without the theology, but the theology of the Bible cannot survive without its history. Thus if the historical content of the Bible is destroyed, or if it is falsified, the theology of the Bible is automatically destroyed. The radicals and atheists were quick to understand this, and this is why they have spend immeasurable amounts of time and energy to attack the historical reliability of Bible and its narratives.

On the other hand, history is a subject more tangible that philosophical speculation. Thus while the critic finds history a good ground for attacking the Bible, the apologist realizes that the tangible nature and the general reliability of historical information can be used for defending the Bible in a more definite and confident manner. What's more, here is an area which can be handled even by those people who have no background or training in sciences.

The word Canon means measuring rod. Thus it is used in a given subject for a collection of information which becomes the standard by which everything in that field is measured. For the Christian apologist, Canon is a word commonly used to denote the Bible. The attacks against the Canon of the Bible centers around the following points:


In the last two to three hundred years the critics have tried their best to attack the Bible on all these points. Initially they even seemed to win, but the close of the nineteenth century and the dawn of the twentieth century brought so many archaeological and historical discoveries that today none can question the Canon on these points. Thousands of manuscripts, tens of thousands of references to the history recorded in the Bible, and even entire nations with their libraries have been discovered. Thus today Bible stands as the most vindicated and amazing ancient book in the world. It would be profitable to discuss some of these subjects in greater detail.
Purity Of The Canon

Questions have been raised frequently about the purity and integrity of the biblical Canon. Most of these questions have come from three sources: the radicals among Christians, the rationalists/atheists, and the Muslims. Ahmadiya Muslims are quite vocal about corruption in the biblical Canon, with the outrageous claim that there are more than 60,000 errors in the Bible. These questions have been adequately answered by Christian scholars but in spite of this they been circulated by ignorant people, and thus they are widely heard today. On the other hand, many critics of Christianity know the truth but in spite of that they keep repeating these question with the sole aim of intimidating the ignorant lay people.

So much information is available on the subject of the purity and integrity of the Canon that several volumes can be filled. Thus what is mentioned on this subject in a small section like this of this book should be considered only as a pointer to what is available.

THEOLOGICAL CONSIDERATIONS: Bible itself reminds in many places that it is book inspired by God. "All scripture is given by the INSPIRATION of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness" (2 Tim. 3:16). Since the origin is God Himself, we can be confident that what has reached us is holy, free from all kind of error, and without any admixture any kind of falsehood.

Bible is not a collection of profound human insight or wisdom, but rather a book given by the Holy Spirit. The Spirit controlled the human writers in such a way that they wrote exactly what the Holy Spirit wanted to be recorded. According to 2 Peter 1:20, 21: "..no prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation. For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake [as they were] moved by the Holy Ghost". Consequently, the information contained in the Bible is free from any kind of error, conceivable or inconceivable.

Bible records much information about the unknown past. For example, much of the details in Genesis ten chapters are from the earliest historical times, for which much record is not available. Inspiration guarantees the accuracy of these records. Similarly, though Bible is not meant to be a textbook of history, the historical narratives in the Bible are all totally accurate.

Inspiration guarantees that the information recorded in the Bible about divine will, attributes, and attitudes are accurately portrayed. It also guarantees that when God's expectations, demands, and instructions are mentioned, they are not human speculation but an accurate presentation of what the true God expects from mankind.

In addition to what God said and what the righteous people did, the Bible also records what the unrighteous people, fallen angels, and even rebellious believers did. This is not to endorse error, but to give us an accurate record of error so that we might be warned to flee from such things and lead a righteous life.


PRACTICAL ASPECTS: Right from the earliest times Jews recognized that the inspired word of God is to be handled carefully and respectfully. Thus Priests and leaders of the Jews carefully preserved and transmitted the text from generation to generation. Eventually highly trained priest-scribes like Ezra began handling the job of copying and transmission (Neh. 8:9). After the time of Babylonian exile many of the Jews became concerned about the preservation of the Scriptures, and this is the time when professional scribes became numerous.

There were many large groups of scribes wherever the Jews lived, and these people faithfully copied not only the Old Testament but also commentaries and other books used among the children of God. Scribes were the preservers of the Law. They were professional students of the law and its defenders. This was specially so during the Hellenistic period when the Jewish priests became corrupt. Eventually they became so obsessed with preserving the Scriptures that they developed elaborate rules and regulations for their profession. These rules contained stipulations regarding both the behaviour of the scribes as well as the way in which the Biblical manuscripts were to be handled.

With dispersion, Greek became the language of many Jews and this is the time when an important translation of the Old Testament was produced in the Greek language. Known as the Septuagint, many of the New Testament writer quoted from this translation. Aramaic translations were also made, and this was the spoken language which Jesus and many of His disciples used.

With the wide dispersal of the Jews, they almost ceased to exist as a nation in their motherland. Hundreds of thousands of Jews scattered around the world adopted the local languages as their language of communication. With this came the gradual elimination of Hebrew as a spoken language. This introduced many difficulties to the religiously minded people. The Jews used the old way of writing the Hebrew language till about AD 500. This system used all capital letters, without spacing, without word-divisions, and without vowels. For example, the God was written as GD in Hebrew. The vowels were supplied by the reader at the time of reading.

The old system of writing was fine as long as Hebrew was used as an everyday language, but it became very difficult with the disuse of Hebrew. The Old Testament text without vowels and without word-divisions was now liable to be misinterpreted by the ignorant. Thus the word GD cited above could be read either as GOD or as GUIDE, because the original text did not contain the vowels. Thus only a person thoroughly familiar with the text of the Old Testament would know which pronunciation to use in a particular place. The concern over these issues resulted in the rise of a group of experts called Massorates. These outstanding Old Testament scholars had their heyday between AD 500 to 1000.

The Massorates carefully compared the handwritten copies available to them and made very accurate copies of the Old Testaments. They developed and introduced vowel marks so that there is no confusion left about what a certain word was. They also developed an elaborate code for copyists and the copies. The copyists had to follow certain rigorous rules about bathing, cleanliness, and self-preparation before they copied the divine text. They also had to check the text of each page of the copy so that it matched horizontally and vertically with the original text. Texts not meeting the stringent integrity criteria were usually destroyed so that they might not corrupt future texts through ignorant people. The text produced and left by them for the progeny is called the Massoratic Text, or MT.

The Old Testament in the King James Version and that in all Indian translations are based upon the Massoratic Text. Many critics and radicals gleefully attacked this fact, claiming that the MT must be full of errors compared to the originals. They based their argument on the premise that even the earliest MT text was produced only 1000 years AFTER the original was written. Many undiscerning even accept such careless pronouncements and became very disturbed. However, the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls in the forties changed the whole picture.

Dead Sea Scrolls were produced almost two hundred years before the time of Christ. Which meant that many of the Dead Sea scrolls were as much as 1200 years older than the Massoratic Text. A comparison of these two families of manuscripts showed that the MT was unusually accurate. Thus the work done by Jewish scholars in preserving the purity of the Old Testament Text was demonstrated once again.

As far as the New Testament text is concerned, it is of more recent origin. The art of writing was widely practiced, and writing materials (though highly perishable) were plentiful. Consequently, numerous copies, translations, and versions were produced. So many of them survive today that it overwhelms Bible scholars. More details about manuscripts of OT and NT available today would be given in another section.
Integrity Of The Canon

While radicals and atheists attacked the accuracy (purity) with which the Canon was transmitted, another group was busy in attacking the integrity of it. They claimed that not all books in the Canon are canonical, while many books that are canonical have been excluded from it. Ahmadiya Muslims are one group that would want some books of their interest (such as the Apocrypha book falsely labeled The Gospel Of Barnabas). These claims have resurfaced at the dawn of the twenty-first century, and many are innocently swept by such baseless argument. Part of the reason is the ignorance of the layman concerning the Canon and how it was formed.

THE NEED TO FIX THE CANON: There was no need to fix the Canon in the period before 400 BC because people generally knew which books came from divine source. However, after the last book of the Old Testament was written, many Jewish people felt the need to clearly spell out the books that were part of the Canon.

The first reason was distance from the original events. People who lived during the times of Prophets and great High Priests recognized the way God communicated with them. However, as new generations came up there was a great time-gap between them and the original revelation. This gap would automatically make them less familiar with the Scriptures, specially if these books were not introduced properly to the posterity.

Further, this distance would also enable forgers and cheats to advance their writings as Scriptures. Thus it was necessary for the posterity to know the boundary. Thus the Jewish fathers were alert to recognize and organize the Canonical books. Of course the correct order of their actions should be realized: these books did not become Canonical by the recognition of the fathers. Rather, when non Canonical books started to claim divine authorship, the Jewish fathers felt it necessary to recognize the books that demonstrated Canonicity. Thus it is not the recognition that brought Canonicity, but it is their Canonical nature that brought recognition to them. The fact that Lord Jesus and the Apostles honoured this Canon demonstrates that the Jewish Fathers were spiritually competent to recognize the Canonical books.

Recognizing Canonical books was necessary also for protecting them from being lost accidentally or through deliberate destruction. People attacked divine revelation both in the Old as well as in the New Testament period. The rationalist Porphyry wrote more than 12 volumes to attack the Bible. In 320 AD the Roman Emperor Diocletian ordered that all religious books be destroyed. In all such cases it became necessary for the children of God to know which books to hide and protect from destruction.

Many other practical considerations also contributed to the demand to spell out the Canon. Thus when the Jews who adopted Greek as their mother-tongue wanted the Scriptures in this language, it was necessary to know which books to translate. With the easy availability of writing materials and the wider dissemination of the Scriptures, the demand to spell out the Canon became all the more important.

As mentioned above, the recognition of the Canonical books was not done randomly or arbitrarily. Rather, the people of God used very strict criteria for recognizing which books were divine. Further, many of these books were given to the children of God under such circumstances that they were recognized as inspired Scriptures soon after these books were written. The divinity of these books helped them to be included in the Bible.


OLD TESTAMENT CANON: The earliest books of the Old Testament were written almost 1400 years before the time of Christ, while the last book Malachi was written about 400 years BC. Since these books came from authoritative sources, people were quick to recognize their divine origin. The sacred books of divine origin were given special honour and protection by the Jews. The priest as well as the people of God always stood up when a public reading of the Scriptures was done.

Many spurious books began to claim divine authorship for them about a hundred years after the completion of Malachi. The Jewish leaders were quick to realize that these writings are not from God, and thus they guarded the books of Bible against all kind of infiltration.

The Apocrypha books are not part of the Canon. Thus none of the things said in this chapter are applicable to them. These books are neither inspired by God, nor are they in any sense a part of the Bible.

There is a mistaken belief among some that the Apocrypha books were part of the Bible, and that these were rejected by the Protestant Reformers. On the contrary, the Apocrypha books were never a part of the Old Testament Canon. Thus there is no question of the Reformers dropping out some books from the Canon. Rather, it is the Roman Catholic Church which ADDED these books to the Canon by a proclamation made at the Council of Trent. The story is something like the following.

When the Hebrew Old Testament was translated into Hebrew, a number of other books were also translated. These were translated as a help to the Jews who did not know Hebrew or Aramaic. Many of the translators felt that the additional books would benefit the readers by providing them historical and background information about the Jews and their culture. Some of these books were appended to the Septuagint by them. The addition was not as part of the Canon, but as study helps. This is similar to the large number of articles often added at the end of study Bibles like the Scofield, Thompson Chain Reference, Dake's Bible, or The Ryrie Study Bible. Though these articles are placed within the same Cover, and though the outer cover contains the word "Bible", none of the modern readers confuses them with the Scripture.

All the contemporary readers know that the study-helps and articles are not part of the Canon. In the same way the readers of Septuagint also knew that these books in the appendix are not part of the Canon. These books found a place in the translation known as Vulgate, which was commonly used by Roman Catholics. In spite of its presence in the Vulgate, the Catholics did not accept the Apocrypha as part of the Canon.

With the Protestant Reformation, many of the Reformers challenged the Catholic church to prove their doctrine by supporting these from the Canon. To their dismay the Roman Catholics discovered that many of their doctrines are not derived from the Canon. At the same time they realized that at least some of these erroneous doctrines are supported by the Apocrypha. Thus for their survival it became necessary to add the Apocrypha to the Canon.

In 1545 the Roman Catholic Church convened what is called the Council Of Trent. Here they passed numerous resolutions, including many curses against the Protestant Believers. In April 1545 the Council declared that the Apocrypha are also part of the Bible. Thus for the first time in history the Apocrypha books were ADDED by the Roman Catholic church to the Bible. This was done in order to justify their doctrinal errors (for which support was available only in the Apocrypha), and also to oppose the Protestant believers. The first Vatican Council held 1869-70 reaffirmed the decision of the Roman Catholic Church to add the Apocrypha to the Canon.

Historically and theologically the Apocrypha was never part of the Canon. Protestant Reformers were very zealous about the doctrine of Sola Scriptura (Everything is to be tested in the light of Bible, and Bible alone). Thus they did not allow any kind of leaven to be mixed with the Bible.

The Apocrypha books contain numerous historical, chronological, and doctrinal errors. Some of these are:

1-Prayers And Offerings For The Dead: The Apocrypha encourages prayer for the dead and also the offering of money for the souls of the dead people. It should not be forgotten that the Roman Catholic Church collects millions in money every year on the pretext of praying for the dead that they might be transferred to heaven.

The Catholic Church needed the non-canonical Apocrypha in their Bibles to support such practices that are actually not found in the Canon. 2 Maccabees 12:41-46 is the passage that supports this. Verse 46 says, "It is therefore a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from sin". This is a blasphemous idea.

2-Atonement And Salvation By Almsgiving: Salvation is by grace alone and through faith alone (Eph. 2:8,9; Titus 3:5; 1 John 1:9). However, the Roman Catholic Church adds "good works" as a condition, and collects billions in money worldwide from gullible people seeking salvation. Apocrypha books support this (Ecclesiasticus 3:33. Ecclesiasticus of the Apocrypha is different from Ecclesiastes in the Bible). According Tobit 4:11 of the Apocrypha, "For alms deliver from all sin, and from death and will not suffer the soul to go into darkness".

3-Preexistence Of Souls: The doctrines that souls have always existed and that the human body receives a preexisting soul is taught in Apocrypha (Wisdom of Solomon 8:19, 20). This is contrary to what is taught by the Canonical books.

4-The Doctrine Of Emanations: Emanation is the theory that just as the web used by the spider comes out of the spider's own being, the Universe and everything in it is an emanation from God. This idea is contrary to what the Bible teaches, but the Apocrypha teaches it (Wisdom Of Solomon 7:25).

5-Suicide Justified: Bible is totally opposed to suicide, and warns believers against contemplating such activities. The Apocrypha justifies it (2 Maccabees 14:41-46).

6-Cruelty To Slaves Justified: While the Canon asks believers to be merciful to slaves (Deu. 23:15,16), the Apocrypha says that the best way to treat a slave is to pile work upon him. It also justifies cruelty to them when needed (Ecclesiasticus 33:25-29).

7-Other Fallacies And Blasphemies: There are numerous historical errors, doctrinal errors, and even blasphemies. Hatred for Samaritan people, sanction for lying, encouragement for magical incantations, assassination, the power of angels to intercede for man, and many other s are found there.

Worse of all, the doctrine of Purgatory has also come from Apocryphal sources. This is a doctrine totally opposed to all what the Bible says.
Summary

Though many people claim that books of the Bible have been altered and manipulated, the historical data opposes this idea. Right from the beginning the Canonical books received special preservation and protection from the Jews as well as the Christians.

They Apocrypha are not part of the Canon. These books were never considered by the Jews or by Christians as part of the Canon. It is the Roman Catholic Church which ADDED these non-canonical books to the Canon in 1545 as a reaction against the Protestant Movement. They needed to do this to justify their doctrinal errors.

The Canon of God is pure, free from error, and preserved for our instruction and edification.

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Original article contributed by Dr. Johnson C. Philip & Dr. Saneesh Cherian. Revised by:

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