Although not themselves apostles, they were the immediate associates of those princes of the church, and there was a well- accredited tradition among the fathers that Mark wrote his gospel under the direction of Peter, and that Luke wrote his under the direction of Paul. Their writings were widely circulated thirty years before the death of John, and while Peter and Paul were living, and yet they were among the very first Scriptures to be universally received as canonical. They therefore must have been approved by at least the apostle John. Besides this, their in- ternal evidence, literary, moral, and spiritual, and their harmony with the other Scriptures in spirit and as to fact, establishes their claim. — See Alexander on Canon, Part II., Sec. 7.
13. By ivhat marks have the Apocryphal toritings of the New Testament era been discriminated from the genuine writings of the apostles ?
The writings thus discriminated by the early Christians were of two kinds —
1st. The genuine writings of holy men who lived in the age immediately subsequent to the apostles, and who wrote edifying epistles and treatises on topics of Christian doctrine or practice. These were called ecclesiastical, and were often read in the churches for edification, though never appealed to as author- ity, e. (/., Epistle of Clemens Komanus and the Shepherd of Hennas.
2d. Spurious compositions, falsely set forth as the writings of Christ or of his apostles, or of their disciples. Some of these were well intentioned pious frauds ; others were the forgeries of here- tics. A few of these appeared in the second, but most in the fourth century, and the greater part are now lost. As far as their names can be recovered, Mr. Jones has given a complete list both of those now extant and of those that have been lost. — Jones' New Method, Part I., chap, iii, and Part III. The principal writ-
SACKED TEXT. 99
ings of this class now extant are the Letter of our Saviour to Abgarus, king of Edessa ; the Constitutions and Creed of the Apostles ; the Gospel of our Saviour's Infancy ; Letters of Paul to Seneca ; the Acts of Paul and Thecla, etc.
Mr. Jones has set clown several marks in his work, Part I., chaps, xi., xii.j xiii., by which all these writings may be proved to constitute no part of Holy Scripture. The sum of the results of his investigations in the first and second parts of his work are, that all these writings are proved by their contents to be unworthy of a place in the canon ; by their style not to be the work of their reputed authors ; by frequent contradictions not to be consistent with the received Scriptures. That not one of them was ever quoted or enrolled as canonical by any competent number of cotem- poraneous witnesses. That nearly all of them were expressly repu- diated as spurious, or at least as uninspired, by the early church.
14. What are the sources from which the true text of the Old Testament is ascertained 1
1st. Ancient manuscripts. The Jews have always copied and preserved their manuscripts with superstitious care, even count- ing the words and letters. " In the period between the sixth and tenth centuries they had two celebrated academies, one at Babylon, in the East, and the other at Tiberias, in the West, where their literature was cultivated, and their Scriptures fre- quently transcribed. Hence arose two distinct recensions or editions of the Hebrew Scriptures, which were collated in the eighth or ninth centuries," and the text thus prepared is the masoretic or traditioncd text which we now have in our Hebrew Bibles. The most ancient existing Hebrew manuscripts date from the ninth or tenth centuries. The majority range from A. D. 1000 to A. D. 1457. The oldest extant printed Hebrew Bible dates A. D. 1488. Dr. Kennicott collated in preparation for his critical edition of the Hebrew Bible six hundred and thirty manuscripts, and M. cle Rossi collated nine hundred and fifty- eight. The various readings presented by these manuscripts in very few cases involve the sense of the passage, and chiefly relate to differences in the vowel points, accents, etc.
2d. We may correct the existing text by comparing it with (1.) The Samaritan Pentateuch, or the edition of the five books
100 THE CANON OF SCRIPTUKE.
of Moses which the Samaritans inherited from the ten tribes. (2.) The Targums, which are eleven books in number, some of them dating from the first century before Christ, and being generally very accurate paraphrases of the Hebrew Scriptures in the an- cient Chaldee. (3.) With the early translations of the Scriptures into other languages, a The Greek Septuagint, made B. C. 285. b The Peshito or ancient Syriac version, A. D. 100 about. c The Latin Yulgate made by Jerome A. D. 385. — Home's Introduction.
15. What are the sources from which the true text of the Neiv Testament Scripture is ascertained ?