Chapter Three - Reliability of the Bible
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1. INTRODUCTION
This chapter is designed to help the fellow Christian workers face attacks by non-believers, who raise serious claims whether the Bible of today could be the same as it was in the 1st century, or even previous to that date. This chapter is divided into three major divisions, they are:
we will demonstrate that we do have New Testament materials, many of them dated almost as far back as the 1st century;
we will deal with Old Testament materials which help us to verify the Hebrew Bible; and
we will discuss how do we know the books in our Bible, and no others, are the ones that should be there, this is called the question of the canon.
The integrity of the Bible has been attacked by a number of sources:
the validity of the text (this chapter);
the historicity and geography claimed by the Scriptures (chapter 4); and
the authority of the Bible (chapter 11).
1.1 The Validity of the Text
Since we do not have the original manuscripts, one argument against the validity of text is apparent. The non-Christian will express doubt that the Bible we have today is the same as when it first appeared. The critic will also question how it is possible for the Bible to be the same after so many translations. What guarantee do we have that deletions and embellishments have not totally obscured the original message of the Bible? What difference does the historical accuracy of the Bible make?
Christianity is rooted in history. Jesus Christ was counted in a Roman census (Luke 2:1-5). If the Bible's historical references are not true, grave questions may be raised about the reliability of other parts of the message based on historical events. However, manuscripts finds in the last 100-150 years have done much to blunt these attacks upon the integrity of the Scriptures.
The job of establishing the text accurately is an extremely important one. This task is called textual criticism. It has to do with the reliability of the text, i.e. how our current text compares with the originals and how accurately the ancient manuscripts were copied.
Manuscript evidence is based on a concern for its historical trustworthiness, authorship, and integrity. Much effort has been expended examining the manuscripts we have today to prove their integrity. The technique in this chapter will be to work our way backward through history, and see how close we are to the original sources.
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2. NEW TESTAMENT DOCUMENTS
2.1 The Discovered New Testament Manuscripts
The New Testament was written in Greek. More than 6,000 manuscripts of the New Testament, or parts of it, have survived to our time. These are on different materials. There are two major types of materials, they are:
Parchment; and
Papyrus.
Parchment was one of the materials of which Greek manuscripts were made. This was the skin of sheep or goats, polished with pumice. It was used until the late Middle Ages, when paper began to replace it.
Papyrus was the common materials used for writing purposes at the beginning of the Christian era. It was made from reeds and was highly durable. In the last 500 years many remains of documents written on papyrus have been discovered, including fragments of manuscripts of the New Testament.
2.1.1 Parchment of the New Testament
The most important manuscripts for our purposes are the Greek capital letters, the uncials, written on velum and parchment, from the 4th to the 9th centuries. Only a few of the older manuscripts will be mentioned.
2.1.1.1 Codex Aleph
Sometimes this manuscript is also called Codex Sinaiticus because it was found at the Monastery of St. Catherine, at the base of the traditional site of Mount Sinai. The German Count Tischendorf visited there in 1844 and discovered baskets containing 43 leaves of velum manuscripts, which the monks used to light their fires! Subsequently, he made two additional visits, and on the third one, he was able to acquire a treasure of manuscripts and other books and bring them to Russia. In 1933, the British government purchased this codex, and it is now in the British museum. Most of the New Testament is intact, with the exception of Mark 16:9-20 and John 7:53-8:11. It is dated to the early 4th century.
2.1.1.2 Codex Beta
This is probably the oldest uncial manuscript on parchment. It dates from the early 4th century, possibly about AD 325-350. The only part of the New Testament that is missing is from Hebrews 9:14 to the end. Mark 16:9-20 and John 7:53-8:11 are not in the original uncials, but were added in smaller uncials at a later date. The manuscript is in the Vatican library in Rome, and is also called Codex Vaticanus for that reason.
2.1.1.3 Codex A
This manuscript, Codex Alexandrius, ranks next in importance to the preceding two, and is dated to either the late 4th century of mid-5th century. The only parts that are missing are Matthew 1:1-25:6; John 6:50-8:52l and 2 Corinthians 4:13-12:6. The text is in large square uncial letters.
2.1.2 Papyrus of the New Testament
The great bulk of papyrus fragments were found in Egypt. The first notable find was in 1778, but it was not until 1890 when the first systematic exploration began. Drs. Grenfell and Hunt of Oxford, England, began their work in 1896-1897 at Oxyrhynchus in Egypt where they found tons of papyri texts, ranging from the 1st century BC to the 10th century AD. For our purposes, we are interested in papyri New Testament materials dated in the 2nd and 3rd centuries.
The discovered papyrus fragments may be classified into two major categories:
Literary and non-literary. Literary papyri contain texts of Homer, Plato, and other Greek authors. The non-literary papyri consists of contracts, wills, receipts, complaints, and petitions, which are valuable for clues about the culture, customs, and life-style. They also indicate the language of the New Testament, which was not classical Greek, but the common Greek that was the international language of the world of that time. These non-literary papyri give us much information concerning the vocabulary of the New Testament. It shows how words were used, which can throw light on the meaning of New Testament words.
Biblical and doctrinal. There are also present some 76 papyri manuscripts of the New Testament, from the very beginning of the 2nd century. These materials are valuable, helping us trace the New Testament back to almost the 1st century.
The most important papyrus fragments of the New Testament were as follows:
2.1.2.1 The John Rylands fragment
It is designated P52, and possibly dated at about AD 120-140, is the earliest fragment of the New Testament. It was written on both sides, with portions of John 18:31-33, 37-38.
2.1.2.2 The Chester Beatty papyri
It is marked as P45, 46 and 47, dated to about AD 250 and contained most of the New Testament.
2.1.2.3 The Bodmer papyri
It is designated P66, 72 and 75, dated approx. to AD 175-225, is possibly the most important find since the Chester Beatty Papyri. P66 has portions from the gospel of John; and P72 has the earliest known materials for Jude, 1 and 2 Peter. Several apocryphal portions are also present.
2.1.2.4 Other papyri
They have the Gospels, Acts, most of Paul's epistles and parts of Romans.
Some of the papyri finds on John date to within 50 years of the apostle John's writings, which appeared at about AD 80-90. Most of the papyri finds can provide for nearly all of the New Testament, dated to within 100-200 years of the originals, a remarkable feature.
2.2 The Testimony of the New Testament Text by the Early Church Fathers
The church Fathers most helpful for our purposes are the apostolic Fathers (AD 70-150), and the ante-Nicene Fathers (AD 150-300). By the time of the Council of Nicea in AD 325, nearly every verse of the New Testament had been cited by the apostolic and ante-Nicene Fathers over 36,000 times. Not every New Testament book is quoted by every Father, but every book of the New Testament is quoted as canonical by at least one of them.
These men either quoted directly, referred to a variant reading, provided a paraphrase, or perhaps even made an allusion. In spite of how the New Testament passage was handled, their testimony is the best evidence for the New Testament. The apostolic Fathers bring us so close to the New Testament writers that we are almost breathing down their necks!
From the chart in Geisler and Nix, How We Got Our Bible - From God to Us, Chicago: Moody Press, 1974, p. 109, we note that:
By the end of the 1st century, 14 books of the New Testament were cited by pseudo-Barnabas (around AD 70-130) and Clement of Rome (about AD 95-97);
By AD 110, some 19 books were cited by Ignatius (about AD 110), and Polycarp, a disciple of the apostle John (about AD 110-150);
By AD 150, some 24 New Testament books were used, Hermas (about AD 115-140), Didache (about AD 120-150), Papias (about AD 130-140), Iraneus (about AD 130-202), and the rest were Diognetus, Justin Martyr, Clement of Alexandria, and Tertullian;
By AD 200, 26 books of the New Testament had been cited; and
Origen, shortly afterwards, mentioned the existence of 3 John.
These demonstrate a living history and testimony of the New Testament text.
2.3 Other Witnesses to the New Testament Text
The authenticity of the New Testament comes from other sources. These are the references and quotations of the New Testament books by both friends and enemies of Christianity.
2.3.1 Gnostic school of Valentinus
It seems apparent, from recent discoveries, that the Gnostic school of Valentinus was also familiar with most of the New Testament.
2.3.2 Broken pieces of pottery, ostraca
In one instance, twenty broken pieces of pottery, called ostraca, provided a copy of the gospels.
2.3.3 Translation versions
There are two other sources of data for establishing the authenticity of the New Testament books. The first source is the versions. Versions are those manuscripts which were translated from the Greek into other languages. Three groups of these are of the most significance:
the Syriac (Aramaic) versions appeared around AD 150-200;
the Egyptian or Coptic versions by about AD 150; and
the Latin versions.
By careful study of the versions, important clues have been uncovered as to the original Greek manuscripts from which they were translated.
2.3.4 Lectionaries
Finally, there is the evidence of the lectionaries containing selective readings, or reading cycles, the reading lessions used in public church services. By the middle of the 20th century more than 1,800 of these reading lessons had been classified. The church services used most of the gospels, portions of Acts, and sometimes the epistles. Though they did not appear before the 6th century, the text from which they quote may itself be early and of high quality.
2.4 Dates of the New Testament Documents
The dates of the New Testament documents indicate that they were written the lifetime of contemporaries of Christ. People were still alive who could remember the things he said and did. Many of the Pauline letters are even earlier than some of the Gospels.
2.5 Accuracy of the New Testament Text
We have over 5,000 New Testament manuscripts today. As they are compared, there are some 200,000 known variants. This is not as serious as it may sound; if one word is misspelled in 1,000 different manuscripts, it is counted as 1,000 variants. Actually, we find that when lower textual criticism is finished with its task, making allowance for misspelling of words, recopying of lines, and omission of lines, the actual number of variants are very few. When we defend the integrity of the New Testament text, we have an abundance of evidence for it, far more than other writings from the ancient world.
Though there have been many changes in the many copyings of the New Testament writings, most of them are minor. The science of textual criticism, which is very exacting, has enabled us to be sure of the true text of the New Testament.
2.6 Conclusion - the New Testament Text is Reliable
We can rest with the conclusion of the late Sir Frederic Kenyon, a world-renowned scholar of the ancient manuscripts. He said: "The interval, then, between the dates of original composition and the earliest extant evidence becomes so small as to be in fact negligible, and the last foundation for any doubt that the Scriptures have come down to us substantially as they were written has now been removed. Both the authenticity and the general integrity of the books of the New Testament may be regarded as finally established.
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3. OLD TESTAMENT DOCUMENTS
3.1 Who Copy the Old Testament Text?
It was a task undertaken by a devout Jew with the highest devotion. Since he believed he was dealing with the Word of God, he was acutely aware of the need for extreme care and accuracy.
3.2 Three Families of the Old Testament Texts
There are three families of the Old Testament texts:
the Masoretic;
the Septuagint; and
the Samaritans.
The above mentioned three main types of text existed in 200 BC. The question for us is, What is the original version of the Old Testament, in the light of these three "families" of texts to choose from?
3.2.1 The Masoretic
There are no complete copies of the Hebrew Old Testament earlier than around AD 900, but it seems evident that the text was preserved very carefully and faithfully since at least AD 100 or 200. A check is provided by comparing some translations from the Hebrew into Latin and Greek at about this time. This comparison reveals the careful copying of the Hebrew text during this period. The text dating from around AD 900 is called the "Masoretic Text" because it was the product of Jewish scribes known as the "Masoretes." All of the present copies of the Hebrew text which come from this period are in remarkable agreement, attesting to the skill of the scribes in proof-reading.
Jews have always been a people of one book who have guarded it with extreme care and precision. From the time of Ezra and even before, there were priests (Deuteronomy 31:24-26) and later scribes called sopherim who were given the responsibility to copy and meticulously care for the sacred text so they could hand down the correct reading.
To ensure this accuracy, later scribes known as the Masoretes developed a number of strict measures to ensure that every fresh copy was an exact reproduction of the original. They established tedious procedures to protect the text against being changed. For instance:
When obvious errors were noted in the text, perhaps because a tired scribe nodded, the text was still not changed. Instead, a correction was placed in the margin called qere, "to be read," and that which was written in the text was called, kethibh, "to be written."
When a word was considered textually, grammatically, or exegetically questionable, dots were placed above that word.
Minute statistics were also kept as a further means of guarding against errors: in the Hebrew Bible at Leviticus 8:8, the margin has a reference that this verse is the middle verse of the Torah. According to the note at Leviticus 10:16 the word darash is the middle word in the Torah, and at 11:42 we are assured that the waw in a Hebrew word there is the middle letter. At the end of each book are statistics as: the total number of verses in Deuteronomy is 955, the total in the entire Torah is 5,845; the total number of words is 97, 856, and the total number of letters is 400,945 (Frederick W. Danker, Multipurpose Tools For Bible Study, Concorida Publishing House, St. Louis, 1960, p. 57).
In this we see something of the painstaking procedures the Jews went through to assure the accurate transmission of the text. God made the Jews the custodians of the Old Testament record. Though their eyes may be blind to its truth (Isaiah 6:10; John 12:40; Romans 10:1-3; 11:7), they have guarded its transmission with great accuracy.
But how could we know about the accuracy and authenticity of the text in pre-Masoretic times?
3.2.2 The Septuagint
Other ancient witnesses attest the accuracy of the copyists who ultimately gave us the Masoretic text. One of these is the Greek translation of the Old Testament, called the Septuagint. It is often referred to as the LXX because it was reputedly done by seventy Jewish scholars in Alexandria. The best estimate of its date seems to be about the 3rd century BC. In the New Testament times, Israel was under the sovereignty of the Roman Empire, Greek was the official language at that time. As a result, it was common for the Jewish people to use the Septuagint for general reading and worshipping of God.
Until the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls there was a question, when the LXX was different from the Masoretic text, why the variations existed. It is now apparent that the Masoretic text has not changed significantly since around 200 BC. Other scrolls among those discovered show a type of Hebrew that is very similar to that from which the LXX was translated. The Samuel scroll especially resembles the reading of the LXX. The LXX appears to be a literal translation, and our manuscripts are pretty good copies of the original translation.
3.2.3 The Samaritans
Another ancient witness is the evidence for a third type of text similar to that which was preserved by the Samaritans. Copies of the old scrolls of the Pentateuch are extant today in Nablus (Shechem), Palestine.
3.3 The Discovered Old Testament Manuscripts
3.3.1 Prior to 1890
Before the discovery of the treasure house in the Cairo Geniza, a special room in the synagogue where used and worn out manuscripts were placed, only 731 Hebrew manuscripts were in existence. Some of the major manuscripts are:
3.3.1.1 Codex Cairensis
It is containing both former and latter prophets, is dated approx. AD 900, and is the oldest known manuscript.
3.3.1.2 Codex Leningrad of the Prophets, or Codex Petersburg
It is dated at about AD 916, has only the major and minor prophets.
3.3.1.3 Codex Aleppo
It is dated around AD 930 is sometimes called the Ben Asher because he further edited the text.
3.3.1.4 Codex Oriental 4445
It is dating from about AD 950, is an incomplete manuscript of the Pentateuch, from Genesis 39:20 to Deuteronomy 1:33.
3.3.1.5 The Leningrad Codex
It is dated AD 1008, is a complete manuscript of the Old Testament.
There are reasons for the scarcity and limit of those Old Testament manuscripts which remained in circulation. At the council of Yavne (AD 70-90), the Jewish religious leaders standardized the Masoretic, or official, text and removed variant readings from it. During the Masoretic Period (AD 500-900), the Jewish authorities completely and systematically reworked the Hebrew text, and standardized its pronounciation. The accuracy of the texts is due to the careful way in which manuscripts were copied, with very few variants permitted in the texts, as contrasted with the New Testament. Although we have manuscripts which date only until the 10th century, the integrity of the text is well established.
3.3.2 The Cairo Genizah
People began to take manuscripts from this room as early as 1864, which were then sent to various libraries in Europe. In 1896, Solomon Schechter from Cambridge University was granted permission to enter the Genizah, and remove from it what he wished. He selected the older uncial manuscripts, which meant much to the scholarly world. Among the treasures were "fragments of the books of Ecclesiastes and Hebrews ... Aquila's version of the Old Testament, biblical fragments in an early Hebrew script presenting in some instances the supra-linear punctuation (the vowel pointings above the line), liturgical fragments and portions of the Talmud and of commentaries ..." (For further information, see Paul Kahle, The Cairo Genizah, New York: Praeger, 1959.) Here are manuscripts already predating the Old Testament manuscripts described above. What is established is a line of evidence from the days of the Masoretic scholars (AD 500-800), which testifies to the integrity of the Hebrew Masoretic or traditional text of the Bible.
Even with this find, liberal Bible scholars pronounced the Septuagint (a Greek translation of a particular Hebrew manuscript family) the more authoritative text, and the Masoretic Hebrew text was relegated to second place. The Greek Old Testament manuscripts predated the Hebrew ones, but all of this was to change during Israel's war of independence in 1948.
3.3.3 The Dead Sea Scrolls - The Qumran Literature
In 1947 the world learned about what has been called the greatest archeologic discovery of the century. In caves in the valley of the Dead Sea, ancient jars were discovered containing the now-famous Dead Sea Scrolls. From these scrolls, it is evident that a group of Jews lived at a place called Qumran from about 150 BC to AD 70.
Just west of the Dead Sea, near its northern end, was a community at the site of Khirbet Qumran. It was occupied either by people called Essenes, or a particular group like the Essenes. Theirs was a communal society, operated very much like a monastery. In addition to tilling the fields, they spent their time studying and copying the Scriptures. When the impending fall of Jerusalem became certain (AD 70), they realized that the Romans would soon be at their site. They hid a number of the manuscripts in the caves of the western hills surrounding Qumran, and then fled to safety.
In the providence of God the scrolls survived undisturbed until discovered accidentally by a wandering Bedouin goat herdsman in February or March of 1947. The accidental discovery was followed by careful exploration, and then several other caves containing scrolls were found. The find included the earliest manuscript copy yet known of the complete Book of Isaiah, and fragments of almost every book in the Old Testament. The story of the discovery of the first manuscript can be found at the book (Geisler and Nix, From God to Us, op. cit., pp. 142-43). In the period between 1947-1956, eleven caves yielded manuscripts wrapped in leather scrolls and hidden in jars.
From the first cave came seven scrolls, some complete and others less so. Included in this find is the earliest known complete book of Isaiah. There was also a commentary on Habakkuk, another incomplete text of Isaiah, the War Scroll and the Manual of Discipline for the community, and some 30 thanksgiving hymns. In the fourth cave, thousands of fragments were discovered, including a fragment of Samuel, which is possibly the oldest known piece of biblical Hebrew of the 4th century BC. Cave eleven was also productive, providing a preserved copy of some of the Psalms, including Psalm 151, which appears only in the Septuagint. In addition, there was a scroll of a portion of Leviticus, as well as a Targum, or paraphrase of Job.
Altogether, some 600 manuscripts were collected from the eleven caves. The greatest contribution of the Qumran literature is the dating of the copies, about 200 BC to AD 100. Most scholars will settle for a date of about 100 BC, although some of the manuscripts are dated earlier.
The tremendous contribution of the scrolls of Qumran establishes the integrity of the Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible. By comparing the Dead Sea Scrolls with the Masoretic text, we would get a clear indication of the accuracy, or lack of it, of transmission over the period of nearly a millennium. At least two-thirds of the scrolls reflect the Masoretic text, thereby establishing it as the more authoritative text. What is more, it compares favorably with the Hebrew biblical text already existing from the 10th century AD. The evidence for the Old Testament is now pushed back 1,000 years to establish its integrity, and the Septuagint is no longer regarded as the more acceptable text.
3.4 Accuracy of the Old Testament Testament Text
In comparing the Qumran manuscript of Isaiah 38-66 with the one we had, scholars found that the text is extremely close to our Masoretic text. A comparison of Isaiah 53 shows that only seventeen letters differ from the Masoretic text. Ten of these are mere differences of spelling, like our "honor" or "honour" and produce no change in the meaning at all. Four more are very minor differences, such as the presence of the conjunction, which is often a matter of style. The other three letters are the Hebrew word for "light" which is added after "they shall see" in verse 11. Out of 166 words in this chapter, only this one word is really in question, and it does not at all change the sense of the passage. This is typical of the whole manuscript.
However, some critics are still not satisfied. They believe that a text from 100 BC is very much removed from the original manuscripts of Isaiah, about 700 BC, David, about 1,000 BC, and others even prior to these dates.
Do we have the means to discover what the original texts were? We obviously do not have the original manuscripts, but we do have evidence today that can substantiate from archaeology the historicity, culture, life-style, and geography to which the Old Testament refers. Chapter 4 will provide us with these materials, and further establish the integrity of the Old Testament.
3.5 Conclusion - the Old Testament Text is Reliable
We can conclude with R. Laird Harris:
"We can now be sure that copyists worked with great care and accuracy on the Old Testament, even back to 225 BC. At that time there were two or three types of text available for copying. These types differed among themselves so little, however, that we can infer that still earlier copyists had also faithfully and carefully transmitted the Old Testament text. We can conclude that we have our Old Testament in a form very close to that used by Ezra when he taught the Law to those who had returned from the Babylonian captivity."
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4. THE QUESTION OF THE CANON
4.1 What is Canon?
A question closely allied to that of the reliability of the texts we have is, How do we know the books in our Bible, and no others, are the ones that should be there? This is called the question of the canon. The word "canon" comes from the Greek word meaning "rule" or "standard." When it is applied to the books of the Bible, it means that they have met a certain standard which has segregated them from all other writings. This does not mean that the Bible was not God's Word before the individual books became part of the canon; the process of canonization was simply an official recognition by man of what has always been God's Word.
There are distinct questions involved for Old and New Testaments.
4.2 The Old Testament Books
The Protestant church accepts identically the same Old Testament books as the Jews had, and as Jesus and the apostles accepted. The Roman Catholic Church, since the Council of Trent in 1546, includes the books of the Apocrypha. The order in the English Bible follows that of the Septuagint. This is different from the Hebrew Bible, in which the books are divided into three groups:
the Law (Genesis to Deuteronomy), known also as the Torah or the Pentateuch;
the Prophets, including the Former Prophets (Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings) and the Latter Prophets (Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the Book of the Twelve - Hosea to Malachi); and
the Writings, the remaining books of our Old Testament canon.
As E.J. Young says:
"When the Word of God was written, it became Scripture, and inasmuch as it had been spoken by God, it possessed absolute authority. Since it was the Word of God, it was canonical. That which determines the canonicity of a book, therefore, is the fact that the book is inspired of God. Hence, a distinction is properly made between the authority which the Old Testament books possess as divinely inspired and the recognition of that authority on the part of Israel."
We can see this development in the work of Moses. The laws issued by him and by the later prophets were intended to be respected as the decrees of God Himself. They were so regarded then and also by later generations. The authority of the Law was recognized by Israel's spiritual leaders. It was the recognition of this authority that shook the King Josiah when he realized how long the Law had been neglected (2 Kings 22:11).
When we examine the writings of the prophets, it is obvious that they believed they spoke with authority. "This is what the Lord says" and "the word of the Lord came to me" are common preambles to their messages.
By the beginning of the Christian era the term Scripture had come to mean a fixed body of divinely inspired writings that were fully recognized as authoritative. Our Lord used the term in this sense and was fully understood by his hearers when he said, "The Scripture cannot be broken" (John 10:35). It is interesting that there was no controversy between our Lord Jesus Christ and the Pharisees on the authority of the Old Testament. Contention arose because they gave tradition the same authority as Scripture.
4.3 The New Testament Books
Here, as for the Old Testament, the books possessed canonicity by virtue of their inspiration, not by virtue of their being voted into canonicity by any group. The history of the recognition of the New Testament's canonicity, however, is interesting. Much of the material of the New Testament claimed apostolic authority. Paul and Peter clearly wrote with this authority in mind. Peter specifically refers to Paul's letters as Scripture (2 Peter 3:15-16).
Jude (v. 18) says that 2 Peter 3:3 is a word from the apostles. Such early church fathers as Polycarp, Ignatius and Clement mention a number of the New Testament books as authoritative.
The onslaught of heresy in the middle of the 2nd century caused the concept of a canon to be revived in the thinking of Christians. Irenaeus and later Eusebius, in the 3rd century, give us more light in their writings. The final fixation of the canon as we know it came in the 4th century. In the East, a letter of Athanasius in AD 367 clearly distinguishes between works in the canon which are described as the sole sources of religious instruction and others which believers were permitted to read. In the West, the canon was fixed by decision of a church council held at Carthage in AD 397.
Three criteria were generally used throughout this period of time to establish that particular written documents were the true record of the voice and message of apostolic witness, they were:
Could authorship be attributed to an apostle? The Gospels of Mark and Luke do not meet this criterion specifically, but were accepted as the works of close associates of the apostles. Note: Mark and Luke were the companions of the apostle Paul.
There was the matter of ecclesiastical usage - that is, recognition of a book by a leading church or majority of churches.
There was conformity to standards of sound doctrine.
4.4 Conclusion - the Bible is the Word of God
These data are helpful and interesting, but in the final analysis, as with the question of the inspiration of the Scripture, canonicity is a question of the witness of the Spirit in the hearts of God's people. In days of uncertainty, what a rock the Scripture is on which to stand! "Heaven and earth will pass away," says our Lord, "but my Words will never pass away" (Luke 21:33).
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5. REFERENCES AND RECOMMENDATION FOR FURTHER STUDY
Know Why You Believe, Chapter 6, InterVarsity Press, 1988, by Paul E. Little & Marie Little.
Archaeological Confirmation of the New Testament in Revelation and the Bible, Grand Rapids, Baker House, 1958, by F.F. Bruce.
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