GENERAL BIBLE FACTS. GENERAL REMARKS ON IT AS LITERATURE. GENERAL REMARKS ON THE CANON OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. GENERAL REMARKS ON THE CANON OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 

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THE WORD Bible is derived from the Greek word biblia, a neuter plural diminutive noun [literally, little books] which, among other senses, is used in Greek to designate, among other writings, the books of the Old and New Testaments. Chrysostom, who was one of the four Greek church fathers, and who died in 407 A.D., appears to have been the first to use this term as the appellation of the Holy Scriptures. This word, biblia, is derived from the Greek word biblos, which primarily means the inner bark of the papyrus, whence it came to mean book. The Septuagint uses the expression ta [the] biblia [books] in translating the corresponding expression in the Hebrew of Dan. 9:2, where the expression is used of the Old Testament Scriptures already then written. There is a partial allusion to this name in the Prologue to the (Apocryphal) book of Jesus, the son of Sirach [Ecclesiasticus], about 200 B.C., where the third division of the Hebrew Old Testament is called "the rest of the books." In another Apocryphal book (1 Macc. 12:9) the whole of the Old Testament is called "the holy books." This name for the Old Testament was early adopted by Christian writers (2 Clement 14:2); and from the time of Chrysostom onward it came to cover both of the Testaments combined. The Western Church adopted this Greek word as the name of both Testaments; and until the thirteenth century they were, accordingly, called Biblia, "the books." During the thirteenth century this neuter plural Greek word, Biblia, by a grammatical mistake became used in the Latin as a feminine singular noun, and thus "the 

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Books" were called "the Book"; and this usage, which we think is a most happy one, entered into the living languages of Europe, among others, into English, whence we have our name Bible, not Bibles, for one copy. It first appeared in English about the time of Wyclif, who died December 31, 1384. Thus we see that the name has in part a Biblical and in part an extra-Biblical origin. 

Taking the initial Hebrew letters of the names of the three divisions of the Hebrew Old Testament: Torah (Law), Nebiim (Prophets) and Kethubim (Writings), the Hebrews have formed a meaningless word as a name for the Old Testament-Tanach. Self-evidently the New Testament does not give itself in its entirety any name at all; but St. Peter does imply that St. Paul's epistles had an equally authoritative standing with the Old Testament Scriptures (2 Pet. 3:16). The most common name that the New Testament, both by Jesus and the Apostles, gives the Old Testament books is "The Scripture," i.e., The Writing, and "The Scriptures," i.e., The Writings, sometimes with the word "Holy" added. The following is a complete list of these: Matt. 21:42; 22:29; 26:54, 56; Mark 12:10, 24; 14:49; 15:28; Luke 4:21; 24:27, 32, 45; John 2:22; 5:39; 7:38, 42; 10:35; 13:18; 17:12; 19:24, 28, 36, 37; 20:9; Acts 1:16; 8:32, 35; 17:2, 11; 18:24, 28; Rom. 1:2; 4:3; 9:17; 10:11; 11:2; 15:4; 16:26; 1 Cor. 15:3, 4; Gal. 3:8, 22; 4:30; 1 Tim. 5:18; 2 Tim. 3:15, 16; Jas. 2:8, 23; 4:5; 1 Pet. 2:6; 2 Pet. 1:20; 3:16. In the A.R.V. of 2 Tim. 3:15, we have as a better translation the word sacred instead of holy, in the expression, "holy Scriptures." Luke (Luke 24:44) refers to the threefold division of the Hebrew Old Testament by the expression, "the Law of Moses, and the Prophets, and the Psalms" (the first book of the third division here is made to stand for all the books of that division). But Jesus more frequently abbreviates the expression into that of "the Law and the Prophets" (Matt. 5:17; 7:12; 

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11:13; 22:40; Luke 16:16, 29, 31; 24:27; John 1:45). Other New Testament uses of this expression are: Acts 13:15; 24:14; 26:22; Rom. 3:21. In some passages the word "Law" is used with reference to the entire Old Testament, and that because the books of Moses, being the most important, give their name to the whole—the most important part standing for the whole (Luke 5:17; John 7:49; 10:34; 12:34; 15:25; Acts 5:34; 6:13; 22:12; 23:29; 1 Cor. 14:21; Gal. 4:21). The New Testament uses the word "oracles" to designate the Old Testament, as the following passages prove: Acts 7:38; Rom. 3:2; Heb. 5:12; 1 Pet. 4:11. There are other Biblical expressions that designate the Old Testament. It is called: the Book (Ps. 40:7; Heb. 10:7), the Law of the Lord (Ps. 1:2; here the New Testament is also included), the Book of the Lord (Is. 34:16), the Law and the Testimony, which also includes the New Testament (Is. 8:20) and the Scripture of Truth (Dan. 10:21). The contents of the whole Bible, rather than the Bible as such, are referred to in expressions like the following: Good Word of God (Heb. 6:5), Sword of the Spirit (Eph. 6:17), the Word (Jas. 1:21-23; 1 Pet. 2:2), the Word of God (Luke 11:28; Heb. 4:12), the Word of Christ (Col. 3:16), the Word of Life (Phil. 2:16) and the Word of Truth (2 Tim. 2:15; Jas. 1:18). And from the standpoint of putting the container for the thing contained, we may properly apply these names to the Bible as such. If we so do, we are to remember that this is done by metonymy (the container for the thing contained), and not as the names Scripturally given to the Bible by direct appellation. 

It has become customary in English to call the two parts of the Bible the Old Testament and the New Testament, the word testament ordinarily in English means a will; but such is not the sense attached to the two names current as to the two parts of the Bible. The Bible nowhere calls these two the Old and New Testaments. In these names the word testament means 

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covenant; and with this meaning in mind the misleading character of these names becomes apparent to the instructed; for the pre-Gospel-Age revelation of God, while it contains the Mosaic Covenant, which St. Paul (2 Cor. 3:14, 15) properly calls the Old Covenant (see A.R.V.; improperly rendered testament here and in v. 6 in the A.V.), contains much matter (more than three-fourths of it) which is not a part of the Mosaic or Old Covenant, even as St. Peter tells us, very much of it pertains to Christ and the Church, i.e., belongs to the Sarah Covenant (1 Pet. 1:10-12), and as our study has in part of it proven. Furthermore, the Gospel-Age revelation of God treats in almost its entirety of the Sarah Covenant, and has very little to say of the New Covenant, which is to operate Millennially and post-Millennially and does not operate now. This name, New Testament, Covenant, given to the Gospel-Age revelation of God is more responsible for the popular error that the New Covenant has been operating since Calvary and Pentecost than anything else, as it is a most effective hiding of the truth that the covenant now operating is the Sarah Covenant. The above considerations prove that the names Old Testament and New Testament, especially the latter, are misnomers. But, as names, they are so deeply rooted in the speech of the masses that it would be useless to attempt to agitate a change of names for these two parts of the Bible. At least this palliates the error: that most people do not associate the meaning of the word covenant with that of testament, and that, accordingly, they use these names not to mean two covenants, but the two parts of the Bible, without especially associating the idea of covenant with them. The A.R.V. and the R.V. have set aside the word Testament and substituted the word Covenant in the names of these two parts of the Bible, an unfortunate change, as the above remarks prove. 

This brings us to a consideration of the divisions of the Bible. Of course, these two Testaments are its

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primary divisions. But each of these is also subdivided. In our English Bibles the Old Testament is usually divided into four parts: (1) Legal Books, (2) Historical Books, (3) Devotional-Didactic Books and (4) Prophetic Books, while the English New Testament is usually divided into three parts: (1) Historical Books, (2) Didactic Books and (3) A Prophetic Book. These divisions are not the most desirable, because, e.g., there is much history in the legal books, since Genesis is entirely historical, Exodus and Numbers mainly so and Leviticus and Deuteronomy subordinately so. The Didactic is found somewhat in judges (Deborah's song) and 1 and 2 Samuel, the historical somewhat in Job, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Daniel. Again, there is much of the didactic in the Gospels and Acts, and somewhat of the autobiographical and personal in some Epistles, e.g., 2 Cor., Gal., Phil., Phile., 2 Pet., 2 and 3 John. But the Lord Himself has given us a division of the Old Testament in the three Hebrew names given above: (1) Torah, (2) Nebiim and (3) Kethubim. By the Torah (Law in a wide sense) the five books of Moses, the Pentateuch, are meant. By the Nebiim (Prophets) the books written by men belonging to the prophet order or profession are meant. And by the Kethubim the books that were written by men not belonging to the prophet order are meant. God has not by name given us a way of dividing the New Testament books. The following is a way of dividing them, but it does not divide them according to their thought matter: (1) The Gospels, (2) the Acts, (3) the Epistles and (4) Revelation. 

The order in which many books of both Testaments are found in the originals and in the English is different. Fortunately, for the Old Testament the Lord gave us the order. This is the same from Genesis up to and including 2 Kings in the original and in the English. From there on the order changes. While in the English the Old Testament books proceed from 2 Kings with 1 and 2 Chro., Ezra, Neh., Esther, Job, 

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Ps., Prov., Eccl., Cant., Is., Jer., Lam., Ezek., Dan. and the twelve Minor Prophets, in the Hebrew original 2 Kings is followed by Is., Jer., Lam., Ezek. and the twelve Minor Prophets. These, beginning with Joshua and ending with Malachi, constitute the Nebiim (Prophets). The Kethubim consist of the following books: Ps., Prov., Job, Cant., Eccl., Esther, Dan., Ezra, Neh. and 1 and 2 Chro., this being the order in the Hebrew original. As for the New Testament, the order for the first five books is the same in the Greek and the English; thereafter the order varies. Unlike the English order, wherein the Pauline Epistles follow immediately after the Acts, the so-called general Epistles follow immediately after the Acts—viz., Jas. 1 and 2 Pet., 1, 2 and 3 John and Jude. Then follow Rom., 1 and 2 Cor., Gal., Eph., Phil., Col. and 1 and 2 Thes. Thereafter again a break in the order occurs. Whereas in the English the order of the next books is: 1 and 2 Tim., Tit., Phile. and Heb., in the Greek the order is Heb., 1 and 2 Tim., Tit. and Phile. Then, all agree in placing Rev. last. It should be added that all Greek MSS. do not in all particulars follow the above-given order for the New Testament books; but the better and older ones do so give it. 

While we do not have a Divinely-arranged order for the books of the New Testament, we do have a Divinely-arranged order for the books of the Old Testament. It is that given in the preceding paragraph, under the three divisions: Torah, Nebiim and Kethubim. The second division, Nebiim, is subdivided into two parts: (1) the Former Prophets (Josh., Judg., Ruth, 1 and 2 Sam. and 1 and 2 Kings); and (2) the Later Prophets (Is., Jer., Lam., Ezek. and the twelve Minor Prophets). Especially noteworthy is the absence of the book of Dan. from the second division, the Prophets of the Old Testament; for we find it among the Kethubim, the Writings. This fact raises the question, Why are Ps., written mainly by David, and Dan., written by Daniel, both being called prophets 

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in the New Testament (Acts 2:30; Matt. 24:15), not placed among the books called the Prophets, instead of being placed among the Writings? The answer to this question will enable us to see that principle of division was followed by God in giving us the threefold division of the Old Testament as Torah, Nebiim and Kethubim. The books were by God assigned to their respective divisions on the basis of the official relation of their writers to God: Moses having a thoroughly unique office before God as Lawgiver, the books that he wrote (Gen., Ex., Lev., Num. and Deut.) stand by themselves, alone, as unique—the Torah. The writers of the books that compose the second division of the Hebrew Scriptures being by profession Prophets, i.e., they belonged to the order of prophets, their books are grouped as separate and distinct from all others. E.g., Samuel, who wrote Josh, Judg. and Ruth (Acts 3:24), was by profession a prophet, and not a king, husbandman or shepherd by profession. The same is true of all the other writers of this second division of the Hebrew Scriptures, Jeremiah and Ezekiel (priests) and Amos (a shepherd) are no exceptions to this rule; for God directly says that He called them to the prophet office (Jer. 1:1-10; Ezek. 1:3; 2:3; 3:4-17; Amos 1:1; 7:14). The writers of the Kethubim were: for Ps.—mainly David, a king, not a prophet, by profession; for Prov., Eccl. and Cant.—Solomon, a king by profession; for Job—quite likely Solomon; for God placed this book immediately after Prov., and just before Cant. and Eccl.; for Dan.—Daniel, a statesman by profession; for Esther, Ezra and 1 and 2 Chro.—Ezra, a priest; and for Neh.—Nehemiah, a governor by profession. Thus none of the writers of the Kethubim belonged to the order of prophets, which fact makes their writings occupy a part of the Old Testament separate and distinct from the Torah and Nebiim. 

The English Old Testament contains 39 books and the English New Testament contains 27 books, thus 

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totaling 66 for the entire Bible. The number 39 as that of the Old Testament is also indicated in the Hebrew Scriptures because of their being so printed. The number 66 is also shown in the types of the Bible, e.g., the two piles of shewbread, each of six loaves, standing side by side, 6 and 6, represent the 66 books of the Bible, which are the special food of the true priesthood. Then, the tabernacle's boards, pillars and bars—the bars as they were constructed over against, and in relation to one another, are also 66 in number, to symbolize the 66 books of the Bible; and in the cases of the pillars they symbolize also certain New Testament writers. But anciently the Hebrew Bible had 24 books, the reduction occurring by making one book out of each of the following sets of two books: 1 and 2 Sam., 1 and 2 Kings, 1 and 2 Chro., and Ezra and Nehemiah, and in making one book out of the twelve Minor Prophets. This reduction of the 39 Old Testament books of 24 God Himself approved, as we will bring out in another connection. Artificially the scribes of Jesus' day, as Josephus shows (Against Apion, 1:8), reduced the number to 22, by combining Ruth with Judges and Lamentations with Jeremiah. Their doing this was in order to have as many books in their Scriptures as there are letters in the Hebrew alphabet—surely an artificial reason and something in harmony with the characters of those whom Jesus charged with burdening the people with their man-made doctrines as Divinely obligatory commands (Matt. 15:9). Modern editions of the Hebrew Scriptures usually place Ruth and Lamentations among the Kethubim; but this is contrary to the Lord's plan of making the divisions depend on the official relations of the writers to Him. The change came about as follows: There are five books (Esther, Ruth, Cant., Lam. and Eccl.) that the Jews often put in a separate scroll for convenience of use, for reading at certain festivals. When they did not put them together in a separate scroll, in order to have them together, the majority of them belonging to 

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the Kethubim, they took Ruth and Lam. out of the Nebiim (Prophets) and placed them among the other three, so that they could conveniently turn the scroll to them without much rolling of the scroll. When these books are in a scroll by themselves the Jews call them the Migilloth, a detached scroll. 

The original language of the Old Testament is, with small exceptions, Hebrew. These exceptions are Jer. 10:11; Ezra 4:8—6:18; 7:12-26; Dan. 2:4—7:28. These exceptions are in the Aramaic language, sometimes called Chaldee, a Semitic language that is closely related to Hebrew, and that supplanted the Hebrew language as the spoken language of the Jews in Palestine several centuries B.C. It and Greek were the main languages of ordinary intercourse in Palestine in the days of our Lord. Apart from a few archeological finds of very small compass, until recently the original Old Testament Scriptures were the only examples of pure Hebrew literature. These have been added to by several translations of the New Testament into Hebrew, beginning with that of Delitzsch in 1878, and immensely added to during the last fifty years, since when the Hebrew language has gradually become again a living language, with an ever-growing literature. The New Testament was originally written in Greek—not the Greek of the classical Greek period, but the Greek of the educated people of the first century of our era, called the koine (the general or communal speech). But the New Testament Greek, while representative of the good Greek of the first Christian century, contains quite a number of Hebrew idioms, called Hebraisms, literally translated into Greek, for which reason an interpreter of the Greek New Testament finds a knowledge of Hebrew a great help to an understanding of the New Testament Greek. Formerly most scholars, steeped in the Greek of the classic period—550 to 325 B.C., looked askance at the New Testament Greek as barbarous; but since the nineties of the last century, when the discoveries of the Greek

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papyri, especially in Egypt, began to be made, it has been found that the New Testament Greek was the Greek of the educated Greek-speaking people of that day, barring its Hebraisms. However, these idioms, the peculiar forms of the Septuagint's Greek, which influenced the New Testament Greek, the peculiarities of its writers and, above all, the new meanings that the Holy Spirit breathed into many New Testament Greek words, make its Greek require a special study by itself, somewhat different from that of the classic Greek. Hence the need of specialized study thereon. 

The original MSS. of the Hebrew Scriptures—those that came from the hands of its original writers—are, of course, lost, due to the ravages of time. Many copies of these suffered the same fate. Additionally, many of them were destroyed by Nebuchadnezzar and Antiochus Epiphanes. But they were held in such reverence by the Jews that they would have died to preserve them. Hence the Hebrew Scriptures have come down to us in greater purity than any other examples of ancient written literature, excepting the New Testament in the original Greek. One reason why we do not have more ancient MSS. of the Hebrew Scriptures is due to the course of the Massoretes. The Massoretes were Hebrew scholars who, from about 450 to 900 A.D., worked on the editing of as pure a text of the Hebrew Scriptures as it was possible for them to prepare. They undertook this work because of the immense number of variant readings in the various copies of the Hebrew Scriptures. When they had completed their work, by common consent all Hebrew copies not conforming to their text were destroyed. Hence it is that our oldest MS. of the Hebrew Old Testament dates from about 925 A.D. It is now in the British Museum. Originally and for many centuries afterward the written Hebrew text was entirely in consonants. It was the Massoretes who supplied these consonants with points that stand for vowels. The work of the Massoretes has prevented there being 

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many variant readings in the Hebrew Scriptures, though in certain cases they, unwilling to alter the text from what they found it, gave in the margin better readings than some of those that they found in the text—probably not more than 200 of such in all in the margin. However, in their notes (Massorah) and in other commentaries, etc., tens of thousands of such have been preserved. And Dr. C. D. Ginsburg in his Hebrew Bible has published many thousands of these, as he has published even more in his Massorah. 

While our ancient MSS. of the Hebrew Scriptures are comparatively few and comparatively recent, the oldest being about 1,000 years old, our MSS. of the New Testament are decidedly older and more numerous. The oldest of these, complete or nearly complete, are the Vatican and the Sinaitic, which date from about 325 A.D. The MS. Ephraemi, though more or less incomplete, dates from the fifth century. The Alexandrian also dates from the fifth century. This is also true of Beza's MS., containing the Gospels and the Acts. Thence New Testament MSS. increase rapidly in number. In 1909 Gregory listed 4,070 Greek MSS. for the New Testament in whole or in part. These MSS. are written in two forms: (1) entirely in capital letters with no spaces between the words, which MSS. are called uncials; and (2) in small letters, which MSS. are called cursives. The more ancient MSS. are uncials. With one probable exception, no other MS. is so ancient as those of the Greek New Testament, and certainly we have more examples of them than examples of any other MSS. of ancient books that have come down to us. And in proportion there are less variant readings in these than in those of other ancient books. Indeed, there are no variant readings materially affecting a doctrine of the Bible on which there is a reasonable doubt as to which are the correct ones. In this fact, amid the multiplicity of New Testament Greek MSS. and the consequent increased possibilities of variant readings,

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we have a striking evidence of God's watchcare over the purity of the Bible text, which was exercised, however, not coercively, but in line with overruling the effects of the human factor for error. 

Before printing came into existence, about the middle of the fifteenth century A. D., like all other MSS., Bible MSS. were re-written, i.e., copied by hand, usually in the New Testament (Greek) by monks, generally on finely prepared skins called parchments, and later on paper made from the leaves of the papyrus plant. In the Hebrew they were generally made on scrolls so that they could be rolled from one of its rolls to the other as one turned from one book or passage to another book or passage. Each end of the parchment was rolled around a cylindrical stick that passed for about six inches from its ends through the center of carved disk-like pieces of wood varying from four to ten inches in diameter, dependent on the size of the parchment, and about three-quarters of an inch thick. These served as "book-ends" to hold the MSS. securely between them, while the six inches of the projected sticks served for the scroll rests, handles and means of rolling and unrolling the scrolls. These scrolls can be seen in any synagogue when they are taken out of the "ark" about the middle of the morning service on Saturdays. We suggest that our readers visit such a synagogue in order to see one of these scrolls. The skins of these parchments are firmly and artistically attached to one another; and some of these parchments, especially those containing the entire Hebrew Old Testament, are perhaps one hundred yards long; hence the need of rolling the MSS. from one to the other roll. Additionally, long after the days of Christ, the Hebrew MSS. were often written on leaves and bound together at one end by leather cords, and thus formed a book somewhat like our books, but without the "bone backs" of our more modern books. The scrolls were written in side-by-side columns, often twenty inches deep from top to bottom, and from three

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to five inches wide. Being Hebrew, the words were written from right to left, and not, like our scripts or prints, from left to right. Their text was not originally, nor for many centuries afterward, divided into chapters or verses, nor were there breaks for these and for the separation of words, sentences and paragraphs from one another. To illustrate how writing or printing from right to left in Hebrew is done, we will here give part of John 1:1-3, with the letters and words reversed and unspaced, as was done in Hebrew, and at the same time illustrate the Hebrew column formation, which looks strange to an English eye. 

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In English style these verses read: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by Him; and without Him was not any." How different the two methods are! 

The art of printing having been discovered about 1440 A.D., and all copies of the Bible previous to that data having been written by hand, usually in the New Testament Greek, and in translations of both Testaments by monks, and in the Hebrew Old Testament by Jewish scribes, the first book ever printed naturally had to come after that date, and fittingly was a Bible (in Latin), printed by Johann Gutenberg, at Mainz, Germany. The first Hebrew Old Testament appeared in print earlier than the first Greek Testament. The former was printed in parts. The Torah (Pentateuch) first appeared in print at Bologna, Italy, in 1482, ten years before Columbus discovered San Salvador, as an American outpost; the Earlier Nebiim (Prophets) in 1485 and the Later Nebiim in 1486, both at Soncino, Italy; and the Kethubim (Writings, or Hagiographa) in 1486 and 1487, at Naples, Italy. The first printed edition of the entire Old Testament appeared in 1488, at Soncino, edited by Abraham Ben (son of) Chayim 

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de Trutore; the second at Naples, about 1491-1493; the third at Brescia, Italy, in 1494; the fourth at Pesaro, Italy, in 1511-1517. The first edition of the Rabbinic Bible, edited by Felix Pratensis, and published by Bomberg, Venice, appeared in four volumes folio, 1517; the second at Venice, 1524-1525. The best edition of the Hebrew Old Testament, edited with perhaps 10,000 variants by C. D. Ginsburg, a converted rabbi, appeared at London, England, in 1894, and the next best, edited by R. Kittel, appeared at Leipzig, Germany, 1905-1906. The first printed edition of the Greek New Testament is that of Erasmus; it appeared at Basel, 1516, since which time many editions of the Greek New Testament have appeared, particularly during the 19th and 20th centuries, when the multiplicity of MSS. of the Greek New Testament gave the text critics better helps for reconstructing a purer text, on which Tischendorf, Tregelles, Westcott and Hort, Weiss, Souter, Gregory and Von Soden did monumental work. The first printed edition of the entire Hebrew and Greek Bible appeared in six folio volumes, 1514-1520, at Complutum (Latin name for Alcala, Spain), and is called Complutensian Polyglott (Greek for many-tongued), from the name of the town where it was printed and from its appearing in four languages: The Septuagint being printed in columns beside the Hebrew, and the Vulgate in columns beside the Greek. Thus it was a polyglott. 

A few words additional to those above on the Greek MSS. of the New Testament would, we trust, prove not unwelcome. The Vatican MS. is so called, because it is kept in the Vatican Library, Rome, Italy, and that as its richest treasure. It contains almost the entire New Testament, but stops in Heb. 9:14, lacking the rest of that book, the two Timothies, Titus, Philemon and Revelation. So far as it goes, it is the best of all Greek MSS. of the New Testament. In 1889 at Rome a facsimile edition of 100 copies was printed. Like all the other most ancient MSS. of the 

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Greek New Testament, it is an uncial. The Sinaitic MS. was discovered in parts, the first in 1844 and the rest in 1859, at the Monastery of St. Catherine, on Mt. Sinai, by C. Tischendorf. He brought it to St. Petersburg, Russia, where it remained until 1935, when it was bought by the British public and deposited in the British Museum, where also is the Alexandrian MS., which dates from the fifth century, and which is the third most ancient and best of the fuller New Testament Greek MSS. The last named MS. was brought to England in 1628 by Cyril Lucar, Patriarch of Constantinople, and presented by him to King Charles I. Cyril Lucar had brought it to Constantinople from Alexandria, where he had been patriarch. Hence its name. While it lacks Matt. 1:1—25:6; John 6:50—8:52; 2 Cor. 4:13—12:6, thus like the Vatican MS. is incomplete, the Sinaitic MS. contains the entire New Testament, as well as the entire Septuagint. Besides the other uncials mentioned previously, a large number of papyri of still earlier date than the above-mentioned MSS. have in the last 55 years come to light, one of them dating early in the second century; however they are in all but small parts of the Scriptures. Because of the purer text that our many Greek MSS. have enabled the text critics above-mentioned to construct, the versions based on these texts' more recent recensions are nearer approaches to the text left by the New Testament writers. Hence translations like the E.R.V., A.R.V., Rotherham, Moffatt, Panin, Baptist Version, Goodspeed, Diaglott, Ballantine, etc., bring us nearer to the original sense of the New Testament writers than earlier translations. 

This brings us to make a few remarks on some of the Bible Versions. By January, 1927, according to the report of the British and Foreign Bible Society, the Bible, either in whole or in part, had been translated into 820 languages and dialects. At that time new versions of the whole or of part of the Bible were being made at the rate of one for each six and a half

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weeks. At that rate 152 more have been added to the above total by January, 1946, making a grand total of 972 languages and dialects into which the Bible, in whole or in part, has been translated. This by far outdoes any other five books in existence combined; and the Bible has, by far and large, remained for the centuries since printing was invented, about 1440, "the best seller," as it has appeared and is appearing in more numerous and varied editions than any other five books combined. The Targums, while for the most part not strictly so much translations as paraphrases of the Hebrew text into Aramaic, are among the oldest versions of parts of the Bible. These originated after Israel's return from Babylon, following the decay of the Hebrew language among the common people, and the substitution of the Aramaic in its place in popular use. Through these the common people who no more were familiar with Hebrew received most of their knowledge of the contents of the Bible. The word Targum means interpretation, which may stand for a translation or a paraphrase. The best of these is that of Onkelos, on the Pentateuch. It partakes very much of the nature of a literal translation. 

The most valuable of all translations is the Septuagint, which is a Greek version of the Old Testament from the original Hebrew. It is said to have been made by 72 (for which 70 has been made to stand as a round number, hence the name Septuagint, from the Latin, septuaginta, 70) learned Hebrews at Alexandria, Egypt, begun in 285 B. C. at the command of Ptolemy Philadelphus, who desired it for the Alexandrine library. It has many and wrong peculiarities, e.g., its Genesis chronological periods are much longer than those of the Hebrew text. It often reads very differently from what a literal translation of the Hebrew should read. What gives this translation its unique place among Bible versions is that it was the Old Testament of Christ and the New Testament writers and of the bulk of Christians for over four centuries. 

The Bible’s Generalities. 23 

The New Testament quotations from the Old Testament are usually taken from it. But when it misrendered, and when a correction was necessary for their purpose, the Apostles did not hesitate to correct its translation, as can be seen from St. Paul's quotation in Heb. 8:8-12 of the New Covenant passage from Jer. 31:31-34, which he rendered literally and in about a dozen details differently from, and in correction of the Septuagint, in order to emphasize the pertinent truth. If, however, its misrenderings did not affect the matter in proof of which it was quoted, the New Testament writers usually did not correct it, even as we often quote a not strictly correct rendering of the A.V. without correction, if the point at issue is not thereby affected. Another famous and very influential version of the whole Bible from the original Hebrew and Greek, made in its first form, about 170 A. D., into Syriac, is the Peshito (simple, or plain). It is the oldest translation of the whole Bible and was very influential for five centuries, after which the Mohammedan conquest of Syria limited its influence. It and the Sinaitic MS. are the oldest witnesses that the words in Rev. 20:5. "But the rest of the dead lived not again until the thousand years were finished," are an interpolation. Thus the oldest Greek MS. and the oldest translation lack this part of that verse, a weighty proof of its fraudulent character, as the following statement, "This is the first resurrection," also shows the unfitness of the interpolation in that place. 

Next to the Septuagint the most influential Bible version is Jerome's translation of the Bible from Hebrew and Greek (385-405 A. D.) into Latin, called the Vulgate, because of its use by all in common in the Occident. Throughout more than a thousand years it reigned supreme in the Occidental Church. Wyclif made it the basis of his, the first translation of the whole Bible into English, as it is the basis of most Romanist translations into the European languages. The Council of Trent (Romanist) in 1563 officially 

24 The Bible. 

declared it the authentic Bible text, thus exalting it above the Hebrew and Greek originals. Pope Damasus commissioned Jerome, the most learned of the Romanist Church fathers, to make this translation. Jerome excluded the apocryphal books from his translation, as not a part of the oracles of God. While Damasus agreed with him that they were not such, yet on account of their widespread use as edifying, though not inspired writings, he prevailed upon the unwilling Jerome to translate them. The Council of Trent, desirous of having an alleged Bible proof of praying for the dead, as a basis for its doctrine of purgatory, because one of the books of Maccabees contained a text on praying for the dead, declared it a Romanist doctrine that the apocrypha is a part of the Bible. How little that passage proves that the Romanist dead are suffering in purgatory is manifest from the fact that every time we offer the petition, Thy Kingdom come, we pray for the dead, yet we do not believe the dead to be conscious, much less now suffering in purgatory, as Catholics do. 

The two most influential translations into modern European languages are Luther's Version of the whole Bible from Hebrew and Greek into German and the A.V. of the entire Bible from Hebrew and Greek into English. Luther rendered his New Testament into German in 1521 and 1522 at the Wartburg, where the Elector of Saxony gave him a refuge immediately after he was put under the ban of the Empire at the Diet of Worms; and it was published in September, 1522. His Old Testament came out in four parts: Part I, the Pentateuch, in 1523; Part II and Part III, the historical and poetical books in 1524 and Part IV, the prophets, in 1532. His complete Bible appeared in 1534. For the Old Testament he used the Brescia edition of the Hebrew Old Testament of 1494, and for the New Testament the second edition of Erasmus' Greek New Testament. He, of course, consulted the Vulgate; and for the Old Testament he had the help

The Bible’s Generalities. 25 

of Melanchthon, Bugenhagen and Cruciger. Luther's was not the day of great Hebrew and Greek dictionaries; but he availed himself industriously of the meager helps at his disposal. He consulted many a rabbi and Jewish merchant, etc., in the market-place at Wittenburg on the meanings of obscure and seldom-occurring Hebrew words. He even had a cow slaughtered and dissected in his presence, and had learned Jews name every part of it in Hebrew, in his attempts to find out the meanings of some words in the Pentateuch used in connection with the sacrifices. His translation aimed more at giving the sense in German understandable to the unlearned, rather than as a literal translation. And when one considers his handicaps, he produced a version that for its noble simplicity, deep spirituality and fine versatility ranks among the highest works of human genius. Through his Bible he literally created the High German language, the reigning language of the German people. Nor was its influence limited to German-speaking people. It became the basis of the Dano-Norwegian (1524), the Dutch (1526), the Swedish (1526), and the Icelandic (1540) versions, and through Tyndale influenced the A.V. in 1611. 

The A.V. is even a finer translation than Luther's. It was proposed at the Hampton Court Conference, January, 1604. And the same year witnessed its beginning by forty-seven of the ablest Biblical scholars of Great Britain. King James I invited them to undertake the work as a revision of former English translations. They based their work upon the Hebrew and Greek MSS. They had more Greek MSS. available than Luther had, besides having the advantage of his and nine previously published English translations and the progress of nearly a century in the study of Greek and Hebrew. The above-mentioned forty-seven scholars formed themselves into six groups and started forthwith to work. They met from time to time, compared and revised one another's work and 

26 The Bible. 

produced in 1611 an epoch-making version of the Bible. As a piece of literature there is nothing that surpasses it in English. It is even doubtful if Shakespeare equals it. For sublimity and simplicity, for beauty and clearness, for combining literality of translation within nativity of English idiom, it is the admiration of the scholarly, the treasure of the commonality and the despair of rivalry. While the E.R.V. and the A.R.V. are more accurate translations, as should be expected from the fact that there were nearly three centuries of progress in the study of Hebrew and Greek and of advancement in textual purity due to the possession of recensions based on better and more MSS., they are distinctly inferior to it in the excellencies mentioned above. While for exact work scholars will prefer later translations, for the purposes of devout study, meditation and reading, they are at one with the unlearned in preferring our good old A.V., which with the average English-speaking Christian is inseparably and sacredly linked as the Bible and his religious experience. 

Above we mentioned the fact that the A.V. stood on the shoulders of nine other English versions. A brief description of these will fit in with our discussing the generalities of the Bible, at least of the English Bible. Wyclif's Version is the first translation of the entire Bible into English, or into any other modern tongue, though before his time there were translations of parts of it, like the Psalms, the four Gospels, etc. This is even true of the Saxon period in England, e.g., Alfred the Great translated the Psalms, etc., into the Anglo-Saxon speech of his day. The first theologian of his time, yea, of his century, Wyclif recognized that the Bible was the greatest opponent of the Roman hierarchy, which he had fought for years, especially since 1378. He made his translation (1380), not from the Greek and Hebrew, of which he seems to have been ignorant, but from Jerome's Vulgate. Like Luther at the Wartburg, he undertook this work when 

The Bible’s Generalities. 27 

driven away from his university (Oxford) by Romanist persecution. His was not the modern English; but was the English that leaned more to the modern English than to that of the Anglo-Saxon period. To read his Bible understandingly one knowing only modern English needs a glossary of obsolete words. He was assisted in his translation by his colleague and chief scholarly supporter, Nicholas Hereford; and their joint work was revised by John Purvey, 1388; about four years after Wyclif's death, December 31, 1384. And it is in this revised form mainly that Wyclif's Bible has come down to posterity. Printing having not yet been invented for nearly a half century, his Bible was quite widely spread in hand-written copies, but was bitterly fought by the English priests and noblemen for 150 years. It was first printed in 1731. 

William Tyndale was the first to translate the entire New Testament from the Greek original, as he also was the first to translate a considerable part (the Pentateuch and Joshua) of the Old Testament into English. He printed Matthew and Mark (1524 and 1525) at some unknown place on the continent, whither persecution drove him from England, because he had announced his decision to translate the Bible and scatter it broadcast there, so that every plowman might become as familiar with it as the ablest Romanist theologian. In 1526 he published his entire New Testament, partly at Cologne and partly at Worms, where Luther's heroic confession was made, persecution having driven the former from Cologne to Worms before the complete number of copies ordered was finished. It was immediately but secretly sent to England, where it arrived in March, 1526. Rome bitterly attacked and burned this Testament, and all its readers on whom it could lay hands. And it succeeded in burning its saintly translator in 1536, after strangling him. He was not only a translator, but also an able writer, efficient reformer and a great exponent of religious liberty. His Pentateuch was published in 

28 The Bible. 

1530, and his Joshua in 1531. The influence of Tyndale's translations on all subsequent English Protestant translations, even up to and including the A.R.V., was quite marked, and is a merited tribute to the ability in Greek, Hebrew and English of the translator. In fact all subsequent Protestant versions that did not take over his version bodily are more or less revisions of it, which goes far to prove its worth. 

In 1535 appeared the first complete version in modern English, that of Miles Coverdale, who, with William Roye, George Roye (afterwards a bitter enemy), John Rogers and John Frith, had helped Tyndale from time to time in his work. He took over Tyndale's New Testament, Pentateuch and Joshua bodily, and then translated the rest of the Bible from Luther's and Zwingli's versions and Jerome's Vulgate into English, and published it at Antwerp, October 4, 1535. His Bible contained also the Apocrypha, but in an appendix by itself, with explanations on its non-canonical, i.e., uninspired and unbiblical, status. Next, in 1537, came the Bible of Thomas Matthew, a name assumed by John Rogers, who became, in 1555, the first Martyr under "bloody Mary." He took over Tyndale's and Coverdale's work made some revisions thereon and published it under the authorization of Henry VIII and patronage of Cromwell, Henry's prime minister; hence this translation was the first "Authorized Version." In 1539 appeared the "Taverner" Bible, which was a revision of Thomas Matthew's Bible made by Richard Taverner. 

In the same year appeared the "Great" Bible, or as it was called, from its second edition onward, "Cranmer's Bible." It was brought out through the authorization of Henry VIII by Cromwell, Earl of Essex, Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of all England [Canterbury], Thomas More and a committee of prelates and scholars. It was begun to be printed at Paris under Coverdale's supervision; but before the printing could be completed the Inquisition, Dec. 17, 1538, put a 

The Bible’s Generalities. 29 

stop to the work, which was then transferred to, and completed at London, April, 1539. Its second edition appeared in 1540, and was "apoynted to the vse of the churches," i.e., was made an A.V. Its book of Psalms is the Psaltery of the prayer-book of the Church of England, the Common Prayer. It is the first English Bible in which italics were used to indicate that there were no words in the Hebrew and Greek originals corresponding to those thus italicized. Its main patron, Thomas Cranmer, was a star-member of the Philadelphia Church, and, in 1556, the most eminent of all the martyrs who suffered death at the stake or otherwise at the hands of "bloody Mary." Next came, in 1560, the Geneva Version, which was made by Englishmen who fled from England during "bloody Mary's" persecution. It was the Bible of the Puritans, Calvinists, and was made in part under Calvin's influence. Many copies of it were brought to America by the Puritans. It is a more exact translation than any that preceded it, yea, a more exact rendering than our A.V., which followed it, but apart from that quality it is in every respect inferior to the A.V. 

In 1568 the Bishops'-Bible appeared. It was published by the Anglican Church in opposition to the Geneva Bible. It was based on Cranmer's Bible, and was translated by fifteen theologians, eight of whom were bishops of the Anglican Church, hence its name. It came out in three parts in 1568-1572, but it was too large and costly to become popular in use, and soon died. The Protestant versions in England stirred up the exiled English Romanist theologians to translate and publish the Douai Bible. It is based upon the Vulgate. Its New Testament was translated and first published in Rheims, France, in 1582, and its Old Testament in Douai, France, in 1609-1610. What is now called the Douai Bible is a revision of the New Testament of Rheims and of the Old Testament of Douai, by Romanist Bishop Richard Challoner. He published his revision with annotations (usually abbreviated 

30 The Bible. 

in modern editions of this Bible), in 1749 and 1750, in five volumes. Its English is Latinized, stiff, usually slavishly literal (to the Vulgate), therefore reproduces the Vulgate's faults and many of its virtues, is often unintelligible because of its "over-set" or "up-set" Latinity, and, of course, reads into the Bible not a few unbiblical Romanisms. It must appear with Romanist notes, for fear that even it will turn Romanists into non-Romanists. It is distinctly inferior to the A.V. As our readers are more or less familiar with the E.R.V. and the A.R.V., the latter superior to the former, and one of the best of all English translations, we will make no further comment on them than to state that 37 Old Testament and 29 New Testament eminent British scholars of five denominations made the former from 1870 onward, publishing the New Testament in 1881 and the Old Testament in 1885, and that two smaller groups of eminent Old Testament and New Testament American scholars of nine denominations made the latter during the same years; but, as required by the British revisers, they could not publish it until 1901. These two translations are fast taking the place of the A.V., vastly faster than it supplanted those of which it was the revision. 

Our discussion of the generalities of the Bible should include a few facts and figures taken from The Analytical Reference Bible: 

‍

‍

The Bible’s Generalities. 31 

Psalm 117, the middle chapter in the Bible, is also the shortest chapter. 

Ezra 7:21 contains all the letters of the alphabet except J. 

The word Jehovah or LORD is found 6,855 times in the Bible. 

The word Eternity occurs only once in the Bible—Isaiah 57:15." 

The word literosity is but rarely used in English. It means the literary character of a writing. By this word we desire to convey the thought of the literary character of the Bible, as a feature of the subject of this chapter. The Scriptures are a literature, and particularly in their Old Testament part are at least as fine a literature, considered simply as literature, as any in the world; for the Bible is not simple a book; it is a library of 66 books that contain in their Old Testament parts all the extant literary remains that the Hebrew people produced until their language became dead, and was superseded by the Israelitish people using Aramaic as their spoken tongue. The religious use of the Bible as a book of texts, which it is, the translations of it being done entirely in prose, until late years witness the rendering of its poetry as poetry, and its division into chapters and verses, conspired to prevent its recognition as being very literary. 

It was during the eighteenth century that especially three scholars devoted themselves, among other things, to the study of certain Old Testament books as poetry. The pioneer of these was Bishop Robert Lowth, whose epoch-making book published in 1753 and entitled, University Lectures On The Sacred Poetry Of The Hebrews, opened up a new world of thought on the Old Testament Scriptures. He found a worthy successor in 1758 for this branch of Scripture study in John David Michaelis, of Goettingen, Germany, whose vast Oriental learning supplemented many of Bishop Lowth's pertinent lacks when he published Lowth's book with copious notes in German. A number of years passed by without improvements in this branch of Biblical learning, until the great German poet and 

32 The Bible. 

preacher, John Godfred Herder, toward the end of the 18th Century published an extraordinary book, entitled, The Spirit Of Hebrew Poetry. These three laid the foundation of the study of the Bible as literature. The ablest modern exponent of this learning was Dr. Richard G. Moulton, of the Chicago University, whose Modern Reader's Bible is a classic in presenting the Bible as literature—a book that every Bible lover will value after using it. In it the whole Bible appears plus three of the poetic books of the Apocrypha, arranged as literature with literary notes thereon. It makes the Bible appear as a wonderful thing, literarily considered. He brings out the literary phases of the Bible; and it makes its events, personages and literary excellencies glow in warm living colors before its enraptured readers. He has shown, indeed, that as literature, which is, of course, not the main attribute of the Bible, it is, in its Old Testament part, at least equal to any other literature. 

The literature of all literary nations, broadly speaking, comes to us in two forms—prose and poetry. We are all, on account of our being used to the A.V., of course, acquainted with the fact that the Bible contains prose; but many seem unaware of the fact that whole books of the Bible are poetry in Hebrew. This is the case with almost all the writings of the prophets and of Job and all the Psalms, Proverbs, Canticles and Ecclesiastes. Only the narrative parts of the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel and of Job are prose. The rest is poetry. The Bible's prose is noteworthy as existing in every form of prose composition. Here are found essays, like 1 Cor. 13:1-13; 2 Peter and Jude. Histories abound in the Bible, as we can see in the books of Genesis, partly in Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy, and with slight exceptions wholly in Joshua, judges, the two Samuels, Kings and part of Chronicles in the Old Testament, and The Acts Of The Apostles in the New Testament. There is much of biography in the

The Bible’s Generalities. 33 

Bible, as witness Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Daniel and, above all, the four Gospels. Many letters are found there, as is evident in the Pauline and General Epistles. Many are the stories with which the Bible abounds, in evidence of which we recall the story of man's creation, trial and fall, the flood and the careers of the Ancient Worthies. It even has many legal documents, as the Mosaic laws testify. Genealogical trees are found there in abundance, especially in 1 Chronicles. There are first-class treatises in the Bible, of which Romans and Hebrews are examples. It also contains philosophical writings, e.g., Proverbs and Ecclesiastes. Many are its epigrams; indeed Proverbs is full of them, while examples of them are scattered with lavish hand throughout the Bible. Many are the sermons there, of which the Sermon on the Mount (Matt. 5—7), the Lord's last address (John 13—16), Peter's Pentecostal and Caesarean addresses and Paul's Antiochian and Athenian addresses are fine examples. The greatest oration of all times is that of Moses in Deuteronomy, especially when its utterances are viewed in the light of the background of Israel's preceding 40 years' experiences and the near departure of Israel's beloved leader. Jesus' denunciation of the scribes and Pharisees in Matt. 23 is unequaled in all the literature of denunciation, not excepting Demosthenes' Philippics and Cicero's Catilinics. Forensic oratory finds among its brightest examples St. Paul's defense before Festus and Agrippa. Martyrs' appeals are glorified by that of Stephen in Acts 7. Humorous literature on an extended scale is the only kind of literature not found in the Bible, though here and there it contains flashes of humor, especially Samson's ways of bettering the Philistines and joking over it, and St. Paul's turning the Sadducees and the Pharisees away from pouncing upon him by inciting them to fight one another to their forgetting of their quarrel with him, when he stood before the Sanhedrin to answer for his life. There is grim humor in the ways 

34 The Bible. 

God foils His adversaries, e.g., Pharaoh, Sisera, Absalom, the two Herods, etc. Most Bible puns are lost in the translation, the English not having pun words corresponding to those in the Hebrew and the Greek. 

The Old Testament is rich in poetry. But Hebrew poetry is quite different from modern European and American poetry, which consists of certain kinds of poetic measures in the lines and usually with rhymes at the end of lines. Rhythm of sound underlies European and American poetry, while rhythm of thought underlies Hebrew poetry: Thus in its very soul Hebrew poetry is based on a finer foundation than non-Biblical poetry. For intricacy of structure and depth of originality Hebrew poetry far transcends the poetry of the nations of Christendom. Rhythm of thought makes the heart of Hebrew poetry consist of parallel thoughts as comparatives or as contrasts. In the comparative parallels, usually called parallelisms, either the same thought is repeated in different words or very similar thoughts are expressed. As an example of the former we may suggest Ps. 25:9—"The meek will He guide in judgment: the meek will He teach His way.'' As a double example of it we may instance Is. 62:1—"For Zion's sake I will not hold my peace; for Jerusalem's sake I will not rest, etc." Another example is Ps. 2:1—"Why do the nations rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?" As an example of a contrasted parallelism we might quote Prov. 10:1—"A wise son maketh a glad father; but a foolish son is the grief of his mother." Usually the Psalms have the parallelisms of comparison and the Proverbs those of contrast. Yet often the reverse is the case, e.g., Ps. 37 and Prov. 1—3. But these are only the generalities of the forms of Hebrew poetry. There are minute details therein that make the structure of Hebrew poems by far more difficult than the most intricate forms of poetry among the nations of Christendom or the heathen Greeks and Romans. A detailed description of them would be entirely too 

The Bible’s Generalities. 35 

intricate for our purpose; hence we will but briefly mention their phases without further description. Their details with copious examples can be found in Dr. Moulton's, The Modern Reader's Bible, 1517-1542. These phases are as follows: synonymous, similar and dissimilar parallelism, variation, and that, of three kinds of metrical rhythm—strain, couplet and stanzas—strophes, duplication, augmenting, diminution, introductions, conclusions, leads, refrains, antistrophic structure—alteration, interlacing, inversion (or introversion)—single, double and triple pendulum rhythm, envelope, interruption, suspension, number sonnet, alternate parallelisms, duplications, antistrophic duplication and augmenting alteration. Then there are all sorts of combinations of most of these. No other poetry in the world can exhibit such wonderful and varied poetic forms. With all there is a rhythm of sound that accompanies the rhythm of thought in much of Hebrew poetry. 

As for kinds of poetic composition Hebrew has all of them. The noblest of all kinds of poetry is the epic, the finest example of which our English language offers is Milton's Paradise Lost. The Bible contains as its contents the Divine Plan of the Ages, which is an epic of the highest order and the noblest cast. Its warfare is the battle between God and Satan. Its hero and heroine are Jesus and the Church; their companions are the Ancient and Youthful Worthies and the Great Company; its villain is Satan; his companions and partisans are fallen angels and wicked men. Its stage is the heavens and earth. Its adventures are as diversified as the stories of the Bible; its time 7,000 years. Its outcome is the extirpation of evil and its servants and the triumph of right and its doers. Its ultimate object is the revelation of God to His creatures as perfect in wisdom, justice, love and power. There are sub-epics in this book. Among these we may instance the life of Joseph and of Esther. No human epic can equal the Divine Plan of the Ages—none 

36 The Bible. 

is worthy of mention with it in the same breath. Drama is the next highest form of poetry. The book of Job is a drama, having its prologue, its dialogues and its epilogue. In fact an epic is the basis of Job, though its bulk is drama. It has even a lyrical element, which, among others, is found in the curse (Job 3). The subjects of its dialogues are inimitable, accurately discussed and in language and thought sublime and beautiful. Literary critics are a unit in the thought that the book of Job is the supreme piece of literature in existence. As lyrical poetry the Psalms are supreme. In them all the feelings of the human heart are shown in their lengths and breadths, heights and depths. Fierce, righteous indignation stand side by side with tenderness and pathos of the finest kind. Hope and fear appear in varied forms. Worship and adoration, prayer and praise, repentance and faith, hope and courage, waiting and doing, are all present. The piety and naturalness of the Psalms make them strike a responsive chord in all pious and simple hearts. It is at once a prayer book, a hymnal and a manual of devotion. It has comforted, cheered and strengthened godly hearts as no other book in existence. Certainly its authors drank deeply of the cup of human experiences in all its general aspects; and their experiences there described reach kindred hearts with the touch of fellowship feelings as no other book has done. This puts the Psalms in the first place of the world's lyrics. As for the literature of rhapsody nothing ever written can equal the rhapsodies of Isaiah. In both of its two divisions, chapters 1—39 and 40—66, the loftiest strains of rhapsody are reached. Note its vocative descriptions of the various nations that must go down in ruin. Note its addresses to Israel, its hailing of the Kingdom of God and Messiah, its King. Note its addresses to Spiritual Israel. Here are rhapsodic beauty and sublimity unrivaled and unequaled. In Job, Psalms and Isaiah literature has reached its holiest of holies, its highest heavens and

The Bible’s Generalities. 37 

its loftiest Paradise. Nothing in the world can compare with them, each in its sphere of poetry—in the way of drama, lyrics and rhapsody. 

Nor are the Psalms, which contain several songs of Moses, the only example of Biblical lyrics. Apart from a few scattered verses, the first examples of such lyrics are Jacob's blessings on the twelve tribes (Gen. 49) and Moses' and Miriam's songs of deliverance at the Red Sea, found in Ex. 15, during whose singing the men and women danced with answering choruses, in harmony with the music and the words. Very famous, indeed, are the lyrics of Moses given in Deut. 32 and 33. Here and there interspersed among the historical books are snatches of songs or couplets. The song of Deborah is certainly a fine specimen of a lyric in which many of the mechanisms of Hebrew poetry mentioned above appear. This was a war song of inimitable beauty, sublimity and strength, well calculated to arouse into enthusiasm the low burning fires of patriotism in a down-trodden and oppressed nation, reduced to servitude, as Israel was frequently during the periods of the judges. Here and there shorter war ballads are found in the Bible. Hannah's song is a lyric of majestic theme and well-developed execution. Here and there in Samuel and Chronicles David bursts out into wonderful lyrics, not to mention his part in the Psalms, 90 of which are expressly ascribed to him, and others of which he likely composed. Others, like Solomon, Asaph, Heman, Ethan, Moses and the unknown captive author of Ps. 137, join with David in giving us, under God, the beautiful, sublime and strong lyrics of which the Psalms consist. Hezekiah and Isaiah give us beautiful Psalms as pious lyrics; and even the New Testament, in which the poetic elements stand comparatively far in the background, contains some splendid lyrics, e.g., the odes of Zacharias and Mary. The annunciation to Mary is clothed in poetic form, as is also the angelic chorus, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will to men." Even unfriendly critics 

38 The Bible. 

of the Bible put as poetry the Hebrew lyrics ahead of the lyrics found in any other literature. 

There is another form of poetry—didactic poetry—that abounds in the Bible. This form of poetry occurs in what is called the Wisdom parts of the Bible—Proverbs and Ecclesiastes; and Job has also Wisdom elements of poetry. Such books contain Israel's philosophy, which is shown to be one of intense practicability. Unlike the impractical, speculative and abstruse philosophies of heathen India and Greece and of nominal Christian nations, the philosophy of the Hebrews was intensely practical. The Hebrews have even some uninspired Wisdom literature in didactic poetry, as can be seen in the two Apocryphal books of Ecclesiasticus and the so-called Wisdom of Solomon, neither of which exists now in Hebrew and which, while not reaching the sublimity of the inspired didactic poetry of Solomon, are fine examples of Wisdom poetry, far outstripping anything in the didactic poetry of other nations. The brief, sometimes disjointed proverbs of Solomon and of others whose proverbs appear in the Book of Proverbs, are not only wonderfully constructed as poetic productions according to Hebrew standards and forms of poetry, but are the finest philosophy for man's conduct toward God and neighbor in existence. Who will deny that in poetic diction Ecclesiastes presents the problem of man's existence amid the conditions of the curse, as it has struck the minds of various classes of more or less skeptical and worldly-minded thinkers, as well as those of believing and religiously-minded men? And who of proper ideals will not agree with the eventual solution of the riddle of human existence under the conditions of the curse as it struck the mind of the wisest of Hebrews, considering that the full solution was not yet due until the time of Jesus and the Apostles? The arrangement of the materials, as the viewpoint of such varied minds and beliefs are successively presented, and the fine poetic sense exhibited in the 

The Bible’s Generalities. 39 

thought and forms expressed prove this poem to be a work of a highest genius, even as Solomon was such. 

Even love songs are found in the Bible. Ps. 45 is a splendid illustration of the chaste love songs of the Hebrews, from which obscenity and coarseness are entirely absent. But the greatest of all love songs, Biblical or extra-Biblical, is the Canticles—"The song of songs (i.e., the superlative song], which is Solomon's." Even in its literality it expresses the noblest attributes of true espoused human love between lovers of the opposite sex. Here is nothing coarse, nothing rude, nothing obscene. Here are loyalty to engagement vows, constancy in affection to the absent lover, ardent affection to the loved prospective spouses, most beautifully exemplified. All sorts of figures of speech are thickly strewn all over the surface of this poem; and it is beautiful in the best sense of that word. This magnificent love poem is all the more enhanced when we remember that it is a prophecy of the espoused love of Christ and the Church. Only when it is so considered do its noblest flights of poetic sentiment stand out in their true colors. 

The great natural literatures of certain nations have all of the above forms of poetry. But the Hebrews have a form of poetry peculiarly their own-prophecy, which, accordingly, they share with no other nation. Almost all the prophetic writings of the Old Testament are in the form of poetry. There are a few exceptions to this, like Is. 36—39, and various chapters in Jeremiah, Ezekiel and Daniel. But for the most part Biblical prophecy is clothed in poetic form. And what poetry! We have already noted the Psalms, which are prophecies, as illustrations of lyrics, and Isaiah, which is mainly prophetic, as an illustration of rhapsody. But the other prophets display these characteristics. Amos and Micah almost equal Isaiah in poetic power and finish. And others of the minor prophets up to and including Malachi, who; though the last, is not the least of the prophets from the 

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standpoint of poetic power and finish, exhibit wonders of poetic flight. Accordingly, Hebrew poetry ranks first in the poetic literature of the world. The remark deserves emphasis here that all the poetry of the Bible has the peculiarity of being prophecy in poetic form. This is true not only of the poetry of Job, Psalms, Isaiah and all the other prophets, but it is true of the songs of Jacob, Balaam, Moses, Deborah, Hannah, Hulda, Zacharias, Mary and other snatches of song interspersed through the historical books of the Bible. And not only is this true of the abovementioned poetry, but also of the Wisdom poetry of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes; for, for the most part, Solomon's Proverbs prefigure the Millennial teachings on ethical and social principles; and his Ecclesiastes sets forth the various classes of natural troubles, as these appeared to the Ancient Worthies, in their philosophizing on the problem of existence. 

Having given some generalities on the prose and poetry of the Hebrews as set forth in the Bible, we will now devote a little time to a consideration of the Bible's uses of the niceties of diction (use of words), which are among the ornaments of every great literature. Its diction, as to the Hebrew vocabulary, is rather limited, since, including its proper names, which number 2,668, according to Fuerst's Hebrew Concordance, all of which are significant, there are only about 8,674 different words in the Hebrew Bible, according to Strong's Hebrew Dictionary of the Old Testament. But this vocabulary is pure Hebrew, overlooking the comparatively few Aramaic words in the original text, found in three books: certain chapters in Ezra and Daniel and two verses in Jeremiah. Hebrew in the 1200 years from Moses to Malachi underwent very few changes, by far less than those of our modern languages, so that one familiar with the prose of Moses finds no difficulty in understanding the prose of Nehemiah, the last of the Old Testament prose writers. And one familiar with the poetic language 

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of Jacob, Moses and Job, the oldest examples of sustained Hebrew poetry, has no difficulty in deciphering the poetic language of Malachi, so far as diction and style are concerned. Singularly free from foreign terms and words, slang and obsolete and obsolescent words is the Hebrew of the Bible. Its diction is, accordingly, pure. It has also the quality of propriety—its words are properly used in its sentences. Here are no misplaced words, no words used in wrong connections, nor words not expressing the exact thought intended by the Bible's Author. On the contrary, each word is given its proper place; each is put into its proper connection and each expresses exactly the thought that God intends to convey. It is true that, like other developed languages, most Hebrew words have a variety of meanings, but the Lord has taken good care of it that His amanuenses used the exact words in the exact places where they would be properly used. E. g., the Bible writers never say predicate when they mean predict, nor mutual when they mean common. Thus they would never say except for unless, like for as, avocation for vocation. Nor do Bible writers ride a word to death, as the words got and get are frequently done in English. Their regarding propriety in their use of words helped them to observe precision therein, i.e., the writers of the Bible tell exactly what they mean, no more and no less. Hence they are discriminate in their use of words. They select from among synonymous words the one that conveys the precise thought that is intended to be conveyed. A study of Bible synonyms, such as Trench's Synonyms of the Greek New Testament and Griddlestone's Hebrew Synonyms of the Old Testament; furnishes splendid examples of the precision of the Bible in its use of synonymous words. Here are no uses of difficulty for obstacle, opportunity for occasion, weight for heaviness, acknowledge for confess, only for alone, etc., etc. Thus in its diction the Bible is precise, proper and pure, the attributes of good diction. 

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The Bible's sentences conform, as a rule, to the rules of style as to sentences. These are found in all kinds in the Bible—simple, complex and compound. Some are periodic, some are loose, most of them are balanced (all are so in poetry), some are long, some are short and some are medium. Unless the Lord purposely designed to use dark speech, as He does in type, parable and mystery, He employs the clearest of thought and language, and even His dark speech is clear when the thought is due to he understood. He uses emphasis wherever it is desired, resorting to the various devices whereby it is secured. Unity of thought in its sentences is in the Bible almost always used; and apart from St. Paul, who in the profusion of his quick, deep and broad thinking powers is often hurried from one thought to another before finishing a sentence, thus at times falling out of his construction, and leaving sentences incomplete, there are remarkably few cases of Biblical writers' falling out of the construction of their sentences, i.e., beginning to express a thought and leaving it incomplete because of taking up another thought. The sentences of the Bible are full of strength. Never in any other book are the same thoughts expressed with such force as those of the Bible. Such strength is secured negatively by its avoiding redundant words, extravagant expletives, carelessness in its use of words of connection, transition and conclusion. It is positively secured by the use of fitting and precise words, by observing care in its use of words of connection, transition and conclusion, by a frequent use of contrast and climax, especially in its parallelisms. So, too, does it use harmony in the construction of its sentences. This it secures by using words so that they will have a pleasing effect on the ear, as is seen in a happy selection of words, a natural arrangement of words and an alternation of soft and harsh sounds and thoughts. The Hebrew system of accentuation greatly assists to harmony in its sentence construction; so, too, does the 

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cadence between the parts of the sentences. Sound is especially adapted to the sense of the words. Thus does the Hebrew make its sentences sententious, strong, clear, various, emphatic, united. Herein the structure of its sentences stands out as worthy of being the parts of a great literature. 

Every great literature is embellished with figures of speech, which add to the literary beauty, and often to the sublimity of a writing or discourse. Accordingly, we find figures of speech richly strewn throughout the Bible. Dr. Bullinger has written a large quarto on the Bible figures, wherein he sets forth very many figures that ordinary text-books on Rhetoric leave unmentioned. Indeed, among the Biblical figures that he enumerates and describes, and that number 181 in all, are some found in no other literature. By a figure of speech is meant such use of a word or words as, departs from their ordinary meaning, place or manner in order to clarify, beautify or emphasize the thought intended to be conveyed. The thought intended to be conveyed thereby is literal, but the words used thereto are not literal. It is because the words are not used therein literally that we call them figurative. The Bible, particularly the Old Testament, is probably the most figurative book ever written; and the failure to distinguish between its literal and figurative language has resulted in false interpretations, e.g., the failure to note that the language as to the elements in the Lord's Supper is such as gives the interpretation of a figurative institution has resulted in the doctrine of transubstantiation and that of instrumentalization—both very gross errors. No one can be a trustworthy interpreter of Holy Writ who confounds its figures into literalities and its literalities into figures; and it takes, at times, considerable knowledge of the Truth as due to be able to detect whether the pertinent language is literal or figurative. The following are the main figures of Biblical speech on which we desire to make some remarks and quote some examples: simile, metaphor, 

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parable, type, allegory, vision, antithesis, epigram, metonymy, synecdoche, interrogation, exclamation, apostrophe, personification, hyperbole, irony, climax, anticlimax, enigma and apodioxis. Our explanations must be brief and our examples few. 

The simile consists of a comparison of one thing with another, the following being several examples of the Bible's use of this figure: My doctrine shall drop as the rain, my speech shall distil as the dew, as the small rain upon the tender grass and as showers upon the grass (Deut. 32:2). Like as a father pitieth his children, so the Lord pitieth them that reverence Him (Ps. 103:13). Be ye yourselves like unto men that wait for their lord, when he will return from the wedding, that when he cometh and knocketh, they may open unto him immediately (Luke 12:36). The Bible similes are frequent and beautiful. The poet, Markham, the author of the poem, The Man With A Hoe, comparing and contrasting Jesus' use of figures with that of Shakespeare, who is generally recognized as the greatest of human poets, and yielding the palm to Jesus, cited, among others, as an illustration of an unrivaled set of similes Jesus' words to the Twelve: Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves; be ye therefore wise as serpents and harmless as doves. In the metaphor the likeness of one thing is put more directly than in a simile; in fact, it directly substitutes one thing for another. The following are some Bible examples of metaphor: Jesus sets off Herod's craftiness in these words: Go ye, and tell that fox, Behold, I cast out devils, and I do cures today and tomorrow, and the third day I shall be perfected (Luke 13:32). Another from Jesus' lips: I am the true vine, and My Father is the Husbandman. Every branch in Me that beareth not fruit He taketh away; and every branch that beareth fruit He purgeth, that it may bring forth more fruit … ye are the branches. He that abideth in Me, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit; if one abide not in Me, he is cast forth as a branch, 

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and is withered; and men gather them, and cast them into the fire, and they are burned (John 15:1-6). In Cant. 2:1 the espoused one says: I am the rose of Sharon, and the lily of the valleys. These are a few among perhaps 500,000 metaphors in the Bible, which literally abounds with them, e.g., Ps. 91:1-13. 

The Bible's parables, particularly those of the New Testament, are simply incomparable, especially for fine art, apt illustration and pithy truth. Jesus particularly is the Master of masters in the art of parabolic illustration. Matt. 13 contains a number of these, e.g., the four kinds of soil that are sown with seed, illustrative of four kinds of hearers of the Word of God; and the parable of wheat and tares, illustrative of the products of Truth and error. Luke 15 contains three fine parables, e.g., the woman and her ten coins with one lost and found, illustrative of the Church with its ten great truths, one of which is restitution, which was lost for centuries and then recovered; the shepherd and his hundred sheep, one of which was lost, illustrative of Christ, the keeper of all of Jehovah's classes of free-moral agents, with the lost one representing mankind, lost and Millennially recovered by Christ, the great Shepherd of the sheep. Who will ever forget the parable of the prodigal son, who illustrates covenant breakers, who during their unfaithfulness taste the bitter fruits of sin, and, repentant, return to God and home, forgiven sinners and welcomed and feted sons, the elder brother, throwing a wet blanket over the festive scene, fittingly picturing the merely external covenant keepers? Who will ever forget the parable of the Good Samaritan, illustrating mankind fallen into the curse, unhelped by nominal Judaism and Churchianity, but rescued and nursed back into health by the ministry and at the cost of The Christ, Head and Body? The Old Testament also contains some parables, e.g., that of the vineyard (Is. 5:1-6); Samson's riddle (Judg. 14:14); the poor 

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man's ewe, told by Nathan to David (2 Sam. 12:112); the eagle and the vine (Ezek. 17:3-10), etc. 

Next to metaphors types are perhaps the most frequent of all Biblical figures; for we have learned that not only everything in the Pentateuch is typical, but also that everything in the next seven books of the Bible, called in the Hebrew Bible, the earlier prophets, is typical. We have learned that every occurrence in the Gospels beginning with Jesus' arrival at Bethany six days before His death until into the night of His resurrection day is typical. Every historic event, every place, person and thing mentioned in the Bible is typical. Thus Adam and Eve in the state of innocence are typical of Christ and the Church (Eph. 5:31, 32). Noah's Ark is typical of the Christ (1 Pet. 3:20, 21). Abraham, his wives and children type God, His covenants and their class products (Gal. 4:21-31). Moses types Christ, Divine justice or the Law, the Head and Body as Mediator, etc. Aaron types our Lord, the Church as God's Parousia and Epiphany mouthpiece, the Head as the Church's High Priest, the Head and Body as the World's High Priest, etc. The tabernacle types the Christ, in its court, as justified, its holy, as Spirit-begotten and its most holy, as Spirit-born. The tents near about it type the antitypical Priesthood and Levites, while those far about it type the denominational divisions of the Gospel Age and the 12 classes of restitutionists of the Millennial Age. Every feature of the tabernacle structure and service was typical of better things. Time and space fail us to go further into this matter, but the typical feature of the Bible is a matter of stupendous literary art; for the stories of the Bible in themselves are marvels of literary composition, put when we realize that they are perfect pictures of future things, we can readily see that their literary art is very greatly enhanced. 

The Bible contains some allegories. An allegory is a sustained elaborated parable. The best example of uninspired allegory is Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress.

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Spenser's Faerie Queene is another able allegory. From many standpoints the book of Revelation is an allegory, though not entirely throughout all its parts is it an allegory. From some standpoints we are warranted in calling some of the types of the Bible an allegory, e.g., Israel's Enslavement And Deliverance. David's and the Apostles' experiences from Pentecost onward are allegories of various experiences of that Servant. One of the less sustained allegories of the Bible is the picture of Ezekiel in the valley of dry bones, in Ezek. 37, whereby, among other things, is pictured forth the experience of God's Parousia people and their preaching of Zionism and the consequent effects on dispersed Israel as the figurative dry bones. This allegory is immediately followed by another in the same chapter, that of the prophet and his two sticks. In fact, Ezekiel contains a number of allegories, like the shepherds and sheep, of Ezek, 34, but the most sustained of these is that of the temple, in Ezek. 40—48. Closely connected with Bible allegories are Bible visions. In fact, its allegories are in most cases visions. Its most notable vision, the grandest and most sublime of all visions, is the book of Revelation. Others of its notable visions are those of Paul in 2 Cor. 12:1-7 and of Peter in Acts 10:9-19. Nor should we forget as a notable vision the transfiguration scene (Matt. 16:27—17:9). Zechariah is full of visions, more so comparatively than any other Old Testament book, for it may be called the Old Testament book of Revelation. Isaiah saw a wonderful vision, recorded in Is. 6. In fact, most of the things revealed to the Old Testament prophets were revealed to them in the form of visions; for a vision may be defined as a representation to the eye of symbols of other things; for in a vision, as in an allegory or type, the things are symbolized, the differences being these: that in a vision the representation is to the physical eye, in the type real events and things are used to represent other matters and in an allegory

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usually imaginary events and persons are used to picture forth certain truths and facts. 

Antithesis is another figure of speech, i.e., one by which striking contrasts are brought out, and which, rightly used, is a literary ornament. Jesus was a master of antithesis. A number of antitheses appear in His denunciation of the scribes and Pharisees in Matt. 23: He charges that they bind heavy burdens on men's shoulders, but refuse to move them with one of their fingers (v. 4); they compass land and sea to make one proselyte, and then make him twofold more a child of gehenna than themselves (v. 15); they tithe the smallest seeds, but pass by the weightiest parts of the law, judgment [truth], mercy and faith (v. 23); they strain out a gnat from their cups and swallow a camel (v. 24); they cleanse away externals, but leave unclean the heart (vs. 25, 26); they are beautiful without, corrupt within, like the whited sepulchres (vs. 27, 28); they garnish the sepulchres of the prophets whom their fathers killed and went about to kill the greatest of all prophets, even the Son of God (vs. 29-35). The beautiful antitheses embedded in the similes of Matt. 10:16, already quoted above, defy comparison. How often God uses antitheses in contrasting His graciousness toward Israel and Israel's irresponsiveness. Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Hosea, Amos and the rest of the prophets are full of such antitheses. But above all, the book of Proverbs abounds with such. Note the many antitheses in Prov. 10 merely, as some illustrations of the many in this book: The wise son and glad father; foolish son and sad mother (v. 1); wickedness unprofitable, righteousness salutary (v. 2); laziness impoverishes, industry enriches (v. 4); the Lord's blessing on the righteous; His chastisements on the wicked (v. 3); the fruitfulness of one taking advantage of his opportunities, and the unfruitfulness of the neglecter thereof (v. 5); prosperity upon the righteous, misfortune upon the wicked (v. 6); the blessedness of the righteous' memory, 

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the corruptibleness of that of the wicked (v. 7); the righteousness sustained, the wicked fall (v. 8), etc., through the 32 verses of this chapter, which is followed by chapter upon chapter of verses full of antitheses. And, surely, these antitheses add greatly to the strength and emphasis of the literosity of the Bible. Epigram, which is a short sententious saying, abounds in the Bible. The book of Proverbs is the finest illustration of this figure of speech; and we need cite no further illustration than to say that the speeches of Christ, notably His two greatest sermons (Matt. 5-7 and John 13-17), and the exhortations of the Apostolic epistles are filled with epigrams. 

Metonymy, which means a change of name, i.e., one name or noun is used for another, is a frequently used figure of literature, and we find it used in the Bible. The change of name is due to some relation between the two names involved, like container for thing contained; cause for effect, or vice versa; the subject put for a thing pertaining to it, or vice versa, etc. Thus in Luke 22:20, among other figures, Jesus uses a metonymy in the form of the container for the thing contained: This cup [its contents] is [represents, here a metaphor occurs] the New Covenant [here another metonymy occurs: the effect is put for the cause; the blood effects the New Covenant by sealing it]. Luke 16:29 is another case of metonymy: Moses and the prophets here do not mean the persons involved, but that which they produced, the Old Testament Scriptures-cause for effect. In Gen. 25:23 we find several metonomies in which the effect is put for the cause, the two nations produced by Esau and Jacob being put for their embryos, the two kinds of people for their embryos, the elder people for its embryo and the younger people for its embryo. In the first part of Acts 1:18 we find that an original is put for an agent, i.e., actually not Judas, but the priests as his representatives bought the field of blood with Judas' reward of iniquity. A metonymy that shows a relation to a 

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subject is used in Gen. 41:13. Actually, Joseph did not restore the butler to his office and hang the baker; he was merely related to these Acts as their forecaster. Again, in Deut. 28:5: Actually not the basket and store were blessed; their owner and contents as the subjects related to them were; hence here is a metonymy involving subject and relation. In Job 32:7: Actually not days do the speaking and multitude of years the teaching of wisdom, but those who have these so do. Here, again, the relation and subject form of metonymy is used. These cases, among others in the Bible, prove its use of the figure of metonymy. 

Synecdoche is a figure much akin to metonymy, but differs from it in that it does not put one name for another, but puts one part of a thing for the whole, or the whole for a part, as when we say, Twenty sails are in line, when we mean ships—a part put for a whole, or as when we say, The American people elected him president, when, as a matter of fact, it was a part, the major part, of the American people who did it. So, whenever a part is put for the whole, or the whole for a part, we use what the science of rhetoric calls a synecdoche. The following will serve as Bible examples in which the whole is put for a part: Gen. 6:12 says, All flesh had corrupted his way upon the earth. This is true of all except Noah and the seven members of his family. Matt. 3:5 is another splendid illustration of the synecdochial feature of the whole being put for a part: Then went out to him Jerusalem [also metonymy, in the form of container for thing contained], and all Judea [also container for thing contained], and all the region around about Jordan [also container for thing contained]. As a matter of fact, not all, but many of the inhabitants of these regions came to John. The following examples use the synecdoche in the form of a part put for the whole: Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return [Adam was actually more than dust; he was a person who consisted of a body (dust) and life-principle (Gen. 3:19)];

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Give us this day our daily bread (Matt. 6:11). Bread here stands for it as well as all else that we need for the support of our earthly and spiritual lives. Again, when Judas acknowledged our Lord's innocence (Matt. 27:4) he did not refer to our Lord by an expression that meant literally the whole of Jesus, but by one that mentioned only a part of Him: "I have betrayed innocent blood." These examples will suffice to illustrate and to prove that the Bible, among others, uses the figure of synecdoche as a part of its literosity. 

The next Bible figure to be studied is that of interrogation, whereby a question is asked, not to obtain information but to emphasize an affirmation or belief. St. Paul frequently in argument uses this figure, e.g., Who goeth a warfare any time at his own charges? Who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof? Who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock (1 Cor. 9:7)? St. Paul by these questions is not asking for information, but is stating the facts more strongly than he would have done by a simple affirmation of them. Some other illustrations will elucidate this thought more fully: What if some have not believed? Shall their unbelief make the faith of God of none effect? … Is God unrighteous who taketh vengeance? … For then how shall God judge the world (Rom. 3:3, 5, 6)? Do we make void the Law through faith (Rom. 3:31)? A peculiarity of this figure is that when we would affirm a thing we do it by making the question negative; and when we would deny a thing we make the question affirmative, e.g., Am I not an apostle? Am I not free? Have I not seen Jesus Christ, our Lord? Are ye not my work in the Lord? Have we not power to eat and drink? Have we not power to lead about a sister, a wife, as well as the other apostles, even the brethren of the Lord and Cephas (1 Cor. 9:1, 4, 5)? These questions affirm with the negative. The following deny without the negative: Do we provoke the Lord to jealousy? Are we stronger than He (1 Cor. 10:22)? Exclamation 

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is a Biblical figure much akin to interrogation in that it expresses a thought more strongly than by a simple affirmation, since it is admirably adapted to express surprise or emotion. Note the following: How is the gold become dim! How is the most fine gold changed (Lam. 4:1)! O the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments and His ways past finding out (Rom. 11:33)! The next two verses are examples of negation by affirmative interrogatives. 

The same kind of emotion that resorts to exclamation makes use of apostrophe on occasions. By apostrophe we speak in the second person to one who is absent as though he were present, to the inanimate as animate, or to the dead as living. One of the finest cases of apostrophe is David's address to dead Absalom: "O my son Absalom, my son, my son, Absalom! Would God I had died for thee, O Absalom, my son, my son" (2 Sam. 18:33)! David's lamentation over Saul and Jonathan is even a finer and more extended case of personification (2 Sam. 1:21-27). It is too long to transcribe here, hence we suggest that our readers turn to it in the Bible. Other fine apostrophes are found in Rev. 12:12; 18:10, 20; Neh. 6:9; Joel 2:22. Personification is a figure by which life is attributed to inanimate things and is closely related to apostrophe. Indeed in some cases they are identical. However, personification need not be in the second person, whereas apostrophe always is. Moreover, apostrophe always personifies when it is addressed to inanimate things. The prophets use personification very often, e.g., O thou sword of the Lord, how long will it be ere thou be quiet? Put up thyself into thy scabbard, rest, and be still (Jer. 47:6)! O death, where is thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory (1 Cor. 15:55)? Jer. 4:28; 22:29; Lam. 2:15 are other illustrations. An especially good one is Is. 55:12: The mountains and the hills shall break forth before you into singing; and all the trees of the 

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field shall clap their hands. The hyperbole (exaggeration) sometimes occurs in the Bible. When this occurs usually humans do the exaggerating, or a figurative or idiomatic expression is added to that of the hyperbole, e.g., in the seven plenteous years the earth brought forth by handfuls (Gen. 41:47). The cities are great and walled up to heaven (Deut. 1:28). And we were in our own sight as grasshoppers [also a simile], and so were we in their sight (Num. 13:33). These examples illustrate the Bible's use of hyperbole. 

Irony is another figure used in the Bible; and like the figure of interrogation its affirmations are negations and its negations are affirmations. The following are some good examples of Biblical irony: Job says, No doubt ye are the people and wisdom will die with you (Job 12:2)! Elijah taunts the priests of Baal with the following barbs of irony: Cry aloud; for he is a god; either he is talking, or he is pursuing [hunting], or he is on a journey, or peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awaked (1 Kings 18:27)! St. Paul used it effectively in 1 Cor. 4:8, 10: Now ye are full, now are ye rich, ye have reigned as kings without us … We are fools for Christ's sake, but ye are wise in Christ; we are weak, but ye are strong; ye are honorable, but we are despised! Climax is also used as a figure in the Bible. In climax the words in a clause or the clauses of a sentence or separate sentences continue to arise in successive importance. Several examples will elucidate this: Add to your faith fortitude, and to your fortitude knowledge, and to knowledge self-control, and to self-control patience, and to patience piety, and to piety brotherly love, and to brotherly love charity (2 Pet. 1:5-7). The messenger who brought Eli the news from the battle of Israel with the Philistines used climax in the clauses in which he clothed the message: Israel is fled before the Philistines, and there hath been also a great slaughter among the people, and thy two sons also, Hophni and Phinehas, are dead, and the ark of God 

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is taken (1 Sam. 4:17). Anticlimax, which puts the features of the sentence with continued successive less importance, is used by Phinehas' wife in speaking of the features of the disgrace of the pertinent situation: "She named the child Ichabod, saying, The glory is departed from Israel: because the ark of God was taken, and because of her father-in-law and her husband" (1 Sam. 4:21). The dark sayings of the Bible come under the figure of enigma. These are very numerous in the Scriptures, e.g., Gen. 49:10; Judges 14:14; John 2:19; 6:32-58; Matt. 16:28; Luke 13:32, etc., etc. Apodioxis, used to express detestation, is frequent in the Bible, though often suppressed in the A.V., e.g., Matt. 16:23; Rom. 3:4, 6, 31; 1 Sam. 20:2 [God forbid], 9 [Far be it from thee) [literally, a profanation!]. Thus we end our discussion of Bible figures, illustrating its literosity. 

Just a word on special features of the Bible's literary style. The highest feature of literary style is sublimity; and the Bible exemplifies this literary excellence to the superlative degree. Its record of creation and the flood and its descriptions of matters on the part of the five disputants and on the part of God in the book of Job rise to the heights of sublimity. The deep feelings of the Psalms, the high raptures of Isaiah, the wide sorrows of Jeremiah and the vast visions of Ezekiel are a few among many examples of the sublimity of the thought and style in the Bible's Old Testament literosity. Jesus' wondrous discourses and pithy sayings in the Gospels, St. Paul's deep reasonings in Romans, his majestic periods in Hebrews, St. John's epistolary unfoldings and his deep, awful, vast and exalted visions in Revelation reach a degree of sublimity nowhere else seen. And since sublimity is the highest quality of literary style, the Bible certainly belongs in the forefront of literary composition. Beauty is another quality of good literary style and the Bible is full of beautiful thoughts beautifully expressed. Perhaps Isaiah contains, especially in its

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second part, chapters 40-66, the most beautiful literature of the Bible: Is. 35, 60, 61, 62 and 65, especially vs. 17-25. Canticles is filled with beauty as its chief literary characteristic, abounding in figures which are one of the principal features of a beautiful style. The life of Samuel has many beautiful episodes in it; and the book of Ruth is filled with beautiful thoughts and episodes beautifully told. Jesus' sayings above all other New Testament sayings have in addition to the quality of sublimity that of beauty. The sermon on the mount, especially in the beatitudes, the Lord's prayer and the section against worry, reach a height of beauty rarely to be found. His conversation with the Samaritan woman is beautiful in thought and expression. His parables abound in beauty. Simplicity is another characteristic of a good style of composition; and in this respect the Bible fulfils the requirements of literary style so that it is preeminently entitled to the merit of literosity. Simplicity marks its histories and biographies, as its historical and biographical books abundantly prove. This is true of its lyrics, precepts, promises and exhortations. It is for its simplicity that children are fascinated by the Bible. Terseness is another attribute of a good style; and in this certainly the Bible abounds. Nowhere else are there so really pithy saying to be found. This is especially true of the Wisdom books, Proverbs and Ecclesiastes, the sayings of Jesus and the epistles of the Apostles. 

For a literature to be great it should have an inner connection of its parts that make it an expression of a united whole, i.e., there should be a unity in a literature that makes it a unit, not a disjointed and unrelated conglomeration. In this the Bible as a literature is immeasurably superior to any other literature; for it is a unit into whose ample folds great diversity and individuality blend into a perfect unity. Its component parts—doctrines, ethics, promises, exhortations, prophecies, histories and types—exhibit unity amid diversity and individuality. It reveals as its great end

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the glory of God; it presents as its hero the Lord Jesus and as its heroine His Bride; and the center out of which its beams radiate is the cross, as the poet has put it: "All the light of sacred story gathers 'round its head sublime!" Then, another feature of a great literature is practicability. This is certainly true of the Bible, as it is true of no other literature. It is the light that enlightens for practical purposes, first the elect, later the non-elect, and gives to each of these classes the help needed for its development: it does develop the elect, and will do it later with the non-elect. It is the power that operates each step of the salvation process now due, and that will in due time do the same with those not now due. It will achieve as the objects of its endeavor glory to God and the Lamb, by its contents the giving of life everlasting on various planes of being to those whom it will fit for life of such kinds, and destruction to all unfit for life, and thus will demonstrate its practicability by achieving the best and most desirable results. 

And, besides all this, it should not be forgotten that this marvelous literature is worked out along the lines of Biblical numerics. Biblical numerics is possible because the Hebrew, Aramaic and Greek letters are at the same time numerals and thus are indicated multiples by the constant re-occurrence of the number seven in the sum totals of the letters of the Bible's sentences, paragraphs, subdivisions, divisions and books, each in itself and each in its relations to other books. Then, there are elaborate multiples of other numbers occurring in similar ways, e.g., the numbers 9, 11, 13, 17, 19. It calls attention to mistakes of interpretations, that would rise, by neighborhood numerics. And in spite of these great elaborations of numerics from many standpoints, the Bible reads smoothly, as though there were no numerical design underlying it. E.g., Matt. 1 and 2 and Mark 16, including the disputed vs. 8-20, read so smoothly that one would think it impossible that very elaborate schemes of

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sevens and its multiples run throughout their length and breadth. The same thing holds true of every other section of the Bible. To have achieved such stupendous results mathematically and at the same time to have embedded them in the supreme expressions of literosity of the world, is a literary feat of a kind wholly and absolutely unique. We, therefore, do not hesitate to claim for the Bible supremacy as literature. And this is an impressive evidence of its Divine Source and Authorship. 

After our study of the generalities and the literosity of the Bible, the question naturally arises, What are the books that belong to the Bible? From our definition of the Bible as being God's inspired revelation (which excludes His uninspired revelation as contained in nature), given by Him through specially inspired agents, our answer to this question is: Every Divinely inspired book belongs to the Bible, i.e., is a book of the Bible. In ecclesiastical language from the second century onward the term canon (Greek for rule) is used synonymously with the Bible as the source of faith and rule of practice given as such by God to His people. Hence in various Christian authors, the sense of the above-mentioned question, What are the books that belong to the Bible? is put as follows: What are the books that belong to the Canon? Hence they speak of the Canon of the Jewish Church, thereby meaning the Old Testament, and of the Canon of the Christian Church, thereby meaning the Old and New Testaments. As our subject is extensive, first, the Canon of the Jewish Church will be discussed, i.e., What books did the Jewish Church accept as having been given by God as His inspired revelation to the Jewish Church, through His specially inspired agents? Or to put it in another form, What books did God give as His revelation to the Jewish Church, through His specially inspired agents? As a matter of fact, God could have made a revelation through His specially inspired agents, regardless of whether the Jewish or 

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Christian Church had accepted it or not (Rom. 3:3), though as a matter of fact the Jewish Church accepted what He offered them as such (Rom. 3:2); so, too, did the Christian Church accept what He offered to them as such, yet their accepting it as such did not make it a Divinely inspired revelation. Its being such depended on His making, not on their accepting, it as such; because He is the Revealer. 

It is not disputed that in the day of Christ and the Apostles the Jews received as their Bible or Canon the same books—no more and no less—than are printed in all editions of the Hebrew Bible. We will offer some testimonies on his head: The first of these is from the pen of Josephus, who was born 37 A.D. and died about 100 A.D. Writing against Apion, an Alexandrian grammarian and an enemy of the Jews, in Book I, Chap. 8, he says the following: "We have not tens of thousands of books discordant and conflicting, but only 22 [he thus counted Ruth a part of judges and Lamentations a part of Jeremiah, while the usual practice of the Jews was to count them as separate books, thus making the total 24, which is one of the ways the Bible counts the number of the Old Testament books], containing the records of all time, which have been justly believed to be Divine. And of these five are the books of Moses [the Pentateuch], which embrace the laws and traditions from the creation of man until his [Moses'] death. This period is a little short of 3,000 years. From the death of Moses to the reign of Artaxerxes, the successor of Xerxes, king of Persia, the prophets who succeeded Moses wrote what was done in thirteen books. The remaining four books embrace hymns to God and counsels for men for the conduct of life. From Artaxerxes until our time everything has been recorded, but has not been deemed worthy of like credit with what preceded, because the exact succession of the prophets ceased [thus Josephus shows that the Jewish Church, recognizing the existence of the Apocrypha and other Jewish books, did not recognize them as a part of the 

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Canon or Bible]. But what faith we place in our own Scriptures is evident by our conduct; for though so long a time has now passed, no one has dared either to add anything to them, or to take anything from them, or to alter anything in them. But it is instinctive in all Jews at once from their birth to regard them as commands of God, and to abide by them, and, if need be, willingly to die for them." Such was their devotion! 

According to this passage the Bible of the Jews was begun in the days of Moses and finished in the days of Artaxerxes I of Persia, who reigned from 474 to 425 B. C. He was Esther's husband (Esth. 2:16, 17), who in the seventh year of his reign sent Ezra to Jerusalem to further the worship of Jehovah there (Ezra 7:7, 11-28), who in his twentieth year sent Nehemiah there to rebuild the walls and the city of Jerusalem (Neh. 2:1-8), and who again in his thirty-second year sent him there to continue his work of advancing the Jews in Jerusalem and Judea (Neh. 13:6, 7). Josephus was a highly educated Jew of priestly lineage and the historian of his nation, who was therefore well qualified to state truly what books the Jews regarded as canonical. He wrote these words in a controversy with a learned enemy of the Jews and of their Bible; hence he took special care to be exact in his statements. He stated, in harmony with the testimonies of other Jewish authorities before and after him, that the spirit of prophecy—inspiration—ceased with Malachi, whose book was written between 443 and 425 B. C., i.e., toward the end of Artaxerxes' reign and after Nehemiah's second trip to Jerusalem from Persia. We have seen above that the Old Testament was expressly said to have been studied in its threefold division by Jesus, the son of Sirach, the author of the Apocryphal book of Ecclesiasticus, who lived about 200 B. C. In the times of Judas Maccabees, about 167 B. C., he and others lamented that the spirit of prophecy—inspiration—no more existed in Israel since Malachi's death. Accordingly, the substance of Josephus' statements

60 The Bible. 

quoted above was authoritatively accepted in Israel hundreds of years before Josephus in 93 A. D. wrote the above-quoted statement. About 75 years later than Josephus, the Talmudic tract, Baba Bathra, written by Judah Hakkodosh, set forth a catalogue of the sacred books. They are there classified as in our modern Hebrew Bibles—five books of the Law, eight of the prophets and eleven of the Kethubim, totaling 24. In this catalogue the two Samuels are counted as one, so are the two Kings, and also the two Chronicles. The twelve Minor Prophets are counted as one, so are Ezra and Nehemiah. It will be noted that Josephus gives the number as 22, while Judah Hakkodosh gives it as 24. The latter is right. How Josephus came to the count of 22 was explained above. From Josephus' description of his third division of four books, we infer that it consisted of Psalms, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Canticles. Hence his second division of thirteen books must have been the following: (1) Joshua, (2) Judges (including Ruth); (3) 1, 2 Samuel; (4) 1, 2 Kings; (5) 1, 2 Chronicles; (6) Ezra and Nehemiah; (7) Esther; (8) Job; (9) Isaiah; (10) Jeremiah (including Lamentations); (11) Ezekiel; (12) Daniel; (13) the Minor Prophets. Josephus in his histories quotes from every Old Testament book except Proverbs, Ecclesiastes and Canticles, which, of course, furnish no historical data, and hence were not available for his use, and Job, which lay outside the scope of his subject. While he quotes from 1 Maccabees, which treats historically of one of the periods treated by him, he does so with the distinct statement that it was not Divinely authoritative, because coming after inspiration ceased in Israel. He shows no acquaintance with the rest of the Apocrypha, though Judith and 2 Maccabees would certainly have been used by him, had he known of them and considered them trustworthy. 

From a third Jewish source we can see what the Jewish Bible in the time of Jesus and the Apostles was: Philo, the learned Jewish scholar of Alexandria, of

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priestly descent, born about 20 B. C., died about 42 A. D. He wrote a commentary on the Pentateuch. Of the Pentateuch he says: "After a lapse of more than 2,000 years [the Jews] have not changed a single word of what had been written by [Moses], but would sooner endure to die a thousand times than consent to violate his laws and customs." While stressing the Pentateuch above the other Old Testament books, he quotes from the other two divisions of the Old Testament as of Divine authority. Thus he quotes, as of the Former Prophets, from Joshua, Judges, Samuel and Kings, as being of "the sacred word," "the Divine oracle." As of the Later Prophets he quotes from Isaiah and Jeremiah, as of "the greater prophets," and from Hosea and Zechariah, as of "the lesser prophets," ascribing Divine inspiration to all of them. As of the third division of the Hebrew Bible he quotes from its historical books, Chronicles and Ezra, and from its poetical books, Psalms, Proverbs and Job. He never quotes from the Apocrypha, though he undoubtedly was acquainted with it. In speaking of the Therapeutae, an order of Jewish ascetics, Philo alludes to the threefold division of the Hebrew Bible in the words, "In each house of these ascetics there is a temple … in which they perform the rites of a holy life, introducing nothing … which is needed for … the body, but laws [of Moses] and oracles delivered by prophets, and hymns [Psalms, the first book of the third division of the Hebrew Bible] … by which knowledge and piety are mutually increased and perfected." 

The parts of the Old Testament accepted and rejected by the Samaritans have a strong bearing here. The Samaritans were a race composed of parts of the ten tribes left in Palestine (when the Assyrian conqueror, Shalmaneser, according to his claim, carried away only 27,290 members of the ten tribes) and of various mixed races. Their religion was a mixture of Mosaism and of heathenisms (2 Kings 17:24-41). Claiming to be Jews, Jehovah's people, they tried in the times of Zerubbabel 

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to join with the Jews in rebuilding the temple; but their co-operation was refused (Ezra 4). Thereupon enmity that endures to this day set in. These Samaritans received the Pentateuch from the apostate priest sent among them to teach them "the manner of the God of the land" (2 Kings 17:27, 28). But please note that while they received the Pentateuch, the oldest copy of it in existence being now in their possession, they received no more of the Old Testament. Why did they not receive the Prophets and the Writings, the other two parts of the Hebrew Bible? Because both parts condemned them as non-Israelitish, despite their claims to be Israelites, some by blood, others by alleged adoption of their religion (Ezra 4:2, 9, 10; John 4:12). Of course, they would not accept the Prophets, since some of these books (2 Kings) condemned them as non-Israelitish. Nor would they accept the Writings, since some of these books condemned them as non-Israelitish (2 Chro., Ezra, Nehemiah). Accordingly, the fact of their accepting the Pentateuch and rejecting the Prophets and the Writings (Kethubim) proves that these three parts of the Hebrew Bible were not only the Bible of the Jews in the time of Christ, but very much earlier. We could also refer to some statements in the Babylonian Talmud that show the same lines of thought on the books and threefold division of the Hebrew Bible; but these were first written out about 450 A. D., though like other parts of that Talmud they were held for centuries before as parts of the oral tradition; hence we will lay no stress on them. They are found in the part of the Babylonian Gamara (commentary part of the Talmud) called Baba Bathra (another tract than that of the same name written by Judah Hakkodosh), which enumerates the books and divisions of the Hebrew Bible. 

The testimonies that we have given from Jewish sources prove that the Jews of Christ's time and centuries earlier received as Divine oracles the books that we 

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now have as the Hebrew Bible. What results from this fact? This, that the Old Testament is a part of the Divinely inspired Scriptures, because God made the Jews the custodians of His Old Testament revelation, and therefore what they had and regarded as that revelation was the revelation of which they were the custodians, and therefore what the Christian Church received from them as the Divine oracles was deposited by God with them as a part of the Bible of the Christian Church. These two facts—(1) that the Jews in the time of Christ had and regarded the Hebrew Scriptures as the Divinely inspired oracles committed to their care, and (2) that these Hebrew Scriptures received from the Jews by the Christian Church are a part of the Divine oracles deposited by God with them as a part of the Bible of the Christian Church—are also proved by the testimonies of Christ and the writers of the New Testament. It is on all hands admitted that the Christian Church received from the Jews the Old Testament oracles. Hence the following parts of the two foregoing propositions are all that we will have to prove: (1) that the New Testament teaches that the Old Testament Scriptures are the Divinely inspired oracles committed to the Jewish Church's custodianship; and (2) that the New Testament teaches that these Old Testament Scriptures are a part of the Divinely inspired oracles of the Christian Church. 

In proof of the first proposition we offer a variety of Scriptures which in various ways demonstrate it. One of the ways that this is proved is by the name oracles, given to parts and to the whole of the Old Testament: "Unto them [the Jews] were committed the oracles of God (Rom. 3:2). Acts 7:38; Heb. 5:12; 1 Pet. 4:11 are also passages that refer to the Old Testament as God's oracles. It will be more convincing on the point now under discussion for us to divide the New Testament writings into their three natural groups and then show how each of these three groups refers to the Torah (Law), Nebiim (Prophets) and Kethubim 

64 The Bible. 

(Writings), the three divisions of the Hebrew Bible. The first group of the New Testament writings consists of the first three (the Synoptic, i.e., common view) Gospels, Acts and the Epistles of James, Peter and Jude; the second group, the Epistles of Paul; and the third group, the writings of John. With these three groups in mind we desire to show how each of these three groups quotes from, and deals with each one of the three Old Testament's divisions as parts of the oracles of God. This point is very convincing. 

Apart from the name oracles, the plainest designation of the Old Testament as God's oracles in the New Testament is the name Scripture or Scriptures. This name as applicable to the Hebrew Bible is found in each of the three groups of New Testament writings (Matt. 22:29; Acts 17:11; 1 Cor. 15:3; John 5:39). And that to which these passages apply this name is in these passages implied to be the Divine revelation (Matt. 26; 54; 1 Cor. 15:3, 4); and it is appealed to as the authoritative source of faith and main rule of practice (Luke 24:27; Acts 18:28). Not only is the Old Testament called in these three groups of New Testament writings the Scriptures, or the Scripture, but it is also called in them the Law and the Prophets, or Moses and the Prophets (the term prophets here is used in its wide sense, i.e., to include also the inspired writings of those men who did not belong to the order of prophets—men like David, Daniel, Ezra, etc.; in other words, it includes all the books of the second and third divisions of the Old Testament). This is seen in the following passages: Matt. 7:12; Luke 16:29, 31; Rom. 3:21; John 1:45. In harmony with the Jewish custom of calling a scroll of the entire Old Testament the Torah, the Law, the New Testament calls the entire Old Testament the Law (John 12:34); for this reason Jesus speaks of quotations that He made from the Psalms (the first book of the Old Testament's third division) as made from the Law (John 10:34; 15:25) and Paul speaks similarly of a passage quoted from the Prophets 

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(1 Cor. 14:21). The threefold division of the Old Testament is clearly recognized in the words of Jesus, "All things must be fulfilled which are written in [1] the Law of Moses, in [2] the Prophets and in [3] the Psalms [the first book of the third division of the Old Testament is here made to stand for that third division by metonymy]" (Luke 24:44). 

Dr. B. F. Westcott, one of the ablest students of the New Testament Scriptures in the 19th century, speaking of the way the New Testament uses and refers to the Old Testament, says the following: "The existence of these collective titles [that the New Testament uses as names of the Old Testament], the universal assumption of their intelligibility, the absence of all trace of doubt as to their application in the districts over which the evidence extends, the unhesitating appeal to the writings described by them, the absolute equality of the different parts which are recognized in the whole collection, have an important bearing both positively and negatively upon the special testimonies to separate books. They extend the testimony from one book to a group of books; and they exclude the inference that a possible use of other books places them on the same footing with those which belong to the recognized collection. … There is not the slightest evidence to show that the Hebrew Bible ever included any more books than are now contained in it." 

Never does the New Testament quote from the Apocrypha, which in the 16th century the Romanist Church declared to be a part of the Old Testament. While the Apocrypha was often previously to the 16th century used for edification, as any good book may be used, it was not regarded as a part of the Canon in the early or medieval Church. The catalogues of Old Testament books that Athanasius, Augustine, Jerome, etc., drew up did not contain it. Jerome would not translate it in his Vulgate as a part of the Bible, but acceded to Pope Damasus' request to translate it as a sort of an appendix, to be used for edifying reading, 

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but not for authoritative Scripture, even as some editions of Protestant translations so treat it. But while the New Testament never quotes from the Apocrypha, its writers, as shown above, quote from every division of the Old Testament, and, what is more, from almost every one of its books. Our Lord quotes passages from Gen., Ex., Num., Deut., 1 Sam., Ps., Is., Dan., Hos., Jonah and Mal., stressing them as Divinely authoritative. Additionally, in their own, not in Jesus' words, Matt. and Luke quote from Lev., Jer., Mic., and Zech. The book of Acts quotes passages from Gen., Ex., Deut., Ps., Is., Joel, Amos and Hab. James, Peter and Jude quote from Gen., Is. and Prov. The wide extent of these quotations, considering the smallness of the books that do the quoting, makes this remarkable indeed. In Rom., 1 and 2 Cor. and Gal., Paul quotes from Gen., Ex., Lev., Deut., 2 Sam., 1 Kings, Job, Ps., Is., Jer., Hos., Hab. and Mal. Hebrews quotes from the Old Testament more than the other Epistles of Paul, and thus quotes from Gen., Ex., Deut., 2 Sam., Ps., Prov., Is., Jer. and Hag. John's Gospel quotes from Ex., Ps., Is. and Zech.; while Revelation is very largely constructed by piecing together disjointed parts of the Old Testament into a connected whole. 

Besides the express quotations, which are the only ones referred to above, the New Testament writings are literally saturated with the adoption of shorter expressions taken from the Old Testament. Very few verses of the New Testament but contain some word or phrase taken from the Greek Old Testament (the Septuagint). But apart from such shorter parts taken from the Old Testament, the express quotations taken from the Old Testament in the New Testament are from every one of the former's books, except Josh., Judg., Chro., Cant., Eccl., Ezra, Neh., Esth., Obad., Zeph. and Nah. These Old Testament books not quoted from in the New Testament refer almost exclusively to the Parousia, or the Epiphany or both, and, therefore, do not contain matters appropriate for proof texts pertinent 

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to earlier times; and hence their not being quoted in the New Testament is just what should be expected of them. If we should take into account coincidences of thought or expression, the quotations in the New Testament from the Old must be at least seven hundred, The following table of Dr. Westcott shows the number of express quotations in the three New Testament groups of books from the threefold division of the Old Testament, these being, of course, sentence quotations, not simply quotations of a few words or of a phrase: 

‍

‍

The second proposition, i.e., that the New Testament claims that the Old Testament is God's inspired revelation, and as such is a part of the Divinely inspired oracles of the Christian Church, is easy of proof. Not only does Rom. 3:2, already quoted in another connection, prove this point, but Christ and the Apostles directly teach it in many places, and presuppose it everywhere when referring to the Old Testament. The classic passage on this subject is 2 Tim. 3:15-17. Here St. Paul tells Timothy that from childhood he had been studying the Holy Scriptures, hence the Old Testament is what he means, since none of the New Testament had yet been written while Timothy was a child. He then calls the whole Old Testament Divinely inspired Scripture, and as such is profitable for doctrine, reproof [refutation], correction and instruction in righteousness, sufficient to equip the Lord's servants fully for their work. Opposers of the inspiration of the Bible, particularly of its Old Testament part, find this passage an insuperable obstacle to their theories. Sophistrize on it as much as they will, its testimony

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overwhelmingly foils their attacks. But this is not the only passage to the point. The following lines of thought corroborate this teaching. Jesus shows that God in the bush account, made a revelation to Israel, "unto you" in proof of the resurrection (Matt. 22:31). Zecharias tells of God's having promised a Savior by the mouth, writings, of His prophets from the outstart of the Jewish Age (so the Greek, Luke 1:70). St. Paul told the Roman Jews that the Holy Spirit spoke by Isaiah, the prophet, to the fathers (Acts 28:25). He tells us that God spoke at various times and in different measures to the fathers by the prophets (Heb. 1:1). Quoting from the Psalms he says that what he quoted was a saying of the Holy Spirit (Heb. 3:7). Peter says that the prophets searched the writings that the Holy Spirit was by them testifying (1 Pet. 1:11). He also assures us that the Old Testament Scriptures came not by the will of man, but that their writers were moved, inspired, by the Holy Spirit. Accordingly, the various lines of reasoning given above prove that in the days of Christ and the Apostles the Hebrew Old Testament was the Divinely inspired revelation given by God to the Jewish Church. The following is involved in our second proposition: that the New Testament teaches that the Old Testament is a part of the Divinely inspired oracles of the Christian Church is evident from the fact that Christ and the New Testament writers quote from it as an authority for the faith and practice of the Christian Church. It is on account of this course of Christ and the New Testament writers that the Christian Church has always accepted the Old Testament as a part of its Divinely inspired oracles. Indeed, it was the Church's only Bible before the New Testament was written, which is self-evident. 

The Old Testament testifies to the formation of it as the Canon. That which, according to the Bible, gives canonicity to a book is that it was produced by a Divinely inspired man. The first part of its Canon is the Pentateuch, the product of Moses, which was set aside

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or deposited solemnly beside the ark as an evidence of its Divine origin and authority (Deut. 31:24-26); it was required to be read in its entirety to the people at least once in seven years (Deut. 31:10-13); the future king was commanded to have a copy of it made and to study it continually (Deut. 17:18, 19); Joshua (this implied that all other judges of Israel, as quasi-kings, were included in the same command, etc.) was commanded to have a copy of it, read it, meditate on it, speak of it and practice it. Saul forfeited his kingdom for failing to obey one of its requirements (1 Sam. 15). David charged Solomon to obey the law of Moses (1 Kings 2:3), as David was frequently commended for keeping it (1 Kings 11:6; 14:8; 9:4; 11:34, 38). Israel's kings were praised or censured accordingly as they obeyed or disobeyed it. The Pentateuch, through long neglect by wicked kings' apostasies and the consequences of these on the people, was for a while lost from sight, but was found again in Josiah's days (2 Kings 22:8-20). Joshua made an addition to the Old Testament after the Pentateuch was completed (Josh. 24:26). So did Samuel (1 Sam. 10:25). These two transactions show us how the post-Pentateuchal Old Testament books found their way into the Bible; Whenever in the Jewish Age a book was written by an inspired man, it became by that very fact a part of the Old Testament; and in this way the Old Testament grew. There never was a council called which, as higher critics claim, canonized the Old Testament books. Rather, whenever a duly accredited Divinely inspired man produced a book, the people of Israel received it as a part of the Canon, Bible. Thus did the Canon grow, until in the days of Ezra, Nehemiah and Malachi it attained its full growth in its Old Testament part. Not only the facts so far given prove this to be the way the Canon grew, but the fact that Is. 34:16 refers to the book of Jehovah, in which prophecies previous to Isaiah's were written by prophets proves it; and the further fact that Daniel refers to "books" in

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which a prophecy of Jeremiah about to be fulfilled was given (Dan. 9:2) likewise proves it. Thus the books of the Old Testament were progressively collected into one book, as each inspired book was written. 

The Apocrypha, which the custodians of God's Old Testament oracles never acknowledged as a part of the Canon, and which therefore cannot be a part of that Canon, but which Rome sought to canonize, is by its own contents proven to be unworthy of a place in the Canon. The test of the Apocrypha, as well as of other Scriptures, is the seven negative axioms of Scriptural authority and Scriptural teaching: a book or a teaching cannot be inspired, if it be self-contradictory or contradictory of Scriptural passages, doctrines, God's character, the Sin-offerings, facts and purposes of the Divine revelation. The Apocrypha subjected to this test and that of Biblical Numerics breaks down as uninspired: The books of Tobit and Judith contain many geographical, chronological and historical mistakes; they promote superstition and deception, and make justification depend on external formal works. The books of the Wisdom of Solomon and Ecclesiasticus, while containing some excellent things, inculcate a morality based mainly on expediency, and are at variance with the holiness of God. Their wisdom is not Solomonic, but Alexandrine. The pre-existence of souls, with their destiny fixed by conduct prior to their human birth, is taught (Wis. 8:19, 20). The material body is taught to be a weight and clog to the soul (9:15). It teaches prodigies instead of miracles (16:20, 21). It adds unbelievable details to the Egyptian plagues (16; 17). The symbolic meanings attached to the high priest's dress are false (18:24, 25). Cain's murder of Abel is falsely given as the cause of the flood (10:4)! Solomon could not have been its author for it teaches that Israel was then subject to its enemies; and it was written in Greek! Ecclesiasticus, among many good things, teaches the following errors that alms-deeds atone for sin; that generosity should 

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not be shown the wicked; that cruelty may be exercised toward slaves; that the Samaritans should be hated; that expediency is substituted for right (3:30; 12:4-7; 33:26, 28; 43:5; 50:25, 26; 38:17). 

Baruch, allegedly written by the companion of Jeremiah, quotes from Daniel and Nehemiah, who wrote, the one 70, the other nearly 200 years later! Again, it is written in Greek! Baruch is said to have been taken to Babylon; the Bible says he went with Jeremiah to Egypt (Jer. 43:6). The temple is said to be existing and offerings made there; the Bible teaching is that it was destroyed with the city in 607 B. C. The vessels of the temple are said to have been returned to Jerusalem in Jeremiah's day: the Bible teaching is that this occurred in the days of Zerubbabel and Ezra. God is said to hear the prayers of the dead; Jeremiah while dead is said to have prayed for Israel (this is one reason Rome canonized the Apocrypha). It contradicts Jeremiah by the claim that the Babylonian captivity lasted at least seven generations. 1 and 2 Maccabees contain many errors; the latter abounds in legends, fables, and gives the extraordinary prodigy of the preservation of the sacred fire; Jeremiah is said to have hid the tabernacle (then non-existent), the ark and golden altar on Mt. Nebo. It justifies suicide; it also sanctions prayers and sacrifices for the dead (hence canonized by Rome). The author does not claim inspiration, but only to have written according to ability. The additions to Esther contradict the Biblical book of that name, and introduce confusion into its narratives. The additions to Daniel, i.e., the alleged prayer of the three youths in the fiery furnace, is not a prayer but a meditation, unsuitable to the occasion, and gives some particulars inharmonious with the true narrative (vs. 23-27). The story of Susannah contains a play on words proving that it was written in Greek. The legend of Bel and the Dragon is foolish imagination. Thus the Apocrypha violates all seven axioms of Scripture and Scriptural interpretation; hence it cannot 

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be a part of the Bible. If it were, the Jews who were God's accredited custodians of it would have accepted and preserved it as such; for the fact that God appointed them to be the custodians of His Old Testament revelation implies this, since He would not have selected unfit custodians, which they would have been, if they failed to receive and preserve all of it alone as God's revelation. The genuine Old Testament is in its books and in their teachings in harmony with these seven axioms; hence from their standpoint nothing can be said against their inspiration. They come to us well guaranteed and accredited. Therefore with confidence we may say of them: "This is the Finger of God." "All Scripture is Divinely inspired." Therefore we may confidently accept them as a Divinely-inspired Revelation. 

The main features of the foregoing discussion may be summarized in the following two propositions: (1) The Old Testament canon, i.e., the books that became the Bible of Israel, was formed, not by a council of learned Jews, as some imagine, but through the writing of those books by inspired men as God's mouthpieces. Accordingly, as each book in turn was produced by such instruments of the Holy Spirit, it was given to Israel by them and was, on the fact of its authorship's having been proven to be from such a source, accepted by the Israelites into their canon of the Scriptures. (2) We of the Christian Church accept as belonging to the canon of the Old Testament those books only that the Jews accepted as such, since they were the Divinely appointed custodians of the Old Testament oracles of God; because in selecting such custodians the all-wise God selected such as would preserve as His oracles those books only that were such oracles (Rom. 3:2), in order that those of the higher dispensation—the Gospel Church—might have these books as a part of their source of faith and main rule of practice. These two propositions are, therefore, our warrant for accepting the 24 books of the Law, Prophets and Writings, or the first 39 books of the A.V., as 

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the Old Testament Scriptures. And two very similar propositions have made the Church of the Gospel Age accept the 27 books written by certain Apostles and by certain of their companions who wrote under apostolic supervision as the canon of the New Testament. Underlying these two propositions was the conviction of the early Church that our Lord Jesus came as the Divinely authorized Agent of a new and, to the Church, final revelation of God's plan. Thus He revealed God (Matt. 11:27; John 3:2, 13, 34; 17:6, 14, 26; Heb. 1:1, 2), declared His doctrine to be of God (John 8:26, 28; 12:49, 50; 14:10, 24; 15:15; 17:8, 26), and wrought and taught so mightily as to convince people generally that He was the great Prophet that was to come (Matt. 21:11, 46; Luke 24:19; John 3:2; 4:19; 6:14; 7:40; 9:17). This mission of Jesus Christ as the Divinely appointed and unique Mouthpiece of God lies at the bottom of the two propositions that convince the Christian Church of today that the 27 books that proceeded from the hands of certain Apostles and certain of their amanuenses constitute the canon, the books, of the New Testament. 

These two propositions are the following: (1) The twelve Apostles were the specially selected and Divinely authorized and inspired mouthpieces of Christ to preserve and expound the pre-and post-Pentecostal Gospel-Age revelations of Christ for the entire Christian Church, which all of them did orally, and which certain of them directly or indirectly, i.e., through companion agents, did in writings. (2) Such attested writings were accepted as Scripture by their disciples because of their apostolic origin, and solely because of their apostolic origin, because these disciples believed them to be the Divinely authorized and inspired mouthpieces of Christ. Thus these two propositions on their very face show that Jesus Christ was by all believers accepted as the Divinely authorized Agent of a new and, to the Church, final revelation of God's plan. These propositions imply that these 27 books did not 

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become canonical, because, allegedly, the Church gave them canonicity, as Romanism claims, but because of their direct and indirect apostolic origin, and were accepted as canonical by the early Christians because of such apostolic origin. The Church merely accepted them as canonical because of that origin. Its accepting them as canonical no more made them canonical than the Israelites' accepting the Law, the Prophets and the Writings made them canonical. In both cases their canonicity was due to their having been written by Divinely inspired mouthpieces. However, just as we would not accept any book as belonging to the Old Testament canon, unless Israel had that book in its canon, neither would we accept a book as belonging to the New Testament canon, unless the primitive Church had that book in its canon. Canonicity depends on God as the Giver of the Scriptures, not upon the people of God as custodians of the oracles of God. But what the early custodians accepted as having canonicity should now be accepted as such—not on their, but on Christ's authority, who used the Apostles as His Divinely authorized and inspired mouthpieces as teachers and writers. How can we harmonize the thought that only the apostolic origin of a New Testament book is the proof of its canonicity with the fact that three of its books were not written by Apostles, viz., Mark, Luke and Acts (by Luke)? To this question we give the following answer: Mark, the writer of the Gospel bearing his name, was not its independent human author. He wrote it as the amanuensis of St. Peter; and Luke, the writer of the Gospel bearing his name and of the Acts of the Apostles, wrote them as St. Paul's amanuensis. As implied in Acts 12:12, Mark was a disciple of St. Peter, and according to well authenticated history Mark was a companion of St. Peter for years. Accordingly, he thus became equipped with the knowledge of Christ's history and teachings as preached by St. Peter, and wrote his Gospel at St. Peter's dictation. Luke was the companion of St. Paul for years, 

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even to the end of the Apostle's course (Col. 4:14; 2 Tim. 4:11; this is also shown in the "we" sections of the Acts from Acts 16:10 onward). This companionship of Luke with St. Paul enabled the former to learn very familiarly from the latter the history and teachings of Christ and St. Peter and St. Paul, and at St. Paul's dictation wrote these out in the Gospel bearing his name and in the Acts. Thus it was really Sts. Peter and Paul who wrote through Mark and Luke. Accordingly, the entire New Testament was of apostolic authorship; and it is this fact that moved the brethren in the primitive Church to accept such writings as Divinely authorized. There was no other requirement than that of apostolic authorship put upon a writing to entitle it to a place in the New Testament canon. And without such an origin no writing was accepted by the churches as Divinely authoritative, and thus accepted into the New Testament canon. 

Why, then, did the Church of the first century and subsequently require such an origin of a writing as an absolutely essential prerequisite for its acceptance of it as a part of the New Testament oracles? We reply: Jesus constituted the Twelve, St. Paul taking Judas' place in the apostolic band, His plenipotentiaries as mouthpieces and executives (John 20:21; Matt. 18:18). And the early Church believing this of the Twelve, accepted their, and only their, oral and written teachings and arrangements as Divinely authoritative and inspired, and thus as binding on the Church in matters of faith and practice. They were warranted in such a belief because of their accepting Jesus Christ as God's unique and final Mouthpiece, who as such gave God's revelation to the Church through the apostolic teachings and writings (John 14:26; 15:26, 27; 16:12-15). This is the teaching of the New Testament, as the passages just cited prove. The Apostles were given certain powers by Christ which He gave to no others: (1) the power authoritatively to bind on the Church what it should believe and practice, and to free 

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the Church from any belief or practice that others sought to foist upon it, or that it under deception might have been inclined to accept (Matt. 18:18; Gal. 1:8, 9); and (2) the power to bestow the gifts of the Spirit (Gal. 3:5; Acts 8:14-25). Though the evangelist Philip could preach and work miracles, he lacked the power to bestow the gifts of the Spirit, so he sent for Apostles to do this, which was, accordingly, bestowed by Peter and John, as the record shows. In a unique sense these powers made the Apostles the main part of the foundation of the Church (Eph. 2:20). In common with the Apostles others could preach and work miracles; but the two above-mentioned powers no others than Apostles have ever had. 

Our thought that no book is to be considered as belonging to the New Testament canon unless written by an Apostle directly, or indirectly through one of their amanuenses, and accepted as such by the primitive Church, sloes not mean that it was the Church's acceptance of such books that gave them canonicity, as the Church of Rome claims, and therefore claims to have the power to make books canonical, which power she claims to have exercised when the Council of Trent allegedly made the Apocrypha canonical. Canonicity did not depend on the Church's accepting the apostolic writings; rather, the Church was obliged to accept them as canonical, because they were apostolic writings. Why, then, do we give as a secondary proof for the canonicity of a book the fact that it was accepted by the primitive Church? It is because their accepting it as such is partly a faith and partly an historical proof to us that they regarded such a book as apostolical. Their accepting it as apostolic and thus canonical is a reason why we should accept such a book as apostolic and canonical; for the first accepters of such books had first-hand evidence of their apostolic origin, which we living 19 centuries later cannot have and, therefore; in part accept it on their testimony as of apostolic origin. 

We say, in part we accept it on their testimony, because 

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we also accept such books because of their own testimony to this effect. One might say that to believe these books as canonical, because they claim to be of apostolic origin is to accept their own witness as a proof of their canonicity, which the objector would say is assuming the thing to be proved and to take one's own witness as proof, whereas its proof should be based on others' witness. We reply that if other humans would make such claims as the reason for accepting them as such, it would be proper to require other than their own evidence as proof. But in this case we come to the rock-bottom of proof—God by reason of His supreme wisdom, justice, love and power is the final authority on all Truth; and His utterances are of themselves absolute and final evidence of Truth. Jesus came as the fully accredited Mouthpiece of God, and the Apostles came as the fully accredited mouthpieces and executives for Jesus as God's final Mouthpiece. Hence we see that the fundamental evidence of the canonicity of the books of the New Testament is their apostolic origin; and the early Church's accepting them as such simply gives us an historical proof thereon, which is only partial and not complete. This evidence is necessary, because many writings claim to be apostolic which are not so. How may we differentiate? In this way: The early Church by its contact with the Apostles knew them, their teachings and their writings, and, therefore, historically can help us to know which writings are apostolic, and which are not. Its rejecting many writings as non-apostolic, despite their claims to apostolicity, is a distinct historical proof to us that such writings lacked the necessary proof of their apostolicity and, therefore, are non-apostolic and hence non-canonical; and its accepting the genuine apostolic writings as such, and hence as canonical, helps us to see which are canonical. Thus the testimony of the early Church is a supporting, not a fundamental, proof of the canonicity of the New Testament books. There is another point that must be considered 

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in connection with the value of the primitive Church's testimony on the apostolicity of the New Testament books, viz., the providence of God operating to bring the Church into accepting as of the canon only apostolic books; for if God undertook to give a revelation through the Apostles, certainly He would so work as to cause that revelation to be accepted as such by those to whom He was making it, i.e., the Church. 

This view of the early Church's relation to the canon as a witness of its apostolic origin is quite a different thing from Rome's claim that it has the power to determine what books are canonical. God alone, through Christ and the Apostles, had and exercised that power. Hence the Roman Church's challenge, "How would you know what books are canonical except by the authority of the Church?" falls to the ground. In the first place, by the early Church we do not mean the Romanist Church, which for centuries was a growing, and now is a gigantic apostasy from the early Church, and is in Rev. 2:9, even from its earliest startings, called a synagogue of Satan, while the true Church consists of the Faithful in Christ Jesus. The Romanist Church took over from the early Church the New Testament books as canonical—it did not make them canonical. Nor did the Church ever before the 15th century by a pope nor before the 16th century by a council claim authority, or presume to exercise the alleged authority, to make books canonical. While certain councils before the 16th century declared that the books of our Bible were canonical, e.g., that at Carthage, 397, they did not presume to make them so; they accepted them as such from the earlier Church; they declared them so because of their prophetic and apostolic origin. The first authoritative claim of the Romanist Church to make books canonical, and to assume to give effect to such a claim, was that of Pope Eugenius (1441 A. D.), who promulgated the same list (like ours, with the addition of the Apocrypha) as the council of Trent (1546) allegedly authorized as canonical. 

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This brief discussion of the subject shows a wide distinction between the Church as a qualified historical witness to us of what books were apostolic and canonical, and the Romanist Church's claim of authority to fix the canon of Holy Scripture. The whole question is one of authorship, hence is far removed from papal or counciliar authority. When the question is recognized as one of authorship, we see at once that all that is needed is credible and qualified historical testimony on that of authorship. No papal or counciliar authority is needed to determine which writings are Luther's or Wesley's; all that is needed to prove them to be such is credible and qualified witnesses. So the acceptance of any writing as of Paul's authorship would depend on credible and qualified witness, which the churches and individuals had to whom he wrote it, and who accepted it on credible and competent witness as to the writing as of his authorship. Thus we see fall one of the swelling words of papal blasphemy. 

Before considering the historical witness of the Church to the canonicity of the New Testament books, it would be in place for us to consider, in addition to what we gave above on the Divinely-given authority of the Apostles to issue canonical writings to the Church, the proofs that the New Testament offers on their having authority to issue such books. And this line of thought we will preface by other pertinent things laid down in the Scriptures. The first of these is the fact that the Bible in both literal and symbolic passages teaches that it would consist of two parts, i.e., the Old and New Testaments. Eph. 2:20 is a literal passage to this effect. Primarily by the prophets of this passage the Old Testament Scriptures are meant, and by the apostles the New Testament Scriptures are meant. These are the primary foundation of the Christian Church as God's temple, because it [the church] is built upon the Holy Scriptures in their two parts: the Old and the New Testaments, which, accordingly, are its foundation as to faith and practice.

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Symbolic passages teach the same things. These two parts of the Bible are the two witnesses of Rev. 11:3-12, which prophesied in the sackcloth of dead languages during the 1260 symbolic days [years] of their prophecy. In this passage they are also called the two olive trees (see also Zech. 4:3), because of their containing the symbolic oil, i.e., the spirit of understanding of the Truth (Matt. 25:3, 4, 8; Jas. 5:14; Ps. 141:5), also the two candlesticks, because they give out the symbolic light, the Truth (Ps. 119:105, 130; Rev. 18:23). 

In the types of the tabernacle everything pertinent to the service of the antitypical Priesthood is set forth. The two parts of the Bible are among such pertinencies; and we should, therefore, expect to find its two parts somewhere typed in the tabernacle arrangement. This seems to be done by the two onyx stones attached to the ephod at the high priest's shoulders, the one on the right standing for the New Testament and the one on the left for the Old Testament, the names of the twelve tribes engraved thereon seemingly typing the twelve graces of Millennial Israel, which are embedded in the two Testaments. Thus we see that the fact that the Bible would consist of two parts is set forth in literal and symbolic passages of the Scriptures. We know no literal passages of Holy Writ that show that the Bible consists of 66 books. But this is set forth in several ways in symbolic passages. The thought of Eph. 2:20, that the Old and New Testaments ["built upon the foundation of the Apostles and prophets"] are the foundation of the Church as God's temple, is worked out in the tabernacle types as follows: The Old Testament consists from one standpoint of 39 books and the New Testament of 27 books: 66 in all. These 66 books are represented by the tabernacle's boards, bars and pillars, which total exactly 66, as follows: It had 48 boards (Ex. 26:18, 19, 22, 23), 9 sets of bars, by counting as a set each of the three rows on each of the three sides of the tabernacle (Ex. 26:26-28), 

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and 9 pillars (Ex. 26:32, 37). These numbers total 66, the number of the Biblical books. 

The following will clarify how the thought of Eph. 2:20, i.e., that the books of the two parts of the Bible are the foundation upon which the Church as God's temple rests. The tabernacle in a wide and in the usual sense of the word was the whole structure built of the boards, pillars, bars and their four different curtains. But in a narrow sense it was the linen curtain, which represents the Church as New Creatures (Ex. 26:1, 6, 7; 36:13, 14). This curtain rested immediately on the boards and pillars of the structure as these were held connectedly by its bars. Thus as the Church rests upon the 66 books of the Bible as its foundation, so the linen curtain which represents the Church as such rested upon the boards, pillars and bars of the tabernacle. Surely this is a remarkable piece of symbolism, beautifully typing that there are 66 books in the Bible as the foundation on which the Church rests. 

In still another way the books of the Bible are represented as being 66 in number: We recall that the shewbread (Lev. 24:5-9) consisted of 12 cakes of bread placed upon the table in two rows, six loaves to a row. Primarily, these loaves represent the truths of God's Word considered as spiritual food (John 17:17; 1 Cor. 5:8; Is. 55:2) for the twelve tribes of Spiritual Israel (Rev. 7:4-8). Secondarily, they represent the Bible as the embodiment of these truths. The two rows, each of six loaves, as they stood side by side and read as numbers give us the number 66; and thus they pictured forth the thought that the Bible consists of truths contained in 66 books. Thus does the Bible in its literal and symbolic passages show that it consists of the Old and New Testaments and that these consist of 66 books. The Bible also shows that the Old Testament consists of 39 books and the New Testament of 27 books. It does not do this in literal passages, but it does this in symbolic passages—by the way the boards, bars and pillars of the tabernacle were

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arranged. Thus, among other things, the 9 pillars, 5 in the holy and 4 in the most holy, and the 18 complete boards in the most holy, 6 on each side, represent the 27 books of the New Testament. The rest of the boards, 30 in number, and the 9 rows of bars, 39 in all, represent the books of the Old Testament. These 30 boards were arranged as follows: On the north and south sides of the tabernacle there were 28 boards minus those wholly within the most holy, and in the north-west and south-west corners of the most holy were two other boards ⅓ visible in the most holy. 

Thus by a literal passage and by several symbolic passages God has indicated to us that the Bible would consist of two parts: the Old and New Testaments, and by several symbolic passages He has shown us that it would consist of 66 books, and that the Old Testament would contain 39 and the New Testament 27 of these. As so symbolized, the Bible consists of 66 books: 39 in the Old Testament and 27 in the New Testament. How wise is our God! Thus, before any book of the Bible was written, God showed that the Bible would consist of 66 books: 39 in the Old Testament and 27 in the New Testament. Hence we know that only 39 books belong to the former and 27 to the latter, which overthrows the Romanist canon as containing more than 39 Old Testament books. This proves also that the Bible of the Protestants contains the right number of books; and since no other than the books that we have in the New Testament were written by Apostles, it follows that the 27 books of our New Testament are canonical and that they are the only ones that belong to the New Testament canon. St. Paul tells the Colossians to read the epistle that would come to them from (ek) the Church of Laodicea (Col. 4:16). This evidently refers to the Epistle to the Ephesians, which was written at Rome by St. Paul at the same period as that to the Colossians was written. Both of these epistles were intended by St. Paul to be circulated among the churches. Some, failing to note 

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that St. Paul here says, "the epistle from Laodicea," not of Laodicea, have thought that a non-canonical epistle was here meant. The Apostles wrote no uncanonical epistles. The many of such ascribed to them are fraudulent. In Col. 4:16 St. Paul speaks of the circulation of two of his epistles among at least two churches, and shows the order of the circulation so far as the two are concerned as to the two named cities: one was first to be read at Colosse, then to be taken from there to be read in the church at Laodicea; the other was to be read first in the church at Laodicea and from there was to be brought to Colosse and there read in its church. The fact that God tells us that there would be 27 books in the New Testament, i.e., books of apostolic origin, no more and no less, also proves that the many apocryphal books ascribed to apostolic authorship are fraudulent—they are the first examples of novels produced by the fertile fancies of Christian romancers, who wrote to feed the voracious appetite of miracle-hungry nominal Christians. 

Now we submit—additional to that given above—the Biblical proof that the oral and written teachings of the Apostles, as being those of Christ's plenipotentiaries in teaching and executive matters, are God's oracles of the New Testament. One of the strongest proofs on this point—other than those given above—is in Gal. 1:11, 12: "1 make known to you, brethren, as touching the Gospel which was preached by me, that it is not after man [of human origin]. For neither did I receive it from man, nor was I taught it [by human teachers], but it came to me through revelation of Jesus Christ." It was of this Gospel that he says in vs. 8, 9, that if any one, even an angel, would preach another gospel than that preached by him, let him be accursed; "God … hath in the last of the days [the Gospel Age is the last day, i.e., Age, of the second dispensation] spoken to us by His Son … so great salvation, which had the beginning of being spoken by the Lord [Jesus] and was confirmed unto us [by word and 

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writing] by them [the Apostles] that heard him, God bearing them witness both with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles and gifts of the Holy Spirit, according to His own will" (Heb. 1:1, 2; 2:3, 4). Thus St. Paul claims for his teachings that they are not the word of man but the Word of God, and upon that authority binds them, whether in oral or literary form, as obligatory on Christians (1 Thes. 2:13). Hence he charges Christians to hold fast to his oral or written teachings (2 Thes. 2:15), and binds on Christians arrangements for the Church (1 Cor. 7:17). 

St. John writes his epistles, in the same sense binding authoritatively the Divine arrangements and teachings on the brethren; and in the Revelation he calls on the faithful to hear his teachings as those of the Spirit spoken to the churches (Rev. 2; 3) and denounces woes on Bible tamperers (Rev. 22:18, 19). While St. James makes no such claims in his epistle, he compares his sayings with those of the Prophets as substantially the same, and sets forth his views as comparing with those of the prophetic writings, and in the same tone of authority as theirs lays charges on his readers. The entire epistle bristles with this view and spirit. St. Peter exercises a similar attitude less trenchantly put. His claim of apostleship implies such authority (1 Pet. 1:1; 2 Pet. 1:1) and his writing for future generations of the Church implies this thought (2 Pet. 1:13-15). And he, therefore, speaks of the Apostles as having a surer word of prophecy than visions, which came by inspiration like that of the Old Testament writers (2 Pet. 1:16-21). St. Jude exercises an apostolic function by addressing the entire Church and laying various necessary obligations upon them (Jude 1, 3, 20-23). It is St. Peter himself that refers to St. Paul's epistles as of equal authority with the rest of the Scriptures (2 Pet. 3:15, 16). Here he not only refers to the Old Testament Scriptures but also to the New Testament Scriptures. And thus he puts them together as of a class by themselves and

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thereby implies the inspiration (God-inbreathed) of the New Testament, as St. Paul does that of the Old Testament (2 Tim. 3:15-17). Thus the New Testament sets forth the thought that the Apostles as Christ's plenipotentiaries have given us the New Testament, consisting of 27 books attested by God and Christ. 

Just one more thought in elucidation of our first proposition on the canonicity of the 27 New Testament books. To refresh our memories we will repeat this first proposition: The twelve Apostles were the specially chosen and Divinely authorized and inspired mouthpieces of Christ to preserve and expound the pre-and post-Pentecostal Gospel-Age revelation of Christ for the entire Christian Church, which all of them did orally, and which certain of them did directly or indirectly, i.e., through companion agents, in writing. Now for the final clarifying thought on the first proposition: The main and controlling objection that certain ones in the fourth century entertained as to the canonicity of certain New Testament books, the so-called "disputed books," was their doubts as to their apostolicity. Thus some doubted that Hebrews came from St. Paul's pen, mainly because its style is different from, and better than that of his other writings. While Revelation was everywhere accepted at first, later when the Millennial hope was swallowed up by the hope of first converting the world and then reigning 1,000 years over it before Christ's return, i.e., Pre-Millennialism was swallowed up by Post-Millennialism, some began to dispute its canonicity. Thus also there was some doubt as to James and 2 Peter, in which Pre-Millennialism is taught. These books were called "disputed." But the main and controlling basis for disputing their canonicity by some was their doubts as to their apostolic origin. Thus we see that the principle prevailed in the early Church that only apostolic writings could belong to the New Testament canon. It will be noted that neither James nor Jude call themselves Apostles. This we ascribe to their humility, James speaking of 

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himself as a servant of God and of our Lord (Jas. 1:1), and Jude speaking of himself as a servant of Jesus Christ and brother of James (Jude 1). But they were undoubtedly those of the Twelve who are called, James the son of Alphaeus (Matt. 10:3), and Judas, not Iscariot (John 14:22), called Lebbaeus and Thaddaeus in Matt. 10:3 and Judas, the brother of James, in Luke 6:16. We now close our discussion of our first proposition and trust that it will be helpful to our understanding of why our 27 New Testament books belong to the Bible, the Canon or rule and source of faith and practice. 

As no extra-Biblical contemporaneous information on the origin of the New Testament canon has come down to us, in order to trace this origin historically from extra-Biblical near-contemporaneous times we will best begin at a time when there is indisputable evidence on the existence of the New Testament as a Divinely given collection of books, i.e., from 170 to 220 A.D., and then trace this historical evidence backward to the times of the Apostles. But candor requires us to acknowledge that we cannot from the extra-Biblical facts that are at our disposal prove unanswerably as an historical problem the Apostolic origin of all the New Testament books. We are compelled to some extent to fall back upon Biblically given facts and upon faith in the providence of the Lord supervising the preservation of the New Testament books. To the Christian such a course is entirely proper, but to the skeptic who demands extra-Biblical contemporaneous and near-contemporaneous facts to prove every phase of the involved questions this course of faith is unsatisfying. He demands sight as proof now, during a dispensation in which faith, even when sight is denied, is the thing that God requires of His faithful, and in which He lets the skeptic go his way in darkness, unenlightened by the lamp of faith. To the Christian it is sufficient that God gives presumptive proof from extra-Biblical near-contemporaneous sources to satisfy

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a reasonable faith as to the New Testament's coming from the hands of the inspired Apostles. Hence if he cannot trace in every detail the extra-Biblical facts demanded by the skeptic as proof for the canonicity of every New Testament book, he has enough proof to satisfy a reasonable faith built upon the basis of a faith-satisfying knowledge. For, as will be brought out later in our discussions, God gives faith a reasonable foundation in knowledge of the genuineness, authenticity and credibility of the Bible in both of its parts. Hence faith so based is not distressed when in some details sight is denied on the matter of the canonicity of every New Testament book. 

There are good reasons to account for the fact that in all details we cannot trace every New Testament book to its writer by contemporaneous and nearly contemporaneous extra-Biblical historical facts. These reasons are especially threefold: (1) the destruction of most of the extra-Biblical Christian literature prior to 170 A. D.; (2) the paucity of what has survived; and (3) the preoccupation of Christian writers living in that period with other matters. A few explanations will clarify these three thoughts. As to the first point there are many names of Christian writers of this period handed down to us of whose writings nothing remains, which means that the wantonness of enemies and the ravages of time have done away with many of these. The Church historian, Eusebius, who flourished in the first half of the fourth century mentions many of these. Among such are Hegesippus (who flourished about 140 A. D. and who was the first of Church historians), Papias (who flourished about 125 A. D. and whose special field was to gather into book form the extra-canonical sayings of our Lord as these were reported by the Apostles to their immediate disciples, a work especially fruitful on the point under consideration, since the contrasts that such a book would make between the four Gospels and the Acts on the one hand, and such extra-canonical sayings on the 

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other hand, would make mention of just what we here desire as witnesses), Quadratus (about 125 A. D.), Claudius Apollinarius, bishop of Hierapolis, Miltiades of Athens (both about 170 A. D.) and Melito of Sardis (about 170 A. D.), all four of whom were apologists. Contemporary literary opponents of Marcion (who, 144-150 A. D., compiled a Gospel from our four Gospels and other sources, who falsified ten of Paul's epistles and rejected other books of the New Testament) doubtless gave fine evidence on the canonical books useful for our present purpose, but their writings are all lost. Thus by the loss of these and many other Christian writings we have lost many testimonies on the canonicity of New Testament books. 

Again, the paucity of the Christian literature that has survived from the post-apostolic period under study precludes our having much on the canon written during this period. This will appear from the following: All of the extant Christian literature produced from the time of the death of the last Apostle, John, about 100 A. D., until about 220 A. D., is published in 10-point solid type (the size of the type with which this is printed), in less than 2400 pages averaging a depth of 7¼" and a width of 5⅜". Considering the large amount of subjects treated in this small literature, it is naturally to be expected that comparatively little of it would be devoted to the matter of canonicity, especially so because the period was so near the time of the Apostles, hence did not allow room for much doubt on the Apostolic origin of the New Testament, and hence would afford small occasion to discuss the question of the canon. And, finally, the character of the writings that have survived proves that for the most part little occasion arose to discuss the canonicity of the New Testament books. Most of the writings of those times that have come down to us are controversial writings occasioned by the rise of various heresies, e.g., Gnosticism, Montanism and the Roman Church's date of the Passover. Because for the most part the

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Gnostics accepted the books of the New Testament, and because all the Montanists and the disputants on the date of the Passover accepted the New Testament books, there was no occasion to discuss the question of the New Testament canon. The bulk of the rest of the literature extant from that period is of an apologetic and ethical character, which, again, afforded almost no occasion to discuss the New Testament canon. The need of defending the doctrines of the New Testament against heretics who professed to believe it, and the need of defending Christians by apologetic writers against persecuting emperors and their representatives gave Christian writers preoccupation with other subjects than writing on the New Testament canon. Hence there are comparatively few of such lines of thought in the writings extant from those days. 

Thus the three reasons: the destruction of most of the post-apostolic age's writings, the paucity of what remains and the preoccupation of Christian writers on other subjects, prevented much to come down to us from the post-apostolic age dealing with the New Testament canon. Hence the insistence of skeptics on requiring conclusive contemporaneous and near-contemporaneous extra-Biblical historical testimony on each book of the New Testament, in the absence of which they will not accept it as canonical, is unfair to history and the circumstance of the case. Since skepticism is a quality of character, it is doubtful that if such evidence were on hand, they would accept it; rather this characteristic would move them to look around for some other excuse to reject what unbelief does not wish to accept. To the believer it is enough that the Lord has given us a fair degree of testimony from extra-Biblical and near-contemporary sources that the books of the New Testament are canonical, because the believer knows that the Bible teaches that there would be 27 such books, that it taught this before they were written, that the fact that it so teaches was not known until centuries after its 27 books were 

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recognized to be canonical, that God could be depended upon providentially to preserve the genuine 27 books of the New Testament, and cause His custodians for those books to receive and keep them as such separate and distinct from all other books, and that there are no more than those 27 ever accepted by all these custodians as canonical, i.e., as of the rule of faith. 

We will now present an outline of the extra-Biblical evidence on the canonicity of the New Testament books, beginning with the evidence on hand from the fifty years' period, 170-220 A. D., thereafter tracing backward the testimony of the preceding 75 years, divided into smaller periods than that of 170-220 A. D. We begin with the testimony on the four Gospels. Irenaeus, whose special activities were from 170 to 203, as against the Gnostic Marcion's conglomeration gathered together from our four Gospels, made between 144 and 150 A. D., as against a fifth gospel made about 140 A. D. by the greatest of the Gnostics, Valentinian, called the Gospel of Truth, which Valentinian held as true along with our four Gospels, as against Alogians, who rejected John's Gospel because of his Logos teachings, and as against the exclusive use of Matthew or Mark as Gospels by certain sects, set forth our four Gospels as coming from Christ through four Apostles ("He gave us the Gospel in a fourfold form") and claimed that to disparage these four was a blasphemy against God and Christ. He and others of his contemporaries designated this fourfold form of the Gospel by the specific expression, The Gospel according to Matthew, according to Mark, according to Luke and according to John. That no other Gospels were used in the Church of that time is apparent from Tertullian's, Origen's and the Muratorian Canon's silence on such when citing from the books called the Gospels. The Muratorian Canon, which dates from 170 A. D., gives us a list of the New Testament books. Its beginning and also its ending have been lost. The fragment that we now have begins to enumerate with Luke's Gospel and reads 

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as follows: "Of the Gospels the third book [is] according to Luke." This wording implies that the lost part of this canon refers to Matthew's book as the first of the Gospels and Mark's book as the second of the Gospels. Then the canon goes on to call John's book the fourth of the Gospels. So here Luke's and John's Gospels are expressly enumerated as the third and fourth and by implication Matthew's and Mark's Gospels are enumerated as the first and second. 

This, together with the enumeration of the rest of the New Testament books as in an annotated catalogue, implies that at least by 170 A. D. these books were gathered together in one volume. The only New Testament books not listed in this fragment are Hebrews, James and 2 Peter, which doubtless were listed in a part or in parts of the canon now lost. Clement of Alexandria, about 200 A. D., speaks of "the four Gospels delivered to us" and distinguishes between them and "certain so-called Gospels" that cannot, like the four, be used as binding proofs for Christians. From the time of Irenaeus on there is no mention of any except our four Gospels as being read in the meetings of the churches. The Alogians, who denied our Lord's pre-human existence, about 170 A. D. agreed that John was written in the time of the Apostle John, but they claimed that it was not written by the Apostle John but by Cerinthus, one of the first Gnostics. Tatian, 170-180, furnished the Church his Diatessaron (through the four, i.e., one Gospel interwoven from the four Gospels), which implies, of course, not only that these four Gospels were recognized as canonical before his times, but also that they were the only ones so recognized, else he would have used others in constructing his Diatessaron. Serapion, a bishop of Antioch, about 200 A. D. on finding that another than the four was read in certain churches of his diocese, after investigation into the matter forbade it on the ground that there were only four canonical Gospels. Origen, about 220, said the following: "The Church of God sanctions but four 

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Gospels." Accordingly, between 170 and 220 A. D. there were our four and only our four Gospels regarded in the Church as originating with Apostles. 

As to St. Paul's epistles from 170 to 220 A. D.: Everywhere our 14 epistles bearing his name were accepted as coming from him, except in the Western Church the Epistle to the Hebrews, which there was not accepted as canonical, because it was not there generally believed to have come from Paul's pen. But everywhere in the Eastern Church it was accepted as canonical because "Divine." Two epistles falsely ascribed to St. Paul, that to the Laodiceans and that to the Alexandrians, were everywhere rejected as false, a thing, e.g., the Muratorian Canon expressly states, as do other writers of this period, though we know of no writer of that or an earlier period who claims them to be St. Paul's. During this period everywhere the Acts were ascribed to Luke as St. Paul's amanuensis. This is seen in the Muratorian Canon and in the writings of Irenaeus, Clement, Tertullian, Hippolytus, Origen, etc. The Muratorian fragment blames Marcion for rejecting it. It is in this canon placed as between John's Gospel and St. Paul's epistles. Revelation in this period has the strongest proofs for its place in the canon. Theophilus of Antioch (died 180 A. D.) and the Church at Lyons, France (Irenaeus' church), quote it as Holy Scripture. Irenaeus and the Muratorian Fragment do the same. Tertullian, 200 A. D., and Clement quote it under the name Apocalypse, the latter writing a commentary on it. Even the Montanists accepted it, while, as with the rest of John's writings, the Alogians (no-Logians) rejected it. Hippolytus (215 A. D.) wrote a refutation against attacks on its canonicity. The opinion was general from 170 to 220 A. D., and before, that this book was written in 95 A. D. and closed the New Testament canon. 

As to the non-Pauline epistles of the New Testament: The parts of the Muratorian Canon that are extant enumerate five of them-all except James and

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2 Peter. Doubtless these were enumerated in parts of the Muratorian Canon now lost. Everywhere 1 John, to which in the period under discussion his second and third epistles were united as a second, according to the Muratorian Fragment, was recognized. So do Irenaeus and Clement unite them. Among others, Clement wrote a commentary on the third; yea, he wrote a commentary on all seven of the non-Pauline epistles in the New Testament: James, 1 and 2 Peter, 1, 2, 3 John and Jude. Origen blamed certain ones for being in doubt as to the canonicity of 2 and 3 John and called Jude Holy Scripture, as also did Tertullian. While James is not mentioned as canonical in the Western Church during this period, nothing there is said against its canonicity in the period under study. Everywhere in the Oriental Church it was in this period accepted as canonical. 1 Peter was everywhere accepted in this period. Irenaeus repeatedly quotes it, so do Tertullian, Origen and Hippolytus, as Scripture, and Clement wrote a commentary on it. There is no evidence extant that 2 Peter was recognized as canonical by the Western Church before 350 A. D. Such silence does not disprove its canonicity; for it may have been referred to in Western writings before then now lost. The Eastern Church in this period accepted it as canonical; as can be recognized from Clement's commentary on it and Origen's use of it. Thus our investigation proves that from 170 to 220 A. D. there is, despite the three handicaps discussed above, strong extra-Biblical historical evidence for the canonicity of the whole New Testament, except for the epistles of James and 2 Peter, for which such evidence, though extant, is not so strong as that for the other 25 books of the New Testament in the period from 170 to 220 A. D. The old Syriac and Latin (Itala) translations of the New Testament date from about 170 A. D., and are a strong proof of the canonicity of the New Testament. 

A few remarks on the foregoing will strengthen the evidence above presented. The manner in which the 

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above-mentioned and other Christian writers express themselves in favor of the New Testament books as against the heresies of the Gnostics, the Alogians and Marcion excludes the possibility that in the lifetimes of Irenaeus and Clement's teachers the use of the collected New Testament as canonical could have been introduced into the service of the churches of their days, i.e., as late as 140 A. D., let alone 170 A. D., and thus ended an alleged chaotic state in the churches as to what New Testament books were canonical. For that time, 140-170 A. D., there did not exist an organization of the Church that could successfully have introduced as something new so momentous a thing as a Divinely obligatory canon that allegedly displaced other books as non-canonical, as skeptical writers claim. The attempt so to do would have raised an unprecedented controversy, of which Church history gives not the slightest hint. This would have implied a general conspiracy, not only of all the leading bishops and all minor bishops, but also of practically all the rest of the clergy—an impossible thing to create, let alone that all traces of such an event be blotted out; for if the effort to change the date of the annual Passover from Nisan 14 to the date at present practiced in Christendom and the effort to introduce Montanism and Gnosticism led to great and widespread controversies, whose records stand indelibly written in Church history, certainly the attempt to displace certain books recognized as canonical by others not up to that time so recognized would not only have occasioned greater controversies than those just mentioned, but would have left indelible records thereon on the pages of Church history. But neither of these things exists—a certain proof that the pertinent allegations of skeptics are baseless. Under such a supposition it would be incomprehensible to explain why no questions were raised in some churches as to why in some churches James, Hebrews and 2 Peter were not, and in others were read as Scripture, even if the main churches had taken part in the alleged

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conspiracy. Against this supposition the fact is conclusive, that, judging from the variant Scripture readings found in the Christian writings of about 200 A. D., there were already in 140-170 A. D. many variant readings in the New Testament—a thing against which the alleged conspirators would have guarded themselves, even as Marcion successfully counterfeited a New Testament strictly free from variant readings. Accordingly, the hypothesis that certain New Testament higher critics have invented, to the effect that by a conspiracy Christian leaders between 140 and 170 A. D. foisted the present New Testament on the whole Church as canonical and thereby suppressed other books previously widely recognized as canonical, falls to the ground as utterly discredited. 

Having briefly set forth the historical proofs that 24 of the 27 New Testament books were universally received in the Church as canonical and that the other three were received by a large number of churches, but cannot be proven to have been accepted by all, during the period from 170 to 220 A. D., we now proceed to set forth briefly the proofs on our subject covering the period from 140 to 170 A. D. In this period we have some valuable testimony, both positive and negative, from heretics, as to the canon of the New Testament. First we cite the Gnostic Marcion, who left the Church in 144 A. D., formed a sect of his own and constructed his own New Testament from the four Gospels and ten of Paul's epistles. He thus divided his New Testament into two parts: a Gospel and an Apostolicon. These he modified, changed, added to and subtracted from, accordingly as the needs of his dogmatical position required. A Jew-baiter, he rejected entirely the Old Testament and all the Apostles except Paul, because they were "Jewish." He taught a theory in certain particulars like Concordant Versionism, which from its actual Gospel rejects everything "Jewish." Tertullian compared and contrasted Marcion's New Testament with the genuine one, verse by verse, when he exposed 

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its fraudulency. Ephraim (325 A. D.) did the same, so that his entire New Testament has been reconstructed. It is a strong tribute to the following facts: (1) that word for word he copied the wording of the four Gospels and ten of Paul's epistles, where they did not contradict his views; (2) that he made slight modifications in the wording to bring almost like thoughts into harmony with his views; (3) that he omitted whatever contradicted his views and could not be doctored so as to support his views; (4) that he added things not contained in the genuine New Testament in order to teach his views that had no ground in the originals; and (5) that he greatly changed passages that could be doctored to teach his views, though the original did not intimate the changed thoughts. 

These five forms of changing the genuine New Testament into becoming the New Testament of his sect is eloquent in positive proof on the canonicity of the 14 involved New Testament books. And his rejecting the other 13 is eloquent as a negative proof of their canonicity; for they could not be doctored into harmony with his views, in harmony with his principle of the general agreement of his Gospel and Apostolicon with our four Gospels and the ten Pauline epistles that he accepted. The four Pauline epistles that he refused to use were 1 and 2 Tim., Tit. and Heb. His Gospel and Apostolicon self-evidently imply that he had the four Gospels and ten of Paul's epistles as the foundation of his work; and negatively they imply that he had the other 13 New Testament books before him, but rejected them from use, because he could not make them subservient to his cause. E.g., Hebrews is based on the Old Testament so allsidedly that he, rejecting the Old Testament, could not at all doctor it up to suit his viewpoint, hence did not use it at all. For a similar reason he could not use the Apocalypse. The pastoral instructions of which the three Pauline Pastoral Epistles consist likewise made them unavailable to him, he claiming that they were merely private letters of Paul,

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hence not to be accepted into the Church's canon. For similar reasons he rejected the Acts and the Catholic Epistles (James, 1, 2 Peter, 1, 2, 3 John and Jude) as "Jewish." To justify his changes he charged the four Evangelists and Paul with error in their writings, claiming that he was qualified to revise them into harmony with the Truth, and that under Divine inspiration. Some of the alleged errors in the said writings were introduced, he claimed, by disciples of the Apostles. He made most use of Luke's Gospel, because it was more Pauline than the others. There is, however, no trace of the use of an uncanonical Gospel to be found in Marcion's Gospel. From these facts it follows that the New Testament of the Roman ecclesia of about 140 A. D. was the same as that of about 200 A. D. 

Valentine, the greatest of the Gnostics, founded in 140 A. D. his sect at Rome, whence it spread over the entire Roman Empire; and in almost every city and town of that empire a Valentinian Gnostic church stood side by side with an orthodox church. He did not do like Marcion: reject the New Testament of the Church and make a counterfeit one of his own. He accepted the Church's New Testament and sought by various expedients of interpretation to read his ideas into the genuine New Testament. To him the Logos doctrine of John was especially needful to form a basis of his aeons doctrine; for he claimed that the Logos was the greatest and first of all aeons, which were allegedly spirit beings that the Supreme Being allegedly caused to emanate from His own substance. This emanation theory of the Gnostics lay at the basis of that part of the trinitarian doctrine involved in the Son's consubstantiality with the Father. Valentine and his school additionally to the four Gospels claimed to have a large body of traditions purporting to consist of extra-Biblical sayings and deeds of our Lord and the Apostles, which really were largely inventions of their own, which they made serve every exigency arising in their debates with the orthodox, and which they put into a

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writing called, The Gospel of Truth. All the while they professed great confidence in our New Testament as a source and rule of faith. One of the leading Valentinians, Heraklion, wrote a commentary on our four Gospels. In the writings of the Gnostics of this school practically every book of our New Testament is quoted from, and referred to, and on several of Paul's epistles they wrote commentaries. Thus from 140 to 170 A. D. the Gnostics give us strong evidence on the canonicity of the New Testament—testimony from enemies! 

Several of the orthodox writers of this period give us evidence on the canonicity of various New Testament books. The Shepherd of Hermas, e.g., compares the New Testament to a chair upon which the Church rests, and uses its four legs to represent the four Gospels, the foundation writings of the New Testament, the seat of the chair to picture the Pauline writings and the chair's back to symbolize the seven Catholic Epistles and Revelation. The Shepherd of Hermas was written between 140 and 150 A. D. Justin Martyr's first Apology was written in 140 A. D. and his second about 160 A. D. These refer to the four Gospels as the memoirs of Christ written by Apostles, i.e., Matthew and John, and disciples of theirs, i.e., Mark and Luke. In these Apologies Justin Martyr describes many Gospel events, some of them in the language of the Gospels, and tells us these Gospels were regularly read in the church services as a part of the worship. In these Apologies and in his other writings Justin refers to the Acts of the Apostles and quotes from some of the Epistles, however, sparingly, since their subject matter was not available to Apologies for Christians addressed to the Roman Emperor, Antoninus Pius (138-161 A. D.). He referred to his Dialogue to the Revelation as a writing of John and a true and sublime prophecy. Aristides, an Athenian philosopher, wrote his Apology about 145 A. D. to the same emperor. It contains some allusions to New Testament passages. Some refer Tatian's Diatessaron to the period between 

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140 and 170 A. D., more particularly to about 160 A. D., but others to 170-180, hence we treated it above as of 170-180. However, the fact that Tatian drew up a synthesized harmony of the four Gospels even as late as 170-180, which, as the Diatessaron, was for centuries used in the church services instead of the four Gospels, because of its giving generally a more detailed account than any one of the four Gospels alone, proves the prior use of these Gospels in the church services. 

Finally, we will adduce testimonies on the New Testament's canonicity from the years 90 to 140 A. D. Cerinthus, who was the first of the Gnostics, who flourished from about 75 to 100 A. D. and who as an opponent of the Truth through his Gnostic errors, was in part responsible for John's writing his Gospel and his first Epistle; for John's Logos doctrine is a refutation of Cerinthus' doctrine of the aeons. None of Cerinthus' writings are extant, but Irenaeus, the disciple of Polycarp, who was John's special helper from about 80 A. D. onward and after John's death a star-member, as was also Irenaeus, tells us on the authority of Polycarp that Cerinthus admitted that John wrote the fourth Gospel, but claimed that John falsified the record, and that Cerinthus preferred Mark's to John's Gospel. Basilades, who next to Valentine was the greatest of the Gnostics, in 125 A. D. used the four Gospels, especially John's. He claimed to believe the New Testament, only like Valentine and his school he misinterpreted it, and used alleged traditions as the proofs of his views that in nowise could by eisegesis be made to appear to have New Testament warrant. His followers held the same views for many years after 125 A. D. Thus there is some testimony as to the New Testament's canonicity extant from heretics from 90 to 140 A. D. For this period there is evidence on our subject from orthodox writers of this period. The pertinent testimony of Papias, who was a disciple of John and of Polycarp, was mentioned above as belonging to 125 A. D. He tells us that at Ephesus and vicinity not only John's,

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but Mark's Gospel was read. The Didache, the oldest church manual, dating from about 112 A. D., makes quotations from, and allusions to various New Testament writings as Divine Scriptures. The same is true of the writing called The Epistle of Barnabas, which is falsely ascribed to the Barnabas of the New Testament, and which dates from about 120 A. D. 

In the genuine epistles of Ignatius, who was a contemporary of John, and who was martyred either in 108 or 115 A. D., there are numerous quotations from, and more numerous allusions to the Gospels and St. Paul's and St. John's epistles, which Ignatius treats as Holy Scripture, thus as canonical. We have Polycarp's epistle to the Philippians, which was written immediately after Ignatius' death, hence in 108 or 115 A. D., and which contains very many quotations from the Gospels, from Paul and from John. Polycarp told Irenaeus, according to the latter's testimony, that the four Gospels came from the four evangelists, and that John wrote the Revelation. Polycarp's consecration in 70 A. D. and Ignatius' consecration still earlier make them fine witnesses on our subject; for they connect us directly with the Apostles. A still closer witness is Clement of Rome, who is the Clement of Phil. 4:3, and who in 97 A. D., as the secretary of the Church of Rome, wrote two epistles of the Corinthians. In these he refers to St. Paul's two letters to them and quotes from many parts of the New Testament as from inspired Scripture. The manner in which these three witnesses quote from, and allude to various New Testament writings, particularly to the four Gospels and 13 of Paul's epistles, implies that the many congregations to whom they wrote were familiar with these writings. They also assure those churches to whom they in common with Paul wrote that their fame among the other churches was founded mainly on the fact that Paul wrote epistles to them which were everywhere circulated as inspired. Polycarp exhorted the Philippians especially to read Paul's epistle to them as particularly

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edifying. He refers to the epistle to the Philippians and those to the Thessalonians as having been meant for all the Macedonians, a thing that Clement also did. Like the Curetorian fragmentary canon, Clement placed 1 and 2 Cor. before Romans, and Polycarp 1 and 2 Thes. before Phil. in the order of Paul's epistles, a not infrequent custom that continued into the fourth and fifth centuries, as can be seen in the writings of Tertullian, in a MS. of the fifth century, in Ambrosiaster, Augustine, Cassiodorus, in some ancient editions of the Vulgate, in some Greek cursives and in the most ancient Syrian canon. 

The spread of Paul's epistles among the churches, to which Clement, Polycarp and Ignatius testify, can be seen to have been suggested by Paul himself (Col. 4:16), a thing also proved by 2 Pet. 3:15, 16. Accordingly we see that in the first century 13 of Paul's letters were gathered together as a book and circulated among the churches, and that in somewhat different order from ours. Peter in 2 Pet. 3:15, when contrasted with v. 16, refers to the epistle to the Hebrews; for 2 Peter was written to Hebrew Christians, whom in v. 15 he refers to an epistle of Paul written to them, whereas we know of no other letter of Paul's being written to them. Hence we have here an inspired proof of the Pauline authorship of Hebrews. The term, the Gospel, as applicable to the four Gospels, occurs in the Didache (teaching of the 12 Apostles, about 112 A. D.) and in Ignatius (108 or 115 A. D.), which implies that very early these four were brought together in one collection. And the implication that this term was so understood proves that these four books in the beginning of the second century were read as Scripture in the churches. In the numerous quotations in the literature of the period, 95-140 A. D., claiming to come from the Gospels, only four cannot be proven to come from our four Gospels. The story that John added his Gospel as a supplement to the other three, and then united them into one book to be read in the 

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assemblies seems credible, in view of the fact that it is supplemental to the three Synoptic Gospels, that Papias, a disciple of John, tells this story, and that the Gospel of John was intended for such uses (John 19:35; 20:31). The last two verses of John (21:24, 25), which occur in all our MSS. of this Gospel, were not written by John, whose Gospel ends with v. 23. It would seem that v. 24 was added by the subordinate elders ("we know) and v. 25 by the leading elder ("I suppose") of the Church of Ephesus, as their attestation (a sort of notarizing of it) to the genuineness of this Gospel, as they sent it forth to other churches; for we know that John never refers to himself in the Gospel in the first person, "I" or "we," but always in the third person, "the disciple that Jesus loved," "another disciple," etc. If this is true we have an attestation to the genuineness of John's Gospel formally made about 90 A.D., i.e., about the year it was written, for naturally its circulation must have begun very shortly after it was written. Finally, we present the fact that about three years ago the British Museum brought to light a fragment of papyrus containing several verses from John's Gospel written in script that archeologists claim was not used after 110 A.D. This fragment may have been a part of the original MS. of John's Gospel. If not, it was likely a copy made very shortly after it was written. With this we close our discussion of the extra-Biblical and near-contemporaneous evidence on the New Testament's canonicity, and with it we also close our discussion of the canonicity of the Bible books, in the hope that the discussion has been helpful to head and heart as proving that the 39 Old Testament and 27 New Testament books are the Divinely attested books of the Bible.