How Did We Get the Bible?

It’s mid-morning on a hot summer afternoon and Roland is taking a walk around his neighborhood. He runs into his neighbor, Mitch, and they start talking about the latest news. Then Mitch says, “Hey, you go to church, don’t you?”

“Ya, why do you ask?”

“Well, I’ve started to wonder if I should go back to church myself.”

Roland perceives God is opening a door, so he dives in a little deeper. “That’s interesting. Can you tell me what’s changed?”

“My kids are getting older,” Mitch wistfully replies. “I just think it might be time to expose them to some of the morals of the church. I just don’t want them to grow up without knowing about the good path.”

“That’s great, Mitch. I’m glad you are interested in exposing them to morality, but do you realize that the morality of the church is based upon the teaching of the Bible?”

“Now hold on,” objects Mitch. “I really don’t want them to go down the rabbit hole of the Bible. After all, that’s just a book made by men. I want my kids to learn to love their neighbor, serve the poor—you know, the important stuff.” 

Roland wants to help Mitch understand that going to church—at least going to a good church—means taking the Bible seriously. That means coming to understand how we got the Bible. Roland quickly prays that God will give him wisdom. Then he opens his mouth.

“Mitch, I get that there’s a lot of stuff in the Bible that you might struggle with and not be too sure about. But you need to realize that the Bible is a book we got from God. You can’t cut the things out of the Bible you don’t like and simply hold on to the stuff that appeals to you—the stuff like ‘Love thy neighbor.’” 

“Why not?” 

“Well, to start with, the Bible presents itself as a book given to us from God. And if God is the author, we don’t have the right to edit it. For example, in the early church—and I mean really early, like the first century—one of the first Christian teachers said this about the Bible. Mitch, listen to 2 Timothy 3:16–17: ‘All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be competent, equipped for every good work.’ So, you see Mitch, what your kids need—what you need—is all of Scripture, not just the part about being nice to your neighbor.” 

“Look, I hear you. But I was watching a documentary on the History channel the other day. I don’t remember what it was called, but the host said the Bible was basically a book approved by a group of men who voted on some old letters that they wanted people to believe came from God. He basically said the Bible came from men, not from God. Don’t get me wrong, I do believe in God, and I believe the basic principles in the Bible are from God, I just don’t think God would care so much about every sentence of every book of the Bible being from him—I think that’s a man-made idea.”

“Mitch, I saw that documentary too. And it made me sad and even a little bit angry, because I think they misrepresented how we got the Bible. Some people, like the host of that show, say that long ago the church collected a few letters circulating around, collected them, and then said, ‘Voilá, our Bible.’ But that’s not the way it happened at all.”

“So how did it happen?” Mitch asks thoughtfully. He’s willing to hear Roland out. So Roland invites him out of the hot sun to his back porch. He gets Mitch some sweet tea and comments on his wilting hydrangeas, then they resume their conversation.

“Okay, Mitch, I know this may seem a little strange, but I want to start with the Bible itself. If we want to know how we got the Bible, the best place to start is with what the Bible actually says and, in particular, what the Bible says about itself. After all, if you want to get to know a person, you ask that person a bunch of questions. We can take the same approach to the Bible. If we want to know how we got the Bible, let’s examine it on its own terms.” 

Mitch scrunches up his nose as if he is about to disagree. Then he gives in. “Sure, I’m willing to start there. What does the Bible say about itself?”

Roland rolls up his sleeves; there is a lot he wants to share with Mitch. “I mentioned that passage from 2 Timothy. That was the Apostle Paul writing to his disciple Timothy and telling him that Scripture is from God. And that’s not the only passage in the Bible that speaks of it that way. The prophets who wrote down what we call the Old Testament understood themselves to be speaking for God. In other words, they believed their message to be not their message at all, but God’s message. You can open practically any Old Testament book to see this, but I’d encourage you to skim through Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Jeremiah because they use the phrase, ‘Thus says the Lord God,’ again and again and again.”

“The writers of the New Testament, men like the Apostle Peter, explained how this happened. Peter pointed out in 2 Peter 1:21 that God gave these prophets his words to write down. He says, ‘For no prophecy was ever produced by the will of man, but men spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.’ Mitch, what I’m saying is that the Holy Spirit led certain men to write the very words God wanted them to write. That’s why we call it the Word of God. And that’s what Scripture is—words penned by men but inspired by God, carried along by his Spirit.”

Mitch is surprisingly interested in what Roland is saying, but Roland has more to say. He wants Mitch to understand that the authors of the Bible understood the Bible itself to be inspired by God. Roland continues: “Mitch, it’s not just the Old Testament that presents itself as Scripture, it’s the New Testament, too. Let me give you an example. Here, take a Bible.” Roland hands Mitch a copy. “Turn to 1 Timothy 5:18.” He waits and then helps Mitch find it. Then, Roland reads it aloud. “‘For the Scripture says, “You shall not muzzle an ox when it treads out the grain.”’ That particular verse is from the book of Deuteronomy, a book written by the prophet Moses centuries earlier.” 

“But that’s the Old Testament,” interrupts Mitch, “not the New!” 

“I know, but look at verse 18 and notice what Paul writes next: ‘and “The laborer deserves his wages.”’ Mitch, that particular sentence is from the Gospel of Luke, a book written in the first century, not long after Jesus’ life and death. Paul is treating that book, the Gospel of Luke, as having the same authority as the Book of Deuteronomy. He calls both of them Scripture. So, this is a great example of the Bible treating itself as the Bible.”

At this point, Mitch begins to lean in. He’s never thought about this before. But Roland isn’t done.

“Let’s look at another passage, Mitch. This one was written by Peter, one of Jesus’s closest companions. Look at 2 Peter 3:15–16.” Mitch turns to the Table of Contents to find just where 2 Peter is and flips to the reference. This time Roland has Mitch read: “And count the patience of our Lord as salvation, just as our beloved brother Paul also wrote to you according to the wisdom given him, as he does in all his letters when he speaks in them of these matters. There are some things in them that are hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other Scriptures.”

Mitch looks confused. “Roland, what’s the big deal?”

“What is Peter writing about, Mitch?” Mitch looks closely at the verses again.

“It looks like he’s writing about stuff Paul wrote.”

“Exactly, but what did Peter say about Paul’s writings?”

“He said they were hard to understand.” Mitch snickers a little bit as he re-reads the verse.

“Ya, but that’s not all. He said some people try to twist Paul’s words, ‘as they do the other Scriptures.’” At this point, a lightbulb goes off in Mitch’s mind. 

“Oh, I see, Peter believed Paul was writing Scripture—the Word of God—himself.”

“That’s exactly right,” Roland assures him. “Isn’t this amazing? Here is Paul, reading the Gospel of Luke and saying Luke has all the divine authority of Deuteronomy. And here is Peter, reading the letters of Paul and saying they have all the divine authority of all the other Scriptures. This is the Bible understanding itself to be the Word of God. And notice when Paul and Peter wrote—both of them penned their letters in the 60s—not the 1960’s, the first century!

“Look, Mitch, I know that documentary said the Bible didn’t become the Bible until the 300s. But if that’s the case, how do you explain these letters written centuries beforehand and treating the Bible as the divinely-inspired Word of God?”

Mitch pauses a long while, taking it all in. “Can I have some more sweet tea?” Roland leaves the room to fill up his glass, and Mitch starts to wonder why he’s never given the Bible this much thought. He grew up going to church now and again. He sang, “Jesus loves me” as a kid and he liked going to VBS. He knew he learned some important lessons about God, but he never walked away convinced the Bible was weighty, heavy, and authoritative. As he is thinking about this, Roland comes in with his sweet tea and a few cookies.

“Let’s pull back the lens a bit and get back to your question. You asked how this happened, how did we get our Bibles? Let me focus in on the New Testament for just a moment, because those are the books the documentary really aimed at. Christians have thought about the New Testament for quite some time, and they’ve observed over the ages several features all the New Testament books have in common.

“For one, they have divine qualities about them. In other words, they are beautiful and moving and deep, and they fit together marvelously. There is a harmony about them. And when people read them, they’re changed. This is the work of the Holy Spirit; he opens our eyes to see the Word of God for what it is. The Bible has a majesty and power to it unlike any other book.

“Still, we can say even more about the books of the New Testament. All of them, one way or another, can either be traced back directly to an apostle or they have a message completely in line with that of the apostles. Peter was with Jesus. Paul saw the risen Jesus. Luke traveled with Paul—which is why we trust his account in both his Gospel and the book of Acts.

“Mitch, there is one other important thing people have observed. And this is really important. From the earliest days of Christianity, local churches received these New Testament letters as the Word of God. There was no official vote. Just the simple fact that the New Testament letters found their way to be read and preached by local churches because Christians understood them to be the very Word of God. This happened gradually—it took a minute—and it happened informally—there was no special vote of bishops, but it really did happen.”

Mitch listens intently, but he still isn’t convinced. “Roland, I hear what you’re saying, that people didn’t write down a list and vote on them. But eventually we did get a list of New Testament books, and someone had to write them down. How did that happen?”

“Great question, Mitch. The answer has to do with a teacher from the second century by the name of Marcion. We don’t know a lot about his life, but he was from modern-day Turkey and he may have been a pastor’s kid. What we know for sure is that he hated the God of the Old Testament—a God of wrath and justice. In fact, Marcion concluded the God of the Old Testament is a deity, but lesser than the God of the New Testament. Jesus came to reveal the true God of love, Marcion said, he came to show us mercy and grace, not wrath and judgment.

“Now, how did Marcion square that with the writings in the New Testament that presented God as full of justice and wrath? Marcion argued they weren’t Scripture at all. He threw out all the Old Testament as well as the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and John. He kept only a heavily edited version of Luke. Marcion rejected any text that alludes to the faith of the Jewish people whose God, he argued, could not be real.”

“Wait a second,” interrupts Mitch, “didn’t Thomas Jefferson do something like that?” 

“Kind of, but that’s a story for another day. The point is that Marcion was doing this in the second century. And when he did it, he upset a bunch of other pastors who had been using those books in their churches. Marcion’s teaching went over like a lead balloon, and he was actually removed from the church as a matter of church discipline in AD 144.”

“They kicked him out for this?” Mitch asks.

“Yes, they did. It was wrong for him to separate the God of the Old Testament from the God of the New. But not only that, it was terrible for him to undermine the truth of the sacred writings the early church had already come to accept—again, without a formal vote. In fact, a lot of church historians believe it was around this time that the church began to keep a list. A former history professor at Emory named Justo Gonzalez made this exact point in his great book, The Story of Christianity. The oldest “list” we have of our New Testament, though incomplete, can be traced back to just a few years after Marcion. It’s called The Muratorian Fragment because it was discovered by an Italian scholar, Lodovico Muratori. Historians date it to about AD 170—long before the documentary said the pastors voted on the Bible!”

“Roland, what do you mean by incomplete? Are you saying this Muratorian Fragment is not a complete list of the books called the New Testament today?”

“That’s right, Mitch. It’s not. It took time for local churches to recognize the exact “canon” we have in our New Testament today. It was a matter of discussion. It happened organically. Just as today there is not one statement of faith for every single church, because churches operate independently, so in the early church Christians had some serious discussions about which books had been inspired by God. And when you dive into it, some of the reasons are pretty obvious. For example, we don’t know the author of Hebrews, which has led some to doubt whether it’s Scripture. Also, because the little letter of Jude cites a book that is clearly not in the Bible, some wondered if Jude should be in the Bible. Second Peter, with its resemblance to Jude, was questioned, too.”

“Roland, if all this is true, doesn’t that just prove the point? Doesn’t it prove that the books we have are simply books sinful people decided to have in the Bible? Doesn’t this argue against the divine inspiration of all the Scriptures?”

“God could have given us a divinely-inspired Table of Contents, Mitch. Then we wouldn’t have to have this conversation! But the fact of the matter is all of these Scriptures made their way to sinful people, and sinful people are going to disagree from time to time. The surprising fact is not that there was some debate, early on, about which books are in the Bible. No, if anything it’s surprising that there was so much agreement so early on among the churches. 

“Let me give you a few examples. I don’t have them on the top of my head, but I’ve kept a list in my office. Hold on a second and I’ll go get them. Do you need any more sweet tea?”

“No, I’m fine.” Roland goes off to grab a couple pages; a list of ancient books that cite from books and letters we now know to make up our New Testament.

“I’ve got ‘em. Here we go. I’m not going to give you every single reference I’ve collected, but I have a pretty long list of Christian writers who clearly treated the books and letters of our New Testament as Holy Scripture.

“The ancient book of 1 Clement, written around AD 95, mentions Paul as an author of Scripture and cites from or alludes to 1 Corinthians, Romans, Galatians, Philippians, Ephesians, and Hebrews.”

“Wait a second, I thought you said Hebrews was disputed by Christians?” 

“I did, but that simply means that some early Christians wondered who wrote it and that led them to discuss whether it should be included in our New Testament. Nonetheless, most churches treated Hebrews as part of the Bible.

“And there’s more. A book called The Didache, also written around AD 95 cites Matthew as Scripture.”

“Wasn’t Matthew a book that Marcion wanted to cut out of the Bible?”

“That’s right, Mitch. Big mistake. Christians had been treating Matthew as Scripture for decades.

“But let’s keep going. Ignatius pastored in the early part of the second century. He wrote several letters. Like a pastor today, he cited from many of the letters now in our New Testament: 1 Corinthians, Ephesians, 1 and 2 Timothy, Romans, Philippians, Galatians, and the four Gospels. He also mentions the authority of Peter and Paul, which presumes their writings to be authoritative, too.”

“Let me get this straight, Roland. Back in the second century, we didn’t have a New Testament bound in one book the way we do now. And yet somehow these Christian pastors knew these books and were referencing them in their own books?”

“Exactly! They would have made the rounds, from city to city, being copied again and again and used. Imagine how exciting it would have been to get your hands on one of these letters, read them aloud, and teach and preach from them in your local church. We take the Bible for granted today, but in the early church, many Christians would rather have died than give up their copies of the Scriptures.

“Mitch, I could keep going quoting from books by Polycarp, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and Tertullian. All of them used what is basically our New Testament today.”

“You mentioned the Muratorian Fragment was incomplete. I think I know what you mean by that. But when do we get a complete list?”

“On one hand, that’s impossible to answer, Mitch. Maybe there was a complete list from the late first century that didn’t survive. The first complete list that we have comes from a fourth-century, Egyptian pastor named Athanasius. In what we call his Easter Letter, he wrote down a list of the 27 books universally recognized as comprising our New Testament today. But what I want you to understand is that he didn’t make it up. He didn’t call a vote or issue a decree. He simply wrote down what the church had come to receive as God’s Word.”

“Come on, Roland, seriously, why did it take so long for Athanasius to write down that list?”

“Again, maybe there was another list we simply don’t have today. But even if there wasn’t, what is so amazing is that we have so much knowledge of the books the church used long before they were ever listed. For example, a century before Athanasius, another Egyptian teacher by the name of Origen cited from all our New Testament books. And Origen did this even though he knew there were debates about some of them. But that didn’t keep him from relying on all of them. That’s what the early church did—they treated these writings as Scripture.

“Mitch, a lot of people bought into that documentary we saw. And they read Dan Brown’s The Davinci Code too. They think the Emperor Constantine wanted to unite his Empire under Christianity, so he ordered all the bishops to come together and vote on a Bible in AD 325 at the Council of Nicaea. That makes for an entertaining story for sure, but I think it led a lot of people to think they can’t trust that the Bible they are holding in their hands really is the Word of God. But I hope you can see now that long before AD 325, churches were reading and preaching through and praying from the New Testament letters and books we use today.”

“Roland, I’ve got one more thing nagging at me. A buddy of mine is Catholic, and he says it different than that documentary did. He doesn’t say a bunch of guys invented the Bible out of nothing. He says the church is the one that decided which books count—that without the church saying so, you’d have no way of knowing what the Bible really is. So doesn’t that mean the church came first and the Bible came second?”

 “That’s a better question than the documentary ever asked, Mitch, and I want to take it seriously. Here’s the thing. There’s a big difference between recognizing something and creating it. One theologian I read, a guy by the name of Michael Kruger, put it like this: Think about a thermometer. When you stick a thermometer outside and it reads ninety-five degrees, the thermometer didn’t make it hot—it’s July in Georgia, it was already hot. The thermometer just tells you the truth about what’s already there. That’s what the church did with these books. The churches didn’t sit down and grantthese letters their authority, like a king knighting a squire. They acknowledged an authority the books already had because they came from God through his apostles. The Word created and gathered the church, not the other way around. Think back to what we already saw—Christians were reading and preaching from these books in the first and second centuries, long before any official council met. The books were already doing their work.”

“But didn’t some council eventually make it official?”

“In a sense, yes—and I don’t want to hide that from you. There were a couple of church meetings in North Africa, at a place called Hippo in 393 and Carthage a few years later, that listed out these 27 books. But notice what they were doing. They weren’t voting to make some letters the Bible, like Congress passing a bill. They were putting their stamp on letters and books the churches had already been treating as God’s Word for generations. They were the thermometer recording the temp, Mitch, not the thermostat setting it. So when your Catholic friend says you’d have no way of knowing without the church, I’d gently push back: the church is how God delivered these books to us and how the Spirit led his people to recognize his own voice in them—but recognizing is not the same as inventing. The church didn’t give the Bible its authority. The church bowed to it.”

“It’s getting late, Roland. You’ve given me a lot to think about. I’m grateful for that and all the sweet tea. I just have to be honest: it’s a lot to believe, isn’t it? That we can go to the Bible, open it up, and have the very words of God. Grant me that: it’s a lot to believe.”

“I’ll grant you that for sure, Mitch. But here’s the deal. If God is God, shouldn’t we expect him to speak? And if he speaks, shouldn’t we expect him to want to be listened to? And if God wants to be listened to, shouldn’t we expect him to ensure his words are recorded for all time? In other words, the Bible is just what we should expect to find if God really is in control of all things.

“But let me take it a step further. Which is harder to believe? That God used sinful men to produce his perfect Word, or that a perfect God took upon himself human flesh and walked among sinful men? In other words, the very heart of Christianity is about the God-man Jesus Christ living a perfect life, dying a sinner’s death, and rising from the dead for the salvation of everyone who would turn and trust in him. 

“Mitch, you want your kids to go to church so they can learn to love their neighbor. But don’t you see that the message of the Bible, all 66 books, is the message of God who didn’t just love his neighbor, he loved his enemies, died for his enemies, and through his death and resurrection made his enemies his friends? I’m glad you want your kids to love their neighbors! That’s a good thing. But what they really need—and what you really need—is a God who loved you enough to die for you. That’s the heart of the Bible, and that’s really what I want to talk about.”

“Okay, Roland, I can tell you care about this deeply. But I’ve really got to go. Let’s pick it up another day. For now, do you mind if I borrow this Bible?”

“Sure, Mitch, go ahead. And when you’re ready, let’s talk it through.”

By Aaron Menikoff