The Foundation of the Canon
Almost 1,982 years ago Joshua (whose name means Yahweh is salvation ) was crucified. Since that time a substantial amount of writings both, canonical and non-canonical were written about Him and His teachings. I learned in the past that there are certain qualifications that have to be passed in order for a writing to be considered canon and placed in the New Testament of the bible, however when looking back through history I see something quite different has taken place. There were different defensive reasons that were taken into consideration as to why writings were separated from other writings and placed into the “New Testament” canon. The first defense was from legalism which was quickly handled by Paul as described in the New Testament. This was followed by the church fathers defense against Gnosticism. These heresies needed to be addressed swiftly, especially after Marcion created the first New Testament which took out all …show more content…
The first books of the New Testament to be considered authoritative was called the fourfold or the four gospels. Jordan Daniel May gives a good argument in his essay “The Four Pillars: the Four Fold Gospel Before the Time of Irenaeus” of how it is almost certain that Justin Martyr and Irenaeus both considered the gospel canon closed because most of their quotes come from these four books. Justin used mainly these four books during worship meetings that he held while Irenaeus said God made four Gospels to compliment the four covenants just as He had made four Pillars to hold up the world and the four gospels to spread the good news. After Justin’s martyrdom his student Tatiana put together the already widely used gospels. He took out overlapping information while adding words to tie all the gospels together his work was called Tatian’s
Almost 1,982 years ago Joshua (whose name means Yahweh is salvation ) was crucified. Since that time a substantial amount of writings both, canonical and non-canonical were written about Him and His teachings. I learned in the past that there are certain qualifications that have to be passed in order for a writing to be considered canon and placed in the New Testament of the bible, however when looking back through history I see something quite different has taken place. There were different defensive reasons that were taken into consideration as to why writings were separated from other writings and placed into the “New Testament” canon. The first defense was from legalism which was quickly handled by Paul as described in the New Testament. This was followed by the church fathers defense against Gnosticism. These heresies needed to be addressed swiftly, especially after Marcion created the first New Testament which took out all …show more content…
The first books of the New Testament to be considered authoritative was called the fourfold or the four gospels. Jordan Daniel May gives a good argument in his essay “The Four Pillars: the Four Fold Gospel Before the Time of Irenaeus” of how it is almost certain that Justin Martyr and Irenaeus both considered the gospel canon closed because most of their quotes come from these four books. Justin used mainly these four books during worship meetings that he held while Irenaeus said God made four Gospels to compliment the four covenants just as He had made four Pillars to hold up the world and the four gospels to spread the good news. After Justin’s martyrdom his student Tatiana put together the already widely used gospels. He took out overlapping information while adding words to tie all the gospels together his work was called Tatian’s