Please note that due to the software used, not everything recorded in this transcript will be accurate.

Canon Fodder

Media – Survivor

John Dickson (Studio)

That’s a clip from Survivor, one of the most political reality TV shows there is. To my shame, beyond that clip, I’ve never seen it (but Director Mark has the box set on constant rotation). They’re picking teams, using the typical ‘Schoolyard pick’ – two captains taking it in turns to choose their teammates. Perhaps it brings back uncomfortable memories for you, being picked (or not!) for a soccer or cricket match. I was always picked for soccer and never for cricket. And what made it more complicated is that it sometimes wasn’t about whether you were any good at the game (although I was hopeless at cricket). What really mattered was whether you were friends with the captain. Like so much in life, being picked for the team was often about schoolyard politics … and favouritism. This is how some of us imagine how the Bible came together: pick the stuff you like, leave out the stuff you don’t. Don’t focus on merit. Pay attention to the politics.  Famed atheist Richard Dawkins puts it like this … 

Reading

“A chaotically cobbled-together anthology of disjointed documents, composed, revised, translated, distorted and ‘improved’ by hundreds of anonymous authors, editors and copyists, unknown to us and mostly unknown to each other, spanning nine centuries”. 

John Dickson (Studio)

So how did the Bible actually come together? Who were the captains of the team? Who were their mates, and what politics influenced the decisions? I’m John Dickson, and this is Undeceptions.

Undeceptions theme 

Producer Kaley and Director Mark read The Da Vinci Code 

John Dickson (Studio)

We’re doing a reading from Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, a bestselling novel released in 2003. Director Mark is playing Sir Leigh Teabing. The fictional Teabing is a British royal historian. Producer Kaley is playing Sophie Neveu, who for the purposes of this section of the book anyway, is just finding out about a number of ‘explosive church secrets’. Here in the script they’ve asked me to apologise that they’re not actors … but I think they’re great!

The Da Vinci Code continued

John Dickson (Studio)

Director Mark at the end there was continuing to read from Dan Brown’s book. Calling Brown’s book a ‘bestseller’ is an understatement – you can call yourself a bestseller with 20,000 nowadays. But this sold 80 million copies! And The Da Vinci Code contributed to a renewed interest in – and scepticism of –  the historical basis of Christianity. My own ancient history department at the time hosted a day conference to discuss its claims – fans of the book were a little deflated at the end of it. Nonetheless, there was an explosion of conspiracy theories and so-called “exposé” documentaries on the life of Christ, the hidden Gospels, and other Church secrets after The Da Vinci Code’s publication. Almost 20 years later, the intrigue is still alive and well. 

John Dickson:
Let’s go to the fourth century, let’s go to emperor Constantine, who let’s just say becomes a Christian in three 12, uh, legalizes Christianity. And then, so the story goes, uh, called great council in Nicea in three 25, told them which, um, Bible texts they should have.

Chris Forbes:
I’m sorry. So the story goes, which particular story is this?

John Dickson (Studio)

That’s Dr Chris Forbes. For decades, he was a senior lecturer in ancient history at Macquarie University, which has one of the largest and most respected Ancient History Departments in the southern hemisphere. Chris specialises in Graeco-Roman history and literature, as well as the New Testament and early Christianity. 

JD:
Yes. Uh, you caught me. It’s Dan, Brown’s that Divinci code, but let’s just go with the story. Cause it’s so good. And uh, he decided which gospel should go in and he decided the rest of the new Testament and then forced everyone to go with his texts. Because of course this was a power document. He wanted a new text for a new people for a new empire. How much of that is true?

CF:
Almost nothing. Really. Almost nothing. There was a guy called Constantine. Yes. There was a guy called Constantine who was empereror who legalized Christianity. Yes. He convened the council of Nicea in three 25. 

John Dickson (Studio)

Constantine the Great was Roman Emperor from 306 to 337AD. In the year 312, he announced his allegiance to the God of the Christians, following a remarkable victory over his imperial rival Maxentius, in the battle of the Milvian Bridge just outside Rome. I reckon we should do a whole episode on Constantine. He was not only pivotal in the history of the West. He’s also the subject of many, many misunderstandings. Anyway, one thing that is true is that in 325 AD, a dozen or so years after his conversion, Constantine called a council of Christian bishops to Nicea (in modern day Turkey). The purpose of 6-8 week talkfest was to put to bed the teachings of a guy called Arius, who most bishops considered to be heretical and dangerous, because he said Jesus wasn’t God, just a bridge between humanity and divinity. 

Chris Forbes:
The question of what books were in the Bible was not even discussed at Nicea. It simply wasn’t on the agenda. The writings of an Egyptian theologian by the name of Areas were discussed at Nicaea, but he hadn’t written the gospel. He’d written theological treatises that nobody thought were going into the Bible at all, not even him. So the whole idea that it was Constantine, who determined what was in the Bible is an utter historical myth and no serious historian takes it for a moment.

John Dickson (Studio)

Dan Brown wasn’t the first to suggest the New Testament was created at the Council of Nicaea, three centuries after Jesus. The French Enlightenment philosopher and atheist Voltaire tells the story in his famous 18th-century Philosophical Dictionary. According to Voltaire, the Council of Nicaea placed all the different books on an altar, prayed for God’s decision, and miraculously, a bunch of books remained and a bunch fell to the floor. Voltaire didn’t make this up, but he was happy to promote it. He was actually retelling the story in a source called the Synodicon Vetus, which was composed about the year 900, more than half a millennium after the Council of Nicaea. Given we have such plentiful sources from the very time of the Council, no one today (in history departments anyway) takes the Synodicon Vetus story seriously. Dan Brown seems to have followed Voltaire, who, in turn, followed a spurious late source instead of the direct sources we have for the Council of Nicaea. 

 

Mike Bird:
I would take what you said and change one small element, and that is the woods cause they were pretty much all wrong. 

John Dickson (Studio)

That’s Dr Mike Bird, a colleague of mine at Ridley Theological College, where he is a New Testament scholar and academic dean. He is the author of several books, including his latest with N.T. Wright, ‘The New Testament in its World’. He might just be the most widely published New Testament expert in Australia today. 

Mike Bird:
That’s a wonderful conspiracy theory that Constantine along with a Sherri of bishops, Sherri, being the collective, uh, uh, now for a group of bishops that Sherry of bishops impose the sort of top-down Imperial order and this set of scriptures and dogmas on a diverse, pluralistic and inclusive Roman empire to become this horrible thing called Christendom. Uh, but it really is a load of nonsense. 

John Dickson (Studio)

So, if it wasn’t Constantine … how did we get the Bible in the form we know it today? I should point out that we’re talking in this episode about the creation of the New Testament – the second part of the Bible, which covers the life and death of Jesus, and the early Christian church. The New Testament is made up of 27 individual books, written by about 10 different authors in the second half of the first century. This second part of the Bible is only authoritative to Christians. Our Jewish friends accept the first part of the Bible, the Tanakh or Old Testament, but not the New Testament. You might hear people talk about the ‘biblical canon’. The word ‘canon’ has nothing to do with weaponry. (This canon has one ‘n’ in the middle)  It’s just the Greek word for ‘territory’ or ‘ruling principle’. Sometimes it’s used for a measuring stick, sometimes for a geographical border or fence, sometimes for an intellectual principle. The New Testament ‘canon’ is just the collection of documents which Christians consider ‘in bounds’, containing the authoritative content for the Christian faith and life. We begin with the easiest part of the canon. The four biographies of Jesus at the front of the New Testament. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John – known as the Canonical Gospels. And the letters of Paul. 

Chris Forbes: 
There was no clear definition of what constituted authority they were being read from when they were first written, they were being read aloud to congregations. That’s how they were probably first quote, unquote, published by being read aloud. And the sayings of Jesus were being treated as authoritative in the letters of Paul. That’s absolutely clear. He doesn’t quote them very often, but when he does it’s, as the Lord said, and Lord has a capital L on it, though not in Greek. Um, Lord has the sense of authority on it clearly. Um, so they were being read aloud and used as sources of authority as soon as they were written, but the evidence beyond what I’ve just suggested doesn’t come until the second century. I think probably the earliest known example is where Justin Martyr, a Christian philosopher teacher, uh, working in the city talks about the public reading of the memoirs of the apostles. And almost certainly what he means is the gospels that we know. It’s not absolutely clear that he must mean that, but it seems extremely likely. 

John Dickson (Studio)

Justin Martyr was one of the first major public advocates for the Christian faith. He was a trained philosopher who bumped into Christians and found himself convinced that Jesus Christ was the great ‘logos’, the animating and intellectual principle all Greek philosophy was searching for. He went on to write defences of the Christian faith, one that took on Jewish criticisms of Christianity, and another that sought to demonstrate that Christianity outdid the best of Graeco-Roman philosophy and would be a positive benefit to the empire. Along the way, he gives us one of our earliest descriptions of a church service.  

Reading

On the day called Sunday, there is a gathering together in the same place of all who live in a given city or rural district. The memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read, as long as time permits. Then when the reader ceases, the president in a discourse admonishes and urges the imitation of these good things. Next we all rise together and send up prayers.

John Dickson (Studio)

Justin goes on to describe two other central parts of the meeting: a meal celebrating the body and blood of Christ (we call it Communion or the Lord’s Supper), and then a financial collection to be distributed to the poor and needy. 

Mike Bird:
Certainly by the first quarter of the second century, we know that the four gospels are being read together, strangely enough, one of our earliest evidences for this is the longer ending of the gospel of Mark. Now, if you have a pickup, your gospel of Mark, you might know that there’s a little, little bit of difficulty of where it ends in your English Bible. There’ll be some part that’s put in brackets. Now this in fact, four different endings for the gospel of Mark. Mark was somewhat neglected in the manuscript. traditional. he Is not well as attested as Matthew and John. So he was kind of like the poor cousin out of all the gospels. But if you look at the longer ending of Mark was someone we think has tried to, you know, fill in the blanks from what they think or how they think Mark should have ended. But that longer ending of Mark seems to make reference, or it uses material from all four gospels, obviously Mark, but it seems to know of parts of Matthew parts of Luke John, and even acts. So the longer ending of Mark, which we know was in the first or maybe second quarter of the second century attest to the existence of the four gospels. So that that’s one good thing. We also have someone like Irenaeus , uh, in writing in the 180s saying we have four gospels because four is a crackerlack’n good number. You know, there’s four sides to a square, four corners of the earth. There’s roughly four seasons. Four’s a good number. 

John Dickson (Studio)

Irenaeus was the bishop of Lyon in Gaul (what we call France) in the mid to late second century. Actually, he’s awesome (if you’ve never read him). His main thing was that God loved his physical creation and intends to redeem not just our spirits but our bodies and the heavens and earth themselves. His target was the so called Gnostics who denigrated the body and creation in a really unJewish (and unChristian) way. Anyway, he has this weird thing about  the number ‘four’ – four corners of he earth, the four winds, and the four Gospels. It’s more poetry than argument at that point, but he provides pretty clear evidence that reading four Gospels in Church was the standard – the ‘canon’ –  in the century immediately after Christ. 

Mike Bird:
And then you have some other things like the Anti-Marcionite prologues to the gospels  kind of explaining what each gospel is about and how it took on its, uh, distinctive shape. And similarly you have the Muratorian Canon cannon to now a few diets do debates about the debating of them.

John Dickson (Studio)

Me again…  Sorry to interrupt. But Mike is such a nerd that he expects everyone to know about these arcane documents. The Muratorian Canon is just an ancient Latin manuscript (discovered by bloke called Muratori) that lists the books of the New Testament as they were known at the time the Muratorian Canon was written (in the late second century): it names the Gospels, Acts, most of Paul’s letters, and raises questions about some other texts (which didn’t get in). The Anti-Marcionite Prologues are just little introductions that appear in a bunch of our ancient manuscripts of the Gospels. They tell you what you’re about to read – a bit like some modern Gospels do. Anyway, they make clear that the Gospels have authoritative status in these very early centuries. The other thing I should mention – that Mike references in a second – is what’s called the Apostolic Fathers. Man, O, man I love these. The sit on my desk book stand permanently – and I’m holding them in my hand as I speak to you, because they are the letters of Christian leaders in the period immediately after the New Testament documents, in the generation or two straight after the apostles. There’s Clement, Ignatius, the Didache, Papias, and a bunch of others. They don’t make a claim to be ‘canon’ or Scripture, but they frequently quote from the Gospels and Paul’s letters as the truly authoritative stuff – they are, if you like, the earliest commentators on the New Testament documents. 

 

Mike Bird:
But certainly in the second century, I think in, in the, in the, uh, earliest decades of it, we have this evidence of a coming together of the four gospels and then soon after being treated as scripture. I mean, so you’ve got the gospel’s being quoted in, in the, you know, you know, sub apostolic writings or we call the apostolic fathers. People like, uh, Ignatius of Antioch. Uh, the Didache, although the Didache could be dated, you know, maybe earlier than Matthew or that type of thing. Uh, you’ve got the letters of Clement, particularly first Clement and a few other places. So you find either quotations of, of an oral tradition or I think more than likely actual quotations of the gospels themselves.

 

John Dickson (Studio)

Now for Paul’s letters – called the Pauline Epistles. They make up 13 books of the New Testament. Paul (formerly Saul) was a one-time persecutor of the early Christians. In the year or so after Jesus’ death he made it his personal mission to bring to ruin the followers of the recent false Messiah. However, in the year 31 or 32 while setting out to arrest Christians in Damascus, he encountered the One whose memory he had sought to destroy. He writes in the Book of Galatians that the risen Jesus appeared to him. From the moment of this revelation until his death thirty years later Paul devoted himself to promoting Christ, establishing small groups of converts in the towns he visited, and staying in contact with them through letters, in which he answered their questions on how to behave as new followers of Jesus. 

John Dickson:
When is our best earliest evidence that people took Paul seriously as an authority of writer on behalf of God?

Mike Bird:
Well, Paul’s letters seem to come together as a collection, uh, maybe in the, in the post 70 periods. So when there’s, you know, the, the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem, and there’s a kind of a big reorganization of Judaism and Christianity and Christian groups seem to start developing their own distinct identity, which is kind of unpolitically related to ancient Judaism, but becomes various distinct a number of ways, you know, I’ve been living in Israel’s God, but also believing that, um, anyone jews orl Gentiles can be part of God’s people through faith, that type of a thing. And one of the leading advocates of that view was of course, the apostle Paul.

John Dickson (Studio)

Outside of the Holocaust, the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in August A.D. 70 was the greatest Jewish tragedy in history. Jewish freedom fighters had tried to throw off the shackles of Roman rule in the year 66. Rome responded with massive force. In four years later, they took the Jewish capital and destroyed the temple. The next 10 to 20 years emperors commemorated the victory on coins throughout the Empire. It deepened the breach between the pagan population and the Jewish population, and it sped up the parting of ways between Jewish Christianity — that was the original Christianity — and Gentile or non-Jewish Christianity. Paul’s letters have been addressed mainly to Gentile Christians, and soon came to the fore

Mike Bird:
So he becomes incredibly, incredibly popular, particularly amongst Gentiles or, or non-Jewish Christ believers. And you see the veneration of him and his writings, uh, fairly quickly, fairly quickly. 

Chris Forbes:
One Clement, clearly coats clearly quotes from several of Paul’s letters. And one Clement could have been written as early as about 70 AD, but most people put it in the nineties. So by the nineties, the church in Rome, which is where Clement lives, has copies of some of Paul’s letters that he knows. And I suspect he doesn’t even have to look them up to quote them. He’s got them in his head.

Mike Bird:
Certainly when you get to someone like Ignatius of Antioch writing about, you know, 115, 117, he has a very high view of Paul, uh, as well as Pedro and the other apostles. Then you get into all the writings as well. On the second century, one of my favorites is the epistle to diagnetis, which is very much bringing together a whole bunch of themes and quotations from Paul’s letters, uh, as well as other places, such as, um, the gospel of John and that type of thing, and sort of doing a creative synergy with them and various authors as well again, to fo to focus on that chap Irenaeus . He’s another one who seems to be very much devoted to Paul and his letters.

John Dickson (Studio)

It’s important to emphasise here that the Apostolic Fathers, like Clement, are quoting from Paul’s letters really early in the life of the early church. In the case of Clement, we’re still in the first century – 30-40 years after Paul wrote.  

Chris Forbes:
So we’re getting our first indirect evidence of the first century documents being reasonably widespread. And it becomes clear that for example, churches, if they had a letter from Paul, we’re quite willing to write a copy and swap it with the church next door, next town, and this sort of thing began to happen completely. Unsystematically if you’ve got a copy, would you send us one? And we’ll send you a copy of our one that was happening almost certainly in the first century. Demonstrably in the second century.

John Dickson (Studio)

So, the Gospels are in. Paul’s letters (almost all of them): in. And not just ‘in’. In early. Widely accepted as authoritative Christian texts within decades of the Apostles. But there are 10 other books in the New Testament that we haven’t dealt with yet. How did they get picked – if ‘picked’ is the right word? And what about the stuff that didn’t make it in? There’s heaps of stuff left on the cutting room floor.. Even … a few books that call themselves ‘Gospels’ too. And they have a very different story to tell about Jesus. So is the Church hiding something? Find out about those, after the break. 

Break

Reading

An early Christian manuscript, including the only known text of what is known as the Gospel of Judas, has surfaced after 1,700 years. The text gives new insights into the relationship of Jesus and the disciple who betrayed him, scholars reported today.

John Dickson (Studio)

That’s Director Mark reading the opening of a New York Times report from 2006 about the discovery of the Gospel of Judas. 

Reading

In this version, Jesus asked Judas, as a close friend, to sell him out to the authorities, telling Judas he will “exceed” the other disciples by doing so. The discovery in the desert of Egypt of the leather-bound papyrus manuscript, and now its translation, was announced by the National Geographic Society at a news conference in Washington. The 26-page Judas text is said to be a copy in Coptic, made around A. D. 300, of the original Gospel of Judas, written in Greek the century before. Terry Garcia, an executive vice president of the geographic society, said the manuscript, or codex, is considered by scholars and scientists to be the most significant ancient, non-biblical text to be found in the past 60 years.

John Dickson (Studio)

In 1945, a collection of manuscripts was uncovered in the Egyptian town of Nag Hammadi, 500km south of Cairo. The thirteen codices (or books) were found in a storage jar buried underneath a boulder. Bizarrely, the man who made the discovery, whose name was Muhammad Ali, took the priceless documents back to his home, where his mother burned some of the pages as fuel for her bread oven. Fortunately, they were soon viewed by antiquities dealers and made available for scholarly assessment. We have no firm information about who originally owned the books or about why they were hidden in this way sometime in the 4th century. Some have speculated that the collection was being protected from an inquisitorial Church eager to stamp out alternative Gospels (there’s zero evidence for that), but it is just as likely that the leather-bound books—a precious commodity in antiquity—were being hidden from thieves, invaders or just the elements. After years of wrangling between collectors and museums, the codices are now kept safe in the beautiful little Coptic Museum of Cairo. They are classified by scholars as Gnostic Gospels because they all seem to follow a similar pattern of Jesus whispering some secret knowledge – Gnosis – to one of the apostles while the others weren’t listening. The main piece of secret knowledge is that the God of the Jews, that is the God of creation, sucks, and by listening to these secret teachings contained in the document, your spirit can escape this material world and rejoin the highest spirit of the universe. It’s got more in common with Hinduism than Judaism, which is why most scholars think they’re not very good sources for understanding the historical Jesus centuries earlier.

Chris Forbes:
We know the names of at least 30 other gospels, but usually the names are all we know, as in most of them, we don’t have even a single quote from them. Sometimes we have a few quotes. There are only three or four that we have any extensive textual material of, but it is not, I repeat it is not because Constantine or anyone else gathered them up and burned them. It would appear to be because they simply weren’t widespread to start with them were minority documents. 

Mike Bird:
Well, I mean, the simple answer is if, uh, if you simply rate them, um, you know, what I love doing with students, I get them to read the gospel of Thomas, the very last verse verse, 114, um, that’s where, uh, you know, Peter, it goes up to, I think it’s, Peter goes up to Jesus and says, and says, you know, the Lord tell Mary to depart from us, hence for she is a woman and not worthy of eternal life. And Jesus says to Peter, Peter, you leave her be. If she becomes male, she can be saved. So it’s this sort of, you know, esoteric sayings like that. Now the, uh, the Thomas scene, Jesus is not talking about salvation through, um, gender reassignment surgery. I mean, he, he, this is a very deeply symbolic view that that maleness is regarded as the original creation and femaleness is a kind of privation or a kind of, you know, um, atrophy from pure maleness. Uh, it’s that it’s that kind of worldview that’s being bought into and, and, and given a somewhat layered and metaphorical description. And when people had stuff like that, and then they thought about, you know, the faith that they were taught by their parents, uh, the sort of hymns they sang to Christ, the sermons they heard, uh, they, they realized to themselves one of these things is not like another. So this was a very much a different Jesus, not part of the texts, the traditions, the faith that people heard about or were nurtured on. Now that said what we can say about the other gospels, that they were the attempt to, uh, imagine or create a version of Christianity that people thought was going to fit better in the Greco Roman world. So they wanted a Jesus who was less Jesus, so less Jewish and maybe more platonic, or they wanted a, they wanted to, in some senses, I think to turn Christianity into a Greco Roman religion, that was a little bit more palatable in the ancient world. And you can understand for various reasons why they might want to do that, but the verdict of the church largely was that those other Jesus books, if they had one or two good things in them, mostly out of bounds, and then not where. They’re not where we should be finding our testimony of the apostles to Jesus and finding the essence and the meaning of our faith,

John Dickson:
But was that, uh, just a theological and political prejudice to exclude them then?

Mike Bird:
Oh, it was definitely a theological prejudice because in the eyes of the majority of the church, this was a different Jesus with a different gospel, addressing a very different problem, uh, and coming to a very different solution.

John Dickson (Studio)

How do you pick between these two Jesus narratives? This takes us to the heart of how the early Christians decided what was in and what was out. 

Mike Bird:
Generally the reason books were included or excluded from the Canon was whether they could be tied to an apostolic author or an apostolic associates. So someone like Paul Peter or John Mark like that, you know, John Mark being an associate of Peter and Paul, whether they were Orthodox, whether they kind of, you know, um, work could be aligned with the, the rule of faith, you know, the basic summary of, of, of, of the Christian story of, you know, of God, Jesus, the church, that type of a thing. Um, and whether they were, they were actually used universally, you know, and where they were, they used in read in worship around the, the church Catholic, you know, could you take a copy of the gospel of Matthew and go from North Africa all the way to Dalmatia, you know, from Spain all the way from, to Mesopotamia and would people know the book you were referring to, would they have the same sense of, uh, of belief and the authoritative status attributed to that book? That was largely the basis in which, um, certain books were decided to be in and certain books were to be decided to, to be out of bounds. It was more about a developing consensus than a kind of top down imposition.

Chris Forbes:
I think consensus is the right way to describe it. There simply isn’t a push from the top to define what’s in and what’s out, there’s a push from beneath to say, this is what we’ve always used.

John Dickson (Studio)

One thing to keep in mind, says Mike, is that plenty of early Christians were open to finding the voice of Jesus in other texts. They were hungry to learn. Back in our very first episode of Undeceptions, where I got to hold the earliest manuscript fragments of some of Paul’s letters, I called this period of early Christianity the “wild west” — there are lots of texts floating around. And some were more worthy than others, as church leaders soon came to realise. 

Mike Bird:
If anything, a lot of Christian authors were quite open to people reading other books. There’s a good story about a chap called [Serapion], who was a Bishop of Antioch in the second, the second late second century. And he found out one of his churches was using the gospel of Peter and he had a cursory look at it that, okay, fine. Just use that. That’s a that’s. Okay. Uh, but then he found out that some people were trying to use the gospel of Peter, um, to kind of bolster kind of [dosedic] heresy, where Jesus never had a real body and he kinda went back and says, yeah, okay. Now I see where they’re coming from on second thoughts, let’s put that one on the, not to read list or not to use in, in worship. And you can read on your own, you feel like, but let’s not use it in church. So, I mean, that’s a good example to say it, they were reasonably flexible about what about Christians reading other literature and people, like origin and Clement of Alexandria. They’re looking for the voice of Jesus wherever they can find it, even if it’s in another gospel. So they’re willing to read it. 

John Dickson (Studio)

There were a few books that didn’t make it into the New Testament as we know it today, but they were really popular among early Christians. There’s the Shepherd of Hermas, the Didache, the Epistle of Barnabas. 

Chris Forbes:
Shepherd of hermas is written by a Christian elder in the city of Rome, probably in the one 30 is PC some BC, probably in the one thirties Ady though it could have been written earlier than that. It’s not absolutely clear that it must have been. And it’s quite clear that Hermes doesn’t think he’s writing scripture in any full blown sense. He is writing a series of visions. He claims to have had that talk about the situation for the church in Rome, in his time. And it seems that he writes it over quite a long period and eventually brings out a written version of it. And it was very popular in the early church. And there’s one great manuscript of the whole Bible quote unquote from the fourth century that has the shepherd of Hermas in it. But only one that anyone knows

John Dickson:
Now, am I correct in thinking it’s actually at the back of sineticus?

Chris Forbes:
Yes, that is correct. Um, so it may be a kind of appendix, they were obviously thinking, yeah, 100% sure about this, but I rather like it. Oh. And, and we know from one of the church writers of the third century, that though it wasn’t considered one of the books that you read aloud in church, it was one that you recommend to new believers to read for their edification. So it was highly regarded.

John Dickson (Studio)

Codex Sinaiticus, by the way, is the oldest complete copy of the Bible – it’s from the fourth century. You can play with it at the British Library in London. It is probably the most precious book in the world. Frankly, priceless. Anyway, the Shepherd of Hermas appears in this copy of the Bible – but interestingly, at the very back, following the book of Revelation. This is a pretty good indication that the compilers loved the document but weren’t confident it should be included in the main body of the New Testament canon. Personally, I’m not a big fan of the Shepherd of Hermas – it’s a bit too legalistic for my liking. I’m kind of glad the early church eventually agreed it probably doesn’t come from an apostle or a colleague of an apostle. The same is true of the Epistle of Barnabas – which is also tucked away at the back of Codex Sinaiticus. We actually don’t know who wrote the epistle of Barnabas. It was traditionally ascribed to the Barnabas mentioned in the New Testament as a colleague of Paul. That’s partly why Christians wondered whether they should hold onto it. They eventually decided that it probably wasn’t apostolic, in this sense, so they left it to the side – even though they allowed it to be read and studied. Every modern scholar agrees they made a good call, because there’s no way this comes from a first century author and colleague of Paul. Then there’s the Didache, an anonymous compilation of Christian teachings that might be as early as the year 100. 

Chris Forbes:
The Didache is a hard one because various writings tell us that a copies of it were widely known in the ancient world. But as far as I’m aware, it was completely lost after the fourth century Ady and it wasn’t rediscovered until the 1880s. I think when one manuscript was discovered since then, papyri have been discovered that have quotes from it as well, but it was reasonably widespread then was lost. And it wasn’t lost because people hated it. They didn’t, they thought it was great. I think it was lost because it’s became less and less relevant because the [inaudible] is essentially, we would say the foundation document of a network of rural churches, probably from what we’d call rural Syria. And as the churches became more and more urban, the kinds of issues it was addressing simply weren’t as relevant anymore. And its material was gobbled up by various other writers and used, but the document itself became less important and eventually vanished.

John Dickson (Studio)

What about the other books that do appear in our New Testaments today. The so-called Catholic Epistles – or ‘General’ Epistles – that’s the letters of  James, 1 and 2 Peter, 1, 2, 3 John and Jude. These were letters directed to the whole church not just a specific one in, say, Corinth. That’s why they’re called ‘Catholic’ epistles – it’s got nothing to do with the Roman Catholic Church. It just means ‘universal’. The truth is: the majority of Christians in the early church weren’t in wide agreement about these letters.

John Dickson:
What about at the edges of the new Testament, James 2 Peter Jude? Yeah. These texts might not have got in, right?

Mike Bird:
Yeah. Around the edges of the new Testament, there was a bit of, a bit of debate and a bit of argy bargy. Uh, we can say that the four gospels are very popular, the pauline Corpus, uh, including Hebrews of all things. Cause people thought, Oh, well, sounds vaguely like Paul. And there’s some mention of Timothy at the end. So I, maybe it was Paull. So the, the Paul line letters with Hebrews were popular. So was first Peter and first John, the other parts of the new Testament, some people had some debate about. And in fact, the Syrian church, which was sort of outside the realm of the Roman empire, they never really accepted the Catholic epistles hardly until the fifth century. Um, which is very interesting. And some people looked at, you know, the book of revelation and the, now this sort of end of the world stuff, you know, it’s odd. I’m not too sure about that. And some people looked at James and said, Hey, James, is he, is he talking some smack about Paul –  what’s what’s what’s what’s James all about? And, and Jude’s pretty short. And he quotes one Enoch as well. What’s up with that?

John Dickson (Studio)

1 Enoch is a Jewish text from about 200BC. It was really popular amongst Jews of the ancient world, and Jude – being a Jew, Jesus’ half-brother, actually – quotes it to drive home a point.

Chris Forbes:
For none of those documents, was it a question or, but that’s weird stuff. They were documents that were popular and well appreciated. The question was purely are, but are they in that special category, which we’re going to read aloud in church to people who don’t have any other access, because remember many, many people were functionally illiterate and the only way they would get these documents is by having them read aloud to them.

John Dickson (Studio)

By the 4th century, we have a much clearer picture of what the New Testament will end up as. Eusebius of Caesarea was a bishop and historian who wrote a historical account of the first centuries of Christianity called Ecclesiastical History. It was the first of its kind – and some scholars, like Arnaldo Momigliano, think that its careful and systematic use of earlier sources influenced Western historiography, that is, how we responsibly write history. Anyway, in his Ecclesiastical History, Eusebius categorised many of the Christian documents circulating at the time: from ‘recognised’ texts, ‘disputed’ texts, ‘spurious’ texts and ‘heretical’ texts. 

Chris Forbes:
Eusebius is a late third, early fourth century Christian leader or Bishop Eusebius of Cesar Maria. There’s another Eusebius as well. Um, but Eusebius was a mainstream Christian leader. He was a Bishop. He became one of the advisors that Constantine decided if he was going to believe in this God and support the work of this, God he’d better have an expert advisor. And new ZB has got to be the man. And Eusebius was also a considerable scholar and writer. And he wrote the first major history of the churches, which does go back to the first century. What’s intriguing about Eusebius is it’s quite clear that there is no definitive statement of what books are in, in his time. Because if there was he quoted that would settle the issue. But instead he adds up references to, well, many people say this one is in some people say this one isn’t Eusebius is actually useful from this point of view because he makes a nice, clear four way distinction. He distinguishes between number one, the unquestioned books. And that’s the gospels, the acts, the letters of Paul, um, the first letter of John and the literate of Peter, I think he means one Peter. And he said, we could add to that, the revelation of John. And then there are books that he calls disputed books. Now these are books that everyone thinks are great, but it’s disputed whether they’re in the top category. And he says, you mentioned earlier the letter of James, that letter of Jude, the second letter of Peter, the second and third letters of John, those are uncertain. Then he adds, there are books that are not genuine. Now, those ones that he just mentioned, which are disputed, we would say ended up in he’s honestly reporting, but not everyone was sure at this point.

John Dickson:
It’s amazing how free he is to tell us that instead of nervously trying to, you know, take down all the yes,

Chris Forbes:
I think it’s because the issue, isn’t a really fierce one in his time, and it’s certainly not a mountain matter of Imperial policy. 

John Dickson (Studio)

Eusebius was a bishop, remember. He was a leader of the church. Everyone looked to him for guidance on matters. But he doesn’t make things neat. He doesn’t skew things or hide things. He is really transparent and historical in the way he talks about things. There was massive agreement, he says, about the Gospels, Acts, and Paul’s letters – the majority of the NT – and there was some lingering discussion about other texts. No one who knows these sources well can imagine that there was some nefarious political thing going on in the discussion about the ‘canon’. They were all just trying to work out what was ‘apostolic’ – what clearly carried the voice of an apostle or colleague of an apostle – so that they could sit under its teaching, and let it shape their faith and life. There is a humility that oozes through the whole thing. They don’t want to be deceived. They want to trust the right documents. Jesus had appointed the apostles to speak on his behalf – like ambassadors – so listening to that ambassadorial message was listening to the voice of Christ. We may disagree with it all, but it was a pretty solid and sincere process. 

Chris Forbes:
Then there are books called the acts of Paul, the shepherd that’s Hermes, the apocalypse of Peter, the litter of Barnabas and the [Didache]. And he says the revelation of John, if that view prevail for, as I said, some rejected, but others countered among the recognized books. So the only one of those that actually ended up in is the revelation of John. The others are all ones written in the second century, 18 or later. Then there are other ones that are positively spurious, and these are the ones which I take it. Nobody is interested in putting in the Bible for any reason. And he gives a list of those as well. And there’s the gospel of the Hebrews, the gospel of the Ebenites, the gospel of Thomas, the gospel of Peter, various others that he mentions. 

John Dickson (Studio)

So, when do we actually get the New Testament — when do we get an agreed list of the 27 books in our Bible today? 

Chris Forbes:
Well, the answer is in the year three 97 at the council of Carthage. Canon, number 24 of the council of Carthage is a list of the 27 books we think are in the new Testament. And really there’s been no serious argument about it between the council of Carthage and now. There was one other major council, a generation earlier, the counsel of Laodicea in 363 AD did I say basically earlier, good, 363 AD, which helpfully comments that it recognized the common practice of all the churches. And it doesn’t tell us what it was, which again is point that it wasn’t controversial the issue. Wasn’t a red hot one. So there’s nothing at Nicea layer to see us is get on with what you’re doing. And the council of Carthage in three 97, formalizes it with A LIST.

John Dickson:
Okay. So 397, we are more than 300 years after the latest of these texts was written yes. Before there’s a, uh, from these 27 and no others. Why shouldn’t people listening go, Oh, well, there you go. Um, this whole thing was a shemozzle?

Chris Forbes:
Well, you can choose, you can make it a highly organized conspiracy and throw them out for that reason. Or you can say it’s a schmozzle and throw them out for that reason. But it seems to me, those are precisely opposite arguments. It wasn’t a schmozzle, it was consensus, and the consensus was formed out of the common practice of a widespread number of early Christian churches and ended up choosing pretty successfully the first and second generation documents, the first century documents and excluding ones that came later. In other words, the early church, systematically culled documents that were late way too late to actually have direct memories of what Jesus had been like.

John Dickson (Studio)

As I said to Chris, the process might sound messy. It’s so … human. So ‘historical’. Not at all like that story from Voltaire where all the books are laid on an altar, and the books that are not to be included magically fall off in some divine stroke of lightning. Nor was it a political process. It was a historical process – as Christians searched to find the voice of the apostles (and so the voice of Jesus). But, I wonder, what else would we expect from a faith so grounded in history? Christians believe in a man – Jesus – who we say really lived in the first century. His story is told in a series of historical biographies and historical letter. There are ways for us to test them, historically, which we have done in previous episodes (Producer Kaley says you should check out Episodes 7, 10, 12 and 16 — all linked in our show notes). So why shouldn’t the process of discovering the sacred text of Christianity be similarly (1) human and (2) able to be traced through history? The reality is: the early Christians did a brilliant job of sifting ‘in’ the apostolic voice, and sifting ‘out’ what didn’t really capture that voice. 

Let’s press pause. I’ve got a five-minute Jesus for you. Actually, it’s more like a three-minutes. The fundamental idea behind the Christian ‘canon’—the official collection of authoritative texts— was that the church was striving to discover anything with apostolic authority. If a document was written by an apostle or a colleague of an apostle, and that document was consistent with the core apostolic teaching, that document was felt to be authoritative. It’s similar to the way you might listen to the official statements of an ambassador because ambassadors reflect the mind of the sending government. That’s the key thought: Christians believed they could hear the truth of Christ himself—the truth of God—in the teaching of the Apostles. It’s quite a different idea of Scripture from, say, Islam, which views the Koran as a divine dictation, an direct disclosure of God’s own thoughts, in the first person: I God tell you this that and the other. The early Christians’ theory of inspiration was based on the logic that the apostles were charged by Christ to speak with authority on his behalf. The simple thing I want to point out is that this notion of “the apostolic teaching reflecting the mind of Christ” was itself a clear teaching of Christ. The early church didn’t invent this notion because they wanted a new scripture. They knew beyond doubting that Jesus had appointed “apostles”, a word that’s very similar in meaning to our term “ambassador”. Apostle (apóstolos) literally means “sent one”, and it carries the connotation that the ‘sent one’ carries the authority of the sender. And this notion is everywhere in our evidence. In our earliest gospel, Mark, we read (Mark 3:14) “Jesus appointed twelve that they might be with him and that he might send them out to preach … “ We associate this word ‘preach’ with a simple religious activity, but the term kerrússo means to act as an official Herald – they were to herald an authoritative message. Independent of both Mark and this Q passage  is the apostle Paul writing in the mid-50s A.D.  But he records the earliest Christian creed, which even the most secular scholars today date to within five years of the life of Jesus: Paul quotes the creed as saying “Christ appeared to Cephas (that’s Peter) and then to the 12.” The point is: three early and separate sources coincide on the crucial point: Christ himself established a select group to be his authorised heralds and judges over the people of God. Now, we might not buy any of that, but there’s no denying that the early Christian passion to find anything written with apostolic authority, and then you submit to it as if to Christ himself, is an idea we can trace to Jesus himself. You can press play now. 

John Dickson:
So from a historical point of view, how well do you reckon those Christians did at gathering their founding texts? They chose ones that were from the first generations. They chose ones that had been widely quoted by later figures and they chose ones that they thought were mainstream. And on those terms they chose well.

Chris Forbes:
I think there’s two extreme views that people can take when it comes to the creation of the Christian Canon of scripture. One that you’ve already touched on John, that’s the idea that the whole thing was kind of imposed and fabricated as a power move in the fourth century, by Constantine and a sherry of bishops who wanted some sort of religious text to unify the empire, to use as a big club that they can, they can wield to punish, you know, various minorities who don’t toe the line of the mixture of Imperial and religious power. And that’s one extreme view. The other extreme view is basically that the, uh, the Bible just kind of fell out of the sky, but it scattered in different places. And then the early church fathers went on a treasure hunt with their magical iPhones, with an inspiration-o-meter app on their phone. And they’d come across the text and they’d run their inspiration-o-meter on it. And you know, the shepherd of ms, um, gets a slight rating, but not a full reading. You know, Paul’s letter to the Romans are man, that’s off the chart and they kind of just go around looking for these inspired texts and then just add them to the kitty. Uh, the reality is, is that once Christ came and the apostles were writing about him and other people were writing about them, they face the question, which are the books that are the primary testimony to the apostolate gospel of Jesus. And God used the church not to create the word of God, but to put the word of God into its canonical location. So God in his Providence brings the church together and through its debates, it’s counsels, it’s testimonies, um, crystallizes the word of God into its canonical form. So that’s the process that I see happening. And that’s simply how, how I think God works. God works through his people through his church, bringing his word to the world.

John Dickson (Studio)

The New Testament is NOT a political document. Anything but. It’s a document based on the usage of the early Christians – a people mainly from the lower classes, a people striving to know what they were meant to trust. They knew Jesus appointed apostles, so they used their best investigative powers and wide, wide consultation with each other, in order to hear the voice of Christ in the writings of the apostles or their colleagues. It wasn’t a bunch of high powered individuals getting together to pick their favourites. The books we read in the New Testament are the books the majority of early Christians were reading from the beginning (certainly in the case of the Gospels, Acts, and the letters of Paul).  And it’s clear that the majority were were reading these books – and not the many, many others – because they were closest in time and message to those appointed by Jesus. The right captains were chosen for the job – not politicians but humble learners and teachers. And they didn’t really ‘choose’ the texts they preferred. The discerned, as best they could, which documents carry the authority of an apostle, of Jesus, of God. As I say, some listeners won’t believe any of this spiritual stuff – about the authority of apostles or the notion of a word from God.  That’s fine. This episode is really just about clearing up the history, and busting a few unfortunate popular myths. The early Christians did a great job a discovering the authentic message of Jesus. If you gave a bunch of objective historians today the hundreds of texts we possess from the first couple of centuries of Christianity, and asked them to come up with a list – a canon – of texts that captured the first-century voice of Jesus and his apostles and could be confidently dated to that century … they’d come up with pretty much exactly the 27 texts we find in the New Testament today. 

Undeceptions theme