Day Four - “The Excluded Books”
We’ve seen why the early church included certain books into the New Testament canon. But why were others rejected? Anyone who’s read Dan Brown’s novel, The Davinci Code, knows that other gospels exist. But is there validity to their claim for canonicity?
The problem with these other gospels is that even though they have names that reflect apostolic authorship, they were in fact, written long after all the apostles had died. The Gospel fo Judas dates to around A.D. 150, long after John, the last apostle to die, had gone to the heaven he saw in the Revelation. The Gospel of Thomas dates even later, probably around A.D. 180. As one writer called them, the ‘fab four’ (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) were included because their apostolic authenticity was proven while all other gospels were very late-comers to the gospel genre.
There is, however, that third detail - consistency. The Jesus presented in the other gospels is radically different from the Jesus who was born a man but evidenced divinity, who loved the Jews, was betrayed, suffered and died only to be raised from the dead. The ‘other’ Jesus is presented as only divine without any humanity, or wholly human minus any divinity. He appears nonJewish, dislikes His own people and is far removed from any thought of suffering, death and resurrection. These aspects of Jesus’ life are essential to His humanity, divinity and mission. These other gospels are missing from the canon because they were missing these necessary aspects of Jesus’ life.
The New Testament gospels and other books all concur with the major theme of the Old Testament. Through both Testaments, God presents a biblically consistent theology that records Jehovah’s historic redemptive acts while always anticipating God’s future work through the Messiah, Jesus Christ. The scarlet thread of redemption that began in Genesis is completed in the very presence of the New Testament writers. They were witnesses to God’s power and work and wrote, not to give us new information but to conclude what their Old Testament counterparts had already begun.
So this is how the New Testament came into being. But what about transmission? Is the New Testament we hold today as valid as the New Testament the author’s wrote? We’ll look at transmission tomorrow and then, on Saturday something often forgotten by the 21st century church but of equal importance to inspiration and inerrancy, the matter of suffiency.