ii. HIsTORY OF THE NT, INCLUDING ITs RELA- TION TO THE CHURCH FATHERS AND THE CHRIS- TIAN APocRYPHA.—As already indicated, a New Testament in our sense of the term was something which the apostles never dreamt of. The charge which they had received from their Master was to preach the gospel, and the as of the Spirit was exiirensly connected with the bearing of oral testimony. As they had received nothing in writing from their Master’s hands, they were not likely to see any necessity for a written word, so long as they were able to fulfil their commission to preach the gospel, especially as they were looking for a speedy return of their Lord, and lad no idea that somany centuries were to elapse before the great event should take place. Probably the earliest nucleus of the NT consisted of notes of the apostles’ preaching, either drawn up by their hearers for their own use, or intended as an aid to catechists and teachers. Some such notes (probably in Aramaic, of which we have many traces in the Greek text) seem to have formed the basis of our Synoptie Gospels. Although not published in their present form till long after Christ’s death, the Gospels narrate events, not in
i Ξ 5 .---- =
NEW TESTAMENT
the light shed upon them δ subsequent experience, but as they were regarded by the disciples at the time of their occurrence. They also preserve expres- sions in our Lord’s discourses which scarcely ever appear in the phraseology of the early Church, while they are at the same time free from forms of speech which betray the post-apostolic date of apocr. Gospels; and in other respects harmonize with the state of things prior to the destruc- tion of Jerusalem in A.D, 70. Before the Gospels assumed their present form, many of the Epistles were already current in the Church. hese letters were naturally prized by the Churches to which they were addressed, as well as by other Churches which received copies of them, and they were readily admitted to public reading in the con- gregation, first of all on special occasions (1 Th 5”) and in course of time as a general practice, along with prescribed portions of the OT, after the manner of the Jewish synagogue. As the apostles one after another passed away, their testimony and that of those most closely associated with them was more and more treasured by the Church ; and the writings in which that testimony was embodied were felt to be indispensable to the faith and life of the Church. In the Apostolic Fathers we can discern signs of the growing reverence for these writings, not only in their reproduction of the thought and language of a considerable number of the Epistles, repre- senting the leading types of apostolic teaching found in the NT, but also in the terms in which St. Paul’s writings are referred to by representative men so far distant from one another as Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, and Polycerp of Smyrna; while our Gospels are also accredited by the substantial harmony of their contents with the facts assumed by the sub-apostolic writers as the basis of their teaching, although the verbal coincidences are neither numerous nor exact, ur- less we except the Didaché in its quotations from the First and Third Gospels.
But the formal recognition of a new body of Scrip- tures worthy of being associated with the OT came much later. As the writings composing the NT came into existence only by degrees, in the course of about half a century, to meet the practical needs of the Chureh, so the collecting of these writings and their setting apart for public use was accomplished only gradually, as the leading representatives of the Church in different parts of the world came to realize the insufficiency and uncertainty of local tradition, and the need for securing the orthodox faith against invasion and corruption. It is not, indeed, till near the close of the 2nd cent. that we find a generally accepted collection of sacred books substantially identical with our NT and ΘΒ sacred with the OT. From the nature of its contents, as well as from the language of Patristic writers on the subject, it is evident that the general principle on which the Church proceeded in forming the NT was to admit to it only the writings of apostles, and of those who had written under the influence and direction of epastls This naturally arose from the fact that the new life of the Church was centred in the person of Jesus Christ, and that the faith of its members depended on the testimony of those who had been brought into close personal contact with Him, or had received a special commission to preach the gospel. But the principle was not always easy of application, and it sometimes led to different conclusions in different parts of the Church, accord- ing to the views held as to the authorship of dis- puted books; while the association of canonical and uncanonical books in the LXX, to which the Fathers were accustomed, tended to make them less rigorous in their judgments than they might have otherwise been. Outside of our NT there
NEW TESTAMENT
were three books which were held in special reverence, being sometimes read in chureh and occasionally included in great Scripture MSS, viz. the Epistle of Clement, the Epistle of Barnabas, and the Shepherd of Hermas; the authors of these books being supposed by many to be identical with the persons of the same names mentioned in the NT in connexion with the Apostle Paul (Ph 4°, Ac 12%, Ro 1601}. On the other hand, as regards the disputed books contained in our NT (chiefly minor Epistles, with the Ep. to the Heb. and the Book of Rev), it was because their apostolic author- ship was more or less distrusted in certain quarters of the Church, owing to the obscurity of their early history or to some dissatisfaction with their contents, that the right of these books toa place in the Canon was more or less called in question, until at length the public opinion of the Church found expression at the 3rd Council of Carthage in A.D. 397, when the very same books as are con- tained in our NT were acknowledged to be can- onical, and declared to be the only books that should be read in church.