The bible is an important book to Christian believers as it, significantly dictates how they behave. The Bible is categorized into two major “Canons” written in different times of history ( Moberly, 2017) . These are the Canon of the Old Testament and the Canon of the New Testament. To fully understand the formation of the “Canon” or the “Bible,” it is essential to begin by fixing firmly in the mind one fact that the Christian church did not require to form for itself the idea of a “Bible,” ( Beckwith, 2018). The bible is a collection of different books given of God to act as the authoritative rule of practice and faith. This is an idea that inherited from the Jewish church along with the “Canon of the Old Testament” or Jewish Scriptures (Copan, 2017). The New Testament that came after the Old Testament did not come by natural law; it was founded and there are various reasons why it contains the books that it includes and excludes other books such as the Gospel of Judas and more.
The New Testament is made up of 27 books which are precipitate or residue of many writings that Christian believers considered sacred in the 1st and 2nd Century-CE writings. This is the time criterion used to differentiate the New Testament books from the Old Testament ( Schröter, & Coppins, 2016) . Another important factor about the New Testament is that the church transmitted its traditions through its various writings (Epp, 2020). These are writings that mainly touch on the self-understanding of the churches, their experience, and more importantly the interpretation of Jesus as the Christ. For example, the Canon of the New Testament contains four Gospels that fully talk about the life of Jesus Christ. These are Mathew, Mark, Luke, and John ( Holladay, 2017) . These four gospels are some of the oldest writings used in denoting a key point difference between the Old and New Testaments. The Old Testament in its Greek translation contains some of the oldest writings and was used as the bible for the earliest believers. This is why the New Testament excludes other books such as the Gospel of Thomas, Joshua, Judges, and other more books regarded to be old and found in the Old Testament. Modern scholars rejected the Gospel of Thomas. The book was discovered in the Nag Hammadi library and is thought to have originated within a school of early Christians possibly Proto-Gnostics. More critics have questioned whether the four gospels should be classified in the new testament despite being written earlier.
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From a theological perspective, Christian believers regard the Canopy of the New Testament as the fulfilment of the Canopy of the Old Testament. The New Testament relates and interprets the new covenant. For example, the covenant represented in the life and death of Jesus Christ, the promised Messiah, and the covenant between God and the followers of Christ (Keene, 2017). In the Old Testament, the prophet Isaiah predicts the birth of Jesus Christ in the Book of Isaiah Chapter 7. Isaiah wrote that a boy named Immanuel will be born to bring salvation ( Beckwith, 2018) . Prophet Jonah talks about Salvation to come in the future through Christ, and God promises Abraham about a blessing to come from him in the book of Genesis. Other books in the Old Testament that talk about Jesus are Deuteronomy, Hebrews, Psalms, Micah, Jeremiah, Hosea, Ezekiel, and more (Copan, 2017). All these are achieved in the New Testament where we see the birth of Jesus Christ and His ministry. Some examples of books that talk about the birth and life of Jesus Christ in the New Testament are Mathew, John, Luke, and many more.
When the messengers in the 1st Century spread the lessons of the Ruler and Salvation, there was no requirement for the “Canon” to be characterized. The messengers were workers of God that were supernaturally named to lecture by the Jesus. As the 2nd Century wore, the messengers started to dying and the verbal lessons that were given by them were getting to be less commonplace to Christian devotees (Holladay, 2017). In this way, the devotees were isolated from the definitive lessons given by the witnesses. Christians were setting less dependence on the verbal lessons given by the remaining apostles and more dependence on their compositions.
The historical process through which the church uses to acknowledge the Canon of the New Testament is the pivotal date for formal establishment. In 367 A.D, a Paschal letter was written by Athanasius, the Bishop of Alexander to the Christian believers on Passover occasion ( Schröter, & Coppins, 2016) . In the letter, Athanasius mentioned the 27 books that were accepted by the church as being the New Testament. Council of Carthage also met in A.D 397 to publish the names of the 27 books of the New Testament to be regarded as genuine scriptures ( Beckwith, 2018) . All these puts together show that churches had no questions about the 27 books in the middle-to-late 4th Century and to date, the canon is still recognized by churches.
Lastly, the idea that “God still speaks” is affirmed. Evangelical Protestant faith states that there is a true and living God. This is what Christians also believe in that the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is the supreme of living things and is not mute. God speaks clearly by His Spirit through the written words of the Bible which have power and meaning. To Christian believers, this implies that God should not be disregarded. Therefore, believers are expected to constantly pray and respect the ways of God.
References
Beckwith, R. T. (2018). The old testament canon of the New Testament church: and its background in early judaism . Wipf and Stock Publishers. https://books.google.co.ke/books?hl=en&lr=&id=7-RLAwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PR9&dq=The+New+Testament+Canon&ots=4rlvIOnTUJ&sig=p6_CKBjhIwnU5AruHH2dOCXXyIE&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=The%20New%20Testament%20Canon&f=false
Copan, P. (2017) The God of the Old Testament vs. the God of the New Testament. https://foclonline.org/sites/live.foclonline.org/files/copan_paul_the_god_of_the_old_testament_vs_the_god_of_the_new_testament_outline.pdf
Epp, E. J. (2020). Are Early New Testament Manuscripts Truly Abundant?. In Perspectives on New Testament Textual Criticism, Volume 2 (pp. 100-145). Brill. https://brill.com/view/book/9789004442337/BP000019.xml
Holladay, C. R. (2017). Introduction to the New Testament: Reference Edition . Baylor University Press. https://muse.jhu.edu/book/52049
Keene, N. (2017). ‘A Two-Edged Sword’: Biblical Criticism and the New Testament Canon in Early Modern England. In Scripture and Scholarship in Early Modern England (pp. 106-127). Routledge. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/chapters/edit/10.4324/9781315243603-13/two-edged-sword-biblical-criticism-new-testament-canon-early-modern-england-nicholas-keene
Moberly, R. W. L. (2017). Canon and religious truth: an appraisal of A New New Testament. Brown Judaic Studies. https://dro.dur.ac.uk/22393/
Schröter, J., & Coppins, W. (2016). From Jesus to the New Testament: Early Christian theology and the origin of the New Testament canon . Baylor University Press. https://muse.jhu.edu/book/26827
