(9) New Testament References. In the New Te-tament our Lord frequently refers to the Old Testament, under the title of 'The Scriptures' or of 'The Law' (Matt. xxi:42; xxii:29; John x:35, etc., etc.), and in one place he speaks of 'the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms' (Luke xxiv:44); by the third of these titles intending, doubtless, to designate the Hagiographa, either after the Jewish custom of denoting a collection of books by the title of that with which it com menced, or, as Havernick suggests, using the term psal-moi, psalms, as a general designation of these books, because of the larger compara tive amount of lyric poetry contained in them (Ella. sec. 14) ; Paul applies to the Old Testament the appellation 'The Holy Writings' (Rom. 1:2), 'The Sacred Leiters' (2 Tim. hi:15), and 'The Old Covenant' (2 Cor. ill:14). Both our Lord and his apostles ascribe Divine authority to the ancient canon (Matt. xv:3; John x:34-36; 2 Tim. iii:16; 2 Peter i:19-21, etc.), and in the course of the New Testament, quotations are made from all the books of the Old, except Ruth,Ezra, Nehe miah, Esther, Canticles, Lamentations and Eze kiel, the omission of which may be accounted for on the simple principle that the writers had no oc casion to quote from them. Philo attests the existence in his time of the sacred writings. He describes them as comprising laws, oracles uttered by the prophets, hymns and the other books by which knowledge and godliness may be increased and perfected (De l'ita Contcmplat. in Opp., tom. ii, p. 275, ed. 'Mangey), and quotations from or references to the most of the books are scattered through his writings. The evidence of Josephus is very important, for, besides general references to the sacred books, he gives a formal account of the canon as it was acknowledged in his day, ascribing five books, containing laws and an ac count of the origin of man, to Moses, thirteen to the prophets, and four, containing songs of praise to God and ethical precepts for men, to different writers, and affirming that the faith of the Jews in these books is such that they would for them suffer all tortures and death itself (Cant. /loon. i:7, 8: Eichhorn, Einleif. i, sec. 5o; Jahn, lntroductio, p. 5o). Nicht°, bishop of Sardis in the second century of the Christian era. gives, as the result of careful inquiry, the same books in the Old Testament Canon as we have now, with the exception of Nehetniah, Esther and Lamentations, the first two of which, however, he probably in cluded in Ezra, and the last in Jeremiah (Euseb. Hist. Eccles. iv:26; Eichhorn. fiiml. i, see 52). The catalogues of Origen (Euseh. Hist. Eccles vi:2. 5), of Jerome (Pro!. Galeai. in Opp. iii). and of others of the fathers, give substantially the same list (Eichhorn. I. c.; Augu.ti, sec. 54; Cosin, Scholastical !list. of the Canon, ch.
iii, vi; Henderson, On Inspiration, 449). In the Talmudic Tract entitled Baba Bathro, a catalogue of the books of the sacred canon is given, which exactly corresponds with that now received by Christians (Buxtorf, Tibertas, c. t). Hence it appears that all the evidence we have shows that the canon, once fixed, has remained unaltered.
(10) Formation of New Testament Canon. The history of the formation of the New Testa ment Canon is involved in much greater obscurity than that of the Old. An ecclesiastical tradition ascribes to the Apostle John the work of collect ing and sanctioning the writings which were worthy of a place in the Canon, but this tradition is too late for any weight to be allowed to it. A much more probable opinion, and one in which nearly all the modern writers who are favorable to the claims of the Canon are agreed, is that each of the original churches, especially those of larger size and greater ability, collected for itself a complete set of those writings which could be proved by competent testimony, to be the production of inspired men, and to have been communicated by them to any of the churches as part of the written Word of God, so that in this way a great many complete collections of the New Testament Scriptures came to be extant, the accordance of which with each other, as to the hooks admitted, furnishes evidence of the cor rectness of the Canon as we now have it. This
opinion, which in itself is highly probable, is rendered still more so when we consider the scru pulous care which the early churches took to dis criminate spurious compositions from such as were authentic—the existence, among some, of doubts regarding certain of the New Testament books, indicating that each church claimed the right of satisfying itself in this matter—their high veneration for the genuine apostolic writ ings—the practice of the fathers of arguing the canonicity of any book, from its reception by the churches, as a sufficient proof of this—and the reason assigned by Eusebius (Mist. Eccles. iii:25) for dividing the books of the New Testa ment into opAcryoviAtvot, those ufion, and dvTac-yliuivt, those disfiuted, viz., that the for mer class was composed of those which the universal tradition of the churches authenti cated, while the latter contained such as had been received by the majority, but not by all (Storch, Comment. !list. Crit. de Libb. N. Tcs tamenti Canone, etc., p. t 12, ff. ; Olshausen's Echtheit der II'. Evang., s. 439). In this way we may readily believe that, without the intervention of any authoritative decision, either from an in dividual or a council, but by the natural process of each body of Christians seeking to procure for themselves and to convey to their brethren authentic copies of writings in which all were deeply interested, the Canon of the New Testa ment was formed.
(11) History of New Testament Canon. The first certain notice which we have of the ex istence of any of the New Testament writings, in a collected form, occurs in 2 Pet. iii :16, where the writer speaks of the epistles of Paul in such a way as to lead us to infer that at that time the whole or the greater part of these were collected together, were known amongst the churches gen erally (for Peter is not addressing any particular church), and were regarded as on a par with 'the other Scriptures,' by which latter expression Peter plainly means the sacred writings both of the Old Testament and the New Testament, as far as then extant That John must have had before him copies of the other evangelists is probablw from the supplementary character of his own gospel. In the anonymous Epistle to Diognetus, which is, on good grounds, supposed to be one of the earliest of the uninspired Christian writ ings, the writer speaks of the Law, the Prophets, the Gospels, and the Apostles (sec. xi. ed. Hefele), Ignatius speaks of 'betaking himself to the gospel as the flesh of Jesus, and to the apostles as the Presbytery of the church,' and adds, 'the pro phets also we love,' thus showing that it is to the Scriptures he was referring (Ep. od Philatte! phcuos, sec. v, ed. I Icicle). Theophilus of An tioch speaks frequently of the New Testament writings under the appellation of the sacred writ ings, or the Divine Word, and in one place men tions the Law, the Prophets and the Gospels, as alike divinely inspired (Ad. Auto!. :1 1) . Clem ent of Alexandria frequently refers to the books of the New Testament, and distinguishes them into 'the Gospels and Apostolic Discourses' (Quis Dives Sa/vitsf prope fin.; Stromot. sxpissime). Tertullian distinctly intimates the existence of the New Testament Canon in a complete form in his day, by ea ling it 'Evangdicum instrument..