Seminar 6 - New Testament Word Studies

Introduction

Most Christians are aware of the biblical claim of inspiration and inerrancy yet when it comes to explaining how the Bible came to us in sixty-six books they are woefully bankrupt of any knowledge. Therefore, when anyone challenges the origin of the books of the Bible they are unable to give any reasonable or intelligent defense of the scriptures. The Bible comes to us as 66 books, 39 in the Old Testament and 27 in the New Testament. In this lesson we will explore the origin of the first four books of the New Testament called the gospels.

Jesus Christ left us no writings. In fact, the only recorded writing that Jesus did was to write something on the ground when the accusers of the woman taken in adultery wanted to stone her. We are not told what he wrote, but whatever it was it was most likely immediately erased by a swish of a sandal. It is only logical that sometime after the death and resurrection of Jesus some people wrote down their recollections of what Jesus said and did. We do not know who or how many or to what extent these freelance writers recorded the story of Jesus. What we do know is that a few of these documents were already highly regarded as early as 50 A.D. by the apostles and churches of the early years. Four of those writings, carefully copied and preserved by the churches, survive to this day. Those four documents are known as the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. The word "gospel" means "good news." The Greek word for gospel is "evangeleon" from which we derive the terms evangelize, evangelism, evangelist, and evangelical. It refers to the good news heralded concerning Jesus Christ. In the Greek culture of the Roman Empire "evangeleon" in singular and plural forms referred to the announcement of the good news of victory. It was used in the Roman cult of emperor worship to mean the glad tidings of the birth of a future emperor or his ascension to the throne.

ASSIGNMENT: Use a concordance or Bible software program that allows for searches of the Greek words. Search all the uses of the word or derivatives of "evangel" or "gospel." Survey the various ways in which it is used in the N.T. (i.e. Acts 5:42, 8:35, 11:20, 17:18, Gal. 1:16, Eph 3:8, I Peter 1:11.)

All of the gospels were written in the first century during the lifetime of the apostles and in plain view of critics, skeptics, and agnostics who could have torn it to shreds had it contained errors historical or otherwise. They did not and could not. In fact one of the antagonists to the gospel message, Celsus, in disputing the faith with Origen, could not deny the genuineness of the four gospels while he vehemently rejected the message. (Faussett-Brown p. 261) On the other hand the gospels, written during the lifetimes of hundreds and thousands of eyewitnesses, were never refuted, questioned, or challenged regarding words, chronologies, names and places, times or dates, or references to concurrent secular history. One wonders why in the midst of intense world persecution Christianity's opponents were not able to assail the reliability of the gospels seeing they too were eyewitnesses of the life and times of Jesus. One must also wonder why 1900 years later non-eyewitness theologians can assault the integrity of the gospel, impugning its veracity, and judging its authenticity as though they had more knowledge, evidence or proofs than did the first century scholars.

By the end of the first century and most certainly before the death of the last apostle (John) all of the books of the N.T. known to us today were already in circulation. (p112 Faussett) The renowned scholar Andrew R. Faussett states the argument for validity of the N.T. canon this way.

"'The prophets' in the Christian Church, speaking themselves under inspiration, and those having the Spirit's gift, 'the discerning of spirits,' acted as checks on the transmission of error orally before the completion of the written word. Secondly it was under their inspired superintendence that the N.T. Scriptures were put forth as they were successively written.... Thus by the twofold sanction of inspiration, that of the authors and that of the judges, the canonicity of each book is established. By God's gracious providence most of the books of the N.T. were in the church's possession years before the death of leading apostles, all of them before the death of John." (Faussett p112)

During the last 150 years theologians have turned to a critical analysis of the Old and New Testament known as higher criticism. Critical study of the Bible is not bad in all its disciplines. It should involve textual criticism (to discover original use and meanings of words), and historical criticism (a study of the historical setting of scripture). The problem comes when men begin to bring in speculative theories as to the sources and forms from which they think the scriptures were derived. Higher criticism seeks to discover what portions of the scriptures were really authentic and what are suspect. The problem is that their approach to the scriptural writings is full of skepticism and agnosticism. Their assumption is that the scriptures are not "God breathed." From the outset they start with the assumption that the Bible is not historically accurate. Despite these incessant attacks on the Bible there has yet to be discovered any archeological or scientific discovery that proves the Bible wrong. "The attitudes behind these attacks on biblical accuracy and authority were those of complete rejection of God's inspiration of the scriptures." (p70 Grant Jeffrey) Many of these so-called religious scholars outrightly deny any supernatural event such as miracles or prophecy. For them any reference to miracles or prophetic fulfillment is an indication of unreliability. They begin with doubt and end with adamant unbelief. Their basic premise is that all in the Bible is false unless it can be corroborated by non-biblical evidence. Yet time and time again discoveries of the ancient world have confirmed the biblical narratives. Still they continue in unbelief refusing to listen to their own pre-established proof requirements. Instead they move on to their next pet-peeve against the scriptures. Their faith in agnosticism exceeds their need for scientific empirical data.

As we move into the NT these pseudo-scholars become even more vociferous against the scriptures. They seem hell-bent on disproving the historicity of Jesus at any cost. Their theme is evident - If it is miraculous it didn't happen. They are convinced of a scientific method that all things operate under the natural laws and anything outside that realm is fantasy. Therefore after 150 years of assaulting the Bible they are now emboldened to assault Jesus Christ himself blatantly denying the birth, death, and resurrection accounts of Christ. Some have gone as far as to claim that Jesus did not even exist but was a hero legend of superstitious people.

The epitome of this folly is the infamous Jesus Seminar composed of seventy-five liberal scholars who sit in pompous judgement over the authenticity of Jesus' words. Meeting semi-annually they vote on the probability of the Jesus' sayings being genuine. It was reported in 1996 by Time magazine that their verdict over the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John was that they (the Gospels) were "notoriously unreliable." They had thrown out the story of the Nativity, the Resurrection and the Sermon on the Mount. When they examined the Lord's Prayer they rejected every word except the "Our Father." The Jesus Seminar has now produced a revised "Gospel According to Jesus" which eliminated almost all of the sayings of Jesus, and most of the miracles." (p 83 Jeffrey)

As we have already stated, the four gospels that we have in the New Testament were written and circulated not long after A.D. 50. As we will see, these books were unanimously upheld by the early church as authentic and written by the apostles or prophetic colleagues of the apostles. These New Testament books were not simply voted into the scriptures hundreds of years after Christ, they were considered scriptures at the earliest moment, when they were first written and circulated among the churches that the apostles had founded.

Early after the resurrection of the Lord congregations gathered authentic writings of scripture into archives or libraries, to be read in the churches on the Lord's day. We call these archives of the books of the Bible "canons" from the Greek word "rule" or "measurement." The word is used in Galatians 6:16 and 2 Corinthians 10:13-16. The word "canon" carries the idea of a setting limits on something, that is, to set off the boundaries of something. Thus the canon of scripture sets off the boundaries of what is scripture and what is not. These manuscripts were carefully and laboriously copied and shared with other congregations. The apostles themselves referred to these writings as scripture. (See 2 Peter 3:16, I Cor 14:37, I Cor 12:10, and Galatians 1:8-9)

The churches themselves individually and without any organized oversight judged what was divinely inspired. We therefore have the solid witness of the apostles themselves, the churches individually and independently of each other using the gift of discernment, all coming to the unanimous decision that the gospels in particular, and the writings of the epistles were genuine, having been written either by the apostles, or as in the case of Mark and Luke, by apostolicly recognized men.

An ancient manuscript written by Caius, a presbyter of Rome in the first century, known as the Muratorian Fragment, contains one of the earliest lists of canonical books, and declares Matthew, Mark, Luke and John to be scriptures while rejecting the Shepherd of Hermas as being spurious.(Fausset p 113) In the same era Peshito and Syriac versions of the canon agree with the Muratorian Fragment and include Hebrews and James.

It was not until AD 397 at the Council of Carthage that the organized church declared their agreement and ratified the canon of the New Testament as containing the 27 books which we now recognize. The canon agreed upon at Carthage could not make any writing inspired scripture which was not already scripture. "Man could never make that inspired which God has not, nor can the doubts of some divest of inspiration that which God has inspired." (Fausset p113) The church merely sealed by declaration the decision which the churches and apostles had already concluded through careful sifting. The canon was closed therefore at the death of the last apostle, not by any legislation of men, but by the witness of God's spirit to the church over a period of four hundred years.

The Diocletian persecution of AD 303 was directed against the Christian scriptures. Whoever delivered them was considered a traitor to the state, therefore even by secular standards there had to have been a predetermined canon of what constituted Christian scriptures. Men and women gave their lives for the scriptures even from the earliest days of Christianity. It is hard to believe that someone would die for something they considered to be the general writings of good men.

There were five possible guiding principles used by the early church fathers to determine whether a New Testament book was canonical.

1. Was it authoritative - did it come from the hand of God with the authoritative "Thus saith the Lord"?
2. Was it prophetic - was it written by a man of God who was himself a prophet?
3. Was it authentic - was its authenticity in doubt? The early church fathers had the policy, "If in doubt, throw it out."
4. Was it dynamic - did it come with the life transforming power of the Spirit?
5. Was it accepted - was it accepted unquestioningly by the church at large since the beginning?

(McDowell, A Ready Defense, p 39)

We now possess over 5,000 manuscript copies of portions of the NT in the Greek language. Beyond this there exist 15,000 manuscripts of the NT in other languages dating from the first centuries after Christ. No other writing of ancient times has so much original material that has been so carefully scrutinized as the New Testament. No other body of literature has undergone such intense attacks on its integrity.