How We Got the Bible · Page 4 of 6
Why some books are not in
The same tests, applied to the books that did not pass them: later dates, borrowed names, a different message.
Every generation produced more Christian writing than the churches received as Scripture. Books were read, valued and kept without being canonized, and others were refused outright. The difference was the tests from page 3: apostolic origin, agreement with the faith the apostles taught, and the settled use of the churches. The books most often asked about fail at least two of the three.
The Gospel of Thomas
The best known is the Gospel of Thomas. It is not a story but a list: 114 sayings attributed to Jesus, many of them versions of sayings in the four Gospels, others strange to them. There is no birth, no cross, no resurrection, no ending at all beyond the last saying. A complete Coptic copy came to light at Nag Hammadi in Egypt in 1945, buried in a jar with other books. The work itself is usually placed in the second century, a hundred years and more after Jesus, and it presents its contents as the secret words of the living Jesus, recorded, it claims, by Thomas. Secret knowledge for the few was the mark of the Gnostic teachers the churches had already refused. Thomas fails the tests: late, not apostolic whatever its title claims, and in its teaching at odds with the apostolic witness at the points where it differs from it.
The pattern repeats
The Gospel of Peter decorates the resurrection with wonders the four Gospels do not tell, including a cross that speaks. The Gospel of Mary rests its authority on teaching given to Mary after the resurrection, teaching the other apostles are said not to have received. The Infancy Gospel of Thomas fills the childhood of Jesus with acts of anger, playmates withered and struck down. Each is second century or later, each borrows an apostle's name, and each teaches things the apostolic writings do not. The churches that had received Matthew, Mark, Luke and John from the apostles' generation did not receive these, and their reasons were the ordinary ones: these were not the apostles' books.
Mentioned is not canonized
The Bible itself points outside itself without enlarging the canon. Joshua 10:13 sends readers to the Book of Jasher for the account of the sun standing still; the book is named, used, and lost, and Scripture never calls it Scripture. Paul, speaking in Athens, quotes Greek poets (Acts 17:28) without making their books holy. A writing can be true, useful and even quoted by an apostle, and still not be one of the books God gave as the rule. The canon is not a list of every good book. It is the measured list.
Not suppression
None of this required bonfires. The refused books were copied, kept and read, which is why copies survived for Nag Hammadi to give up in 1945, and why anyone can buy them today in editions like James M. Robinson's Nag Hammadi Library in English. The churches' act was narrower and more ordinary than suppression: they declined to read these books in worship as the word of God, because they could not trace them to the apostles.
Sources
- Bruce M. Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament (1997)
- James M. Robinson (ed.), The Nag Hammadi Library in English (1988)
- Berean Standard Bible (BSB)
Review status: in-theological-review. Every Contend page passes a human theological review against the Statement of Faith before it is published as approved teaching. This section is in that queue.