Let’s get started with our need for Scripture. How can it meet our needs for knowing who God is and his salvation offered to us? And why is it called a “canon”?

Let’s begin.

I.. Introduction

A.. Hermeneutics = Interpretation

The word interpretation comes from Latin, and hermeneutics comes from Greek, but they are synonyms.

But before we begin learning how to interpret Scripture, let’s talk about the biblical canon and Scripture’s four main characteristics. They lead us closer to the definition of Scripture.

B.. Canon of Scripture

“Canon” in Greek means measuring stick or yardstick (a meterstick!). It is the norm or standard by which we measure or size up all ideas. The canon of Scripture is the measuring stick by which we measure all other doctrines and truths flooding society, right now with the web.

In this series I won’t discuss how we got the canon. I accept that they are the 66 books in the Bible, 39 in the OT and 27 in the NT. Nor do I discuss the apocrypha or the deuterocanonical books. I don’t consider them God-breathed or inspired by the Spirit.

For this series (and me), it is all about the Bible. It fills my plate with plenty of work and divine truths to study.

Here they are:

Source: Google AI (I didn’t want to write out all the books!)

C. Competing texts

The recognition of the canon did not happen in an historical vacuum. What were the competing writings and genres in the second to third centuries? We can even look into the first century in some cases.

• Historical writings (Josephus)
• Philosophical writings (Stoics, Philo, Epicureans)
• Biographies (Plutarch, Parallel Lives, Philostratus the Life of Apollonius of Tyana, without a Jewish context in Israel and other major differences from the four Gospels. Go here for a good list and here).
• Gnostic texts (many of them, all bizarre)
• Satire (Lucian)
• Greek novels
• Speeches by moralistic pagan orators (Dio Chrysostom)
• The later “Acts,” written in the mid-to-late second and third centuries: the Acts of John, the Acts of Peter, the Acts of Paul, the Acts of Andrew, and the Acts of Thomas.
• And so on

C. Explaining the differences

The point to this list: in the early church the writings of the New Testament were easy to contrast with the above list. Spotting the differences did not even need a special council, nor special knowledge to see them. The authors lived later and had different intentions in the writings. And so the New Testament canon clearly presented itself, particularly in contrast to the Gnostic texts. Everyone could see it, just like we can today. The competing texts were and are easy to deny for canonicity.

For example: the later Acts. It is easy to see why scholars reject any claim that they are canonical. In Acts of John, a young man repents by cutting off his private parts and throwing them before his adulteress-mistress (Destruction of the Temple of Artemis 53). Necrophilia is described (Drusiana and Callimachus 70). In the Acts of Thomas, a demon has sex with a woman (Fifth Acts 42). It may be true that these “apostles” travel from city to city, but the books stray far from history and biblical morality, as if they do not even try to root their stories in time and place. There is no eyewitness testimony. These Acts are fake and diabolical fakes (I’m not afraid to say it in the “Age of Tolerance”).

Another example: the Greek novel. Here the events and people seem real. Typically, the young hero and heroine are arranged to be married, but they are separated and are compelled by circumstances and fate to go on adventures, before they are reunited and live happily ever after. They travel to cities with accurate names (e.g. Ephesus, Aphrodisias, Syracuse, Alexandria, or Tyre), islands (e.g. Lesbos or Chios), regions (e.g. Egypt, Syria or Phoenicia), people with the right title (e.g. first man, law clerk, shepherds, priestesses) and events (e.g. shipwrecks, confronting pirates, slave markets, meeting realistic, average people). But these characters also dance with nymphs.

The strong point in these novels is verisimilitude (literally “truth-like”). They couch these charming fictions in real-life scenarios and scenery to give them the air of realism. The audiences who heard them read out loud could relate and no doubt smiled and chuckled and sometimes felt the drama in these fictional stories.

However, the big difference between the Greek novel and our Book of Acts is seen in their intention, sources, and technique.

The intention of the novelists was to provide entertaining fictional stories. When people gathered around to listen to the stories read aloud, they knew what they were getting. They were not about to hear Thucydides or Polybius, both of whom wrote what, for the audience, had to be boring ancient history. These novels succeeded because the novelists intended to entertain their audiences.

The novels’ sources were the imagination of the writer; an expert could tell us whether there were earlier fictions, but then this would still be proto-entertaining fictions from the imagination of earlier writers.

Their technique is to invent entertaining plots and characters and events from their imagination.

Gnosticism: An Introduction

Ancient Heresy of Gnosticism and Its Postmodern Teachers

For a good offsite resource about the development of the canon, please go to this link:

Michael J. Kruger, The Complete Series: 10 Misconceptions About the NT Canon, 24 Aug. 2012.

II.. Four Characteristics of Scripture

A.. The authority and inerrancy of Scriptures

We look into this topic in the next post.

B.. The clarity of Scripture

This is also called perspicacity or perspicuity. The Bible is clear on how we can know God through his Son, how to experience salvation, how we can live a life of godliness, or how we can live moral lives in society, to name only those areas. Other passages may be difficult to understand because of the cultural distance between us and the Bible. But hard work can often bridge the cultural gap. Right relationship with God and our fellow humans are not so difficult to grasp.

We will look further into clarity, in Parts Two and Three.

C.. The necessity of Scripture

It means that without it we would be lost in our Christian faith. We would not know who Jesus was except for a few aspects here and there. Is he just a moral teacher and good example? Or is he the mighty Son of God? We would not know what the gospel is without it. Is it anything goes? Sloppy grace? We would not have the Ten Commandments. Maybe we should commit adultery! We would not know God’s will for our lives. We might get into a complicated marriage with an unbeliever.

And so we need Scripture for the foundation of our faith and relationship with God.

D.. The sufficiency of Scripture

It contains all we need to live in right relationship with God and other people, in other words, salvation and social righteousness or right behavior. We don’t need other holy books like the Quran or the Buddhist scriptures. We don’t even need wholesome books that expand on Scripture, like an exposition of the Ten Commandments. These books may be edifying, and you can read them for your learning and edification, but they are not authoritative or inerrant. Only Scripture has those doctrines that provide for us all we need for faith and practice. And we don’t need an infallible interpreter of Scripture, like a magisterium. The sufficiency of Scripture is sola scriptura  (Scripture alone).

RELATED

I will reflect on this post at the end of Part Three. Go to Part Two next.

 

I provide a link to the bibliography in Part Three.

LONGER POST

Sec. 2, 1 Bibliology, Doctrine of the Bible: The Basics