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The New Testament is a different story. The major evidence that the New Testament existed before Constantine is found in the “Muratorian Fragment” (A.D. 170) since it lists all the New Testament books, except for Matthew, Mark, Hebrews, James, 1-2 Peter and 3 John. The document is called a fragment because portions of the document have been torn off. Therefore, the well known biblical scholar Westcott says that the missing books were probably included initially because the document is torn where they should have been listed. The document indicates that there were only four gospels that were accepted by the early church.
The Bible had already been established prior to Constantine.
The Old Testament scriptures had been approved by Christ (Luke 24:44)
and the New Testament had been approved by His apostles. The Apostle
Peter approved of Paul’s writings in 2 Pet. 3:15-16, and Paul endorsed
Luke in 1 Tim 5:18 when he quoted Luke 10:7. Matthew, Luke, John, Peter,
and Paul wrote 85% of the New Testament. The remaining books are Mark,
Hebrews, James, and Jude. Mark wrote for the Apostle Peter, and James
and Jude were brothers of Jesus. The author of Hebrews is unknown to
us.
The early church father Irenaeus (about A.D. 120-202) names the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and defends the existence of only four (Irenaeus Against Heresies. 3.11 ). Origen listed all of the New Testament books in His works, except for Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, and Jude.
In short, the New Testament books were approved by the apostles. At the beginning of the second century, the canon or the Bible was complete. By the end of the second century, the early church fathers had quoted from all of the New Testament books and almost every verse.
In the years that followed, the authority of certain books was challenged, and church councils were convened to review and defend the contents of our Bible. The Council of Carthage (A.D. 397) is usually pointed to as the council which finally put the debates to rest. But unfortunately, there will always be men who will challenge the authority of various books in the Bible.
A few pages later in The Da Vinci Code, Mr Brown writes these words,
. . . Almost four centuries after Jesus’ death, thousands of documents already existed chronicling His life as a mortal man. To rewrite history books, Constantine knew that he would need a bold stroke. From this sprang the most profound moment in Christian history . . . Constantine commissioned and financed a new Bible, which omitted those gospels that spoke of Christ’s human traits and embellished those gospels that made Him godlike. The earlier gospels were outlawed, gathered up, and burned. Fortunately, for historians . . Some of the gospels that Constantine attempted to eradicate managed to survive. The Dead Sea Scrolls were found in the 1950s hidden in a cave near Qumran in the Judean desert. And, of course, the Coptic Scrolls in 1945 at Nag Hammadi. In addition to telling the story of the Grail story, these documents speak of Christ’ ministry in very human terms. (DVC p. 234) But there is no historical evidence that Constantine did any of this. Constantine did order the writings of Arius, who claimed that Jesus was a created being, to be burned. That occurred by an edict in A.D. 325. Is Mr. Brown confused?
To claim that the gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John ignore the human traits of Jesus is to deny the facts that these gospels speak of Jesus being hungry (Luke 4:2), tired (John 4:6), thirsty (John 19:28), and crying (John 11:35). The gospels demonstrate that Jesus had human traits. Mr. Brown is wrong.
The quotes from the early church fathers demonstrate that the New Testament books prove that the wording of our current gospels remains unchanged since the early centuries.
On page 245, The Da Vinci Code says that the Dead Sea Scrolls and Nag Hammadi are “the earliest Christian records.” But this is not true since the Nag Hammadi document texts were Gnostic documents and were written from about A.D. 250-350. They are not Christian and they were written almost 200-300 years after Jesus. These texts were originally written in Greek and were later written in Coptic. The Dead Sea Scrolls were not Christian documents either and were written 100-200 years before Jesus. |
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