📘 Angus, The Bible Hand-Book (assigned excerpts)

1. How the Text of Scripture Has Been Preserved

Joseph Angus, The Bible Hand-Book (1868), chapter 1, “On the Genuineness of Scripture: or the Bible as Inspired Men Wrote It”. Assigned excerpt. The interpretations are the author’s.

If a MS. of each book of the Bible in the author’s handwriting were still extant, and if the fact of its being such could be proved, every copy that agreed with the MS. would be perfectly genuine. There are now, however, no such autographs of any ancient books; and yet there are circumstances attending the preservation and transmission of the MSS. of the Scriptures, which prove their genuineness with nearly as much certainty as if the first copies were still in existence.

[A MS., or book, whether anonymous or written by the person whose name it bears, or by one using an assumed name or title, is genuine, (1.) If whatever it affirms in respect to the authorship of it is true; and (2.) If its text in all material points remains as it proceeded from the author. If the text has been materially changed, it is corrupt. If its statements in respect to authorship are false, the MS. or book is spurious, or forged.]

The question of the genuineness of Scripture is much simplified by the invention of printing. That art shortens and fixes the dates of books, and by multiplying copies and editions secures the text from corruption. As printed books cannot be altered by the pen, any material change of the text becomes impossible or nugatory. The MSS. of printed books are now committed therefore without fear of falsification “to the immortal custody of the press.”

There are still extant, for example, printed copies of the Old Testament in Hebrew, dated Soncino, A. D. 1488, and Brescia, A. D. 1494. A copy of the year 1488 is in the library of Exeter College, Oxford, and in the Royal Library at Berlin is the identical copy (dated 1494) from which Luther made his German translation. There are extant also copies of the New Testament in Greek, dated Basle, 1516, edited by Erasmus, and in Greek and Latin, dated Alcala or Complutum (in Spain), 1514. On being compared with each other, and with modern editions, these copies are found to agree in the main. They, therefore, prove by a single step, the existence of the Scriptures in the 15th century. They prove, also, that the text of modern editions has not been materially impaired during the last 350 years.

These two editions of the New Testament which are founded upon a very partial examination of MSS. form the basis of the Received Text. The first edition of that text was printed in 1624, by Elzevir. Besides the two editions just named, he had the advantage of consulting the editions of Stephens (Paris, 1546), and of Beza (Gen. 1565), but did not introduce from them many important readings.

At the time these volumes were printed, there were MS. copies of the Scriptures in most of the public libraries of Europe. They form, with the writings of the Fathers, or of other ecclesiastical authors of the middle ages, the bulk of most library catalogues of the 15th century. Dr. Kennicott collated 630 of these MSS. for his critical edition of the Hebrew Bible. De Rossi collated 734 more. And upwards of 600 MSS. have been examined for recent editions of the Greek Testament.

In the case of the Greek and Roman classics, twenty, or ten MSS. are deemed amply sufficient to form an accurate text: fifteen MSS. of Herodotus are known to critics, of which the most ancient belongs to the 10th century: and this is a fair average of the ancient MSS. of classic authors. It is obvious, therefore, that the advantage in this respect is greatly on the side of the Scriptures. The number of MSS. has afforded ample provision for restoring the text to its original purity, and at the same time gives absolute security against extensive corruptions.

2. The History of the English Bible and the Value of a Written Word

Joseph Angus, The Bible Hand-Book (1868), chapter 1, “On the Genuineness of Scripture: or the Bible as Inspired Men Wrote It”. Assigned excerpt. The interpretations are the author’s.

The English version of the Scriptures now in use is itself the result of repeated revisions. In the preface to the Bishops’ Bible, (A. D. 1568) a distinct reference is made to early Saxon versions, and there are still extant parts of the Bible in Saxon, translated by Bede, by Alfred the Great, and by Ælfric of Canterbury. Early Saxon MSS. of the Gospels are still preserved in the libraries of the British Museum, and Corpus Christi College, Cambridge.

The translation of the Bible was completed by Wycliffe and his helpers about A. D. 1382. It existed only in MS. for many years, but the whole is now in print (New Testament, 1731; Old Testament, 1848.) The work was regarded with grave suspicion, and a bill was introduced into the House of Lords for suppressing it; but through the influence of John O’Gaunt this was rejected. In 1408, however, in a convocation held at Oxford, it was resolved that no one should translate any text of Scripture into English, as a book or tract, and that no book of the kind should be read. This resolution led to great persecution, though there is reason to believe that, notwithstanding, many MSS. of Scripture were at that time in extensive circulation throughout England.

The first printed edition of the Bible in English, was published by Tyndale; the New Testament in 1526, and the Bible, in part, in 1532. Tonstall, Bishop of London, and Sir Thomas More, took great pains to buy up and burn the impression, but with the effect thereby, of enabling the translator to publish a larger and improved edition, “diligently corrected and compared with the Greek.” Miles Coverdale revised the whole, and dedicated it to King Henry the 8th, A. D. 1535; and in 1537 John Rogers, who had assisted Tyndale, and was then residing at Antwerp, reprinted an edition, taken from Tyndale and Coverdale. This edition was published under the assumed name of Thomas Matthews. A revision of this edition again was published (A. D. 1539,) by Richard Taverner.

The Great Bible appeared A. D. 1539. It was Coverdale’s, revised by the translator, under the sanction of Cranmer. It was printed in large folio. For the edition of 1540 Cranmer wrote a preface, and it is hence called Cranmer’s Bible. It was published “by authority.” During the seven years of King Edward’s (VI.) reign eleven editions of the Scriptures were printed, but no new version or revision was attempted. During the reign of Mary was published the Geneva Bible, A. D. 1557-60. Coverdale and others who had taken refuge in Geneva, edited it, and added marginal annotations.

Archbishop Parker obtained authority from Queen Elizabeth to revise the existing translations, and with the help of various bishops and others, published in 1568 what was called the Bishops’ Bible. It contains short annotations, and in the smaller editions (from 1589) the text is divided, like the Genevan, into verses. The same text was afterwards printed (in 1572) in a larger size, and with various prefaces, under the name of Matthew Parker’s Bible. It continued in common use in the churches for forty years, though the Genevan Bible was perhaps more read in private. The Rhemish New Testament and the Douay Old Testament form the English Bible of the Romanists. The former was printed at Rheims, A. D. 1582 and the latter at Douay, A. D. 1609-10. In 1603 King James resolved on a revision of the translation, and for this purpose appointed fifty-four men of learning and piety. Forty-seven only undertook the work, and in four years (from 1607-11), it was completed. The text, as thus prepared and printed in 1611, is the authorized version.

What wisdom is seen in the fact that we have a written word; not tradition, and not many Bibles, but one. A revelation more than this would have multiplied the difficulties of inquiry. A revelation less than this would long ago have lost its distinctness. Apart from any desire to vitiate a Divine message, merely oral tradition must have suffered from the condition of those to whom it was addressed. So incessant is the influence of man’s moral state upon his judgment and perceptions, that any unwritten revelation must have undergone essential, though, perhaps, insensible modifications. Every truth too, which had ceased in one age to be of present importance, would have been omitted in the number of truths handed down to the next. But for the Bible we should have had a fearfully mutilated revelation, and of what remained we should have been contending, not so much for the sense of our Master’s words, as for the words themselves. What grace is it, therefore, that in a world prone to deteriorate everything holy, and to falsify everything true, whatever may have grown old with age, has the means of renewing its youth; whatever may have been lost from the memory of the Church is not lost irrecoverably. We have the seeds of reformation and of renewed knowledge: the very “word of the Lord, which liveth and abideth forever.”

3. The Inspiration of Scripture

Joseph Angus, The Bible Hand-Book (1868), chapter 2, “On the Authenticity and Authority of Scripture”. Assigned excerpt. The interpretations are the author’s.

Here then we have the first peculiarity of the Bible. It professes to be a book from God, speaks everywhere with Divine authority, and demands our submission. It is the one book, which claims “God for its author, unmixed truth for its contents, and salvation for its end.” If we admit the authority of our Lord as a Divine teacher, the authority of the Bible is established. If we deny the authority of the Bible, we deny the truth of some of his most frequent teachings and with it the divinity of his mission.

The general truth that the books of Scripture are of Divine origin and authority is sometimes expressed in another form, and they are said to be inspired. Holy men spoke or wrote them as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.

Whatever refers to the explanation of this truth—as, how men were inspired, and whether the same kind of inspiration was needed in each case—is theory, and is concerned with questions rather curious than useful. The truth itself is all that is fully revealed.

Among the heathen and uninspired Jews it was generally held that while inspired men were under the Divine impulse, all voluntary action was suspended. Among the early Christians the doctrine of inspiration was held rather practically than speculatively, though they generally maintained that the writers of the Bible, when inspired, exercised their ordinary mental powers. On the mode or kinds of inspiration they said little. When the authority of the Papacy, however, began in modern times to be questioned, the whole doctrine of inspiration was more closely examined. The facts were generally admitted, but the theory or comprehensive statement which best embodied and accounted for them, was a topic regarded as open to discussion.

…holy men wrote in obedience to Divine command, and that in writing they were kept free, we know not how, from all error, whether they taught truths previously unknown to them, or published truths and facts already familiar. In this theory, which is indeed rather a statement of the fact than a theory in relation to it, inspiration is ascribed to the whole of Scripture, while revelation is confined to those acts of the Spirit by which truths previously unknown were communicated to men. All Scripture is inspired, and the new truths of Scripture are revealed; or, as Thomas Scott expressed it, inspiration discovers new truth (this we call revelation), and superintends the communication of the old. This distinction it is convenient to retain.

The fact which they have to embody and explain is that Scripture is everywhere the utterance—the word—of Divine wisdom, and that it expresses the very ideas which the Holy Spirit intended. It is this gift which the inspired writers profess to have received. Their writings are God-inspired…

Old Testament writers, for example, claim it for themselves. Exod. iv. 15, 16; xix. 9: Lev. passim: Deut. iv. 2: Num. xxiii. 12: 2 Sam. xxiii. 2: Jer. i. 7-9: Ezek. iii. 4-10: Mic. iii. 8, etc. New Testament writers claim it for the Old, and also for themselves. 2 Pet. i. 20, 21: Luke i. 70: 1 Pet. i. 11: Acts i. 16; xxviii. 25: Heb. iii. 7. John xiv. 26; xvi. 13, 14: 1 Cor. ii. 13; xiv. 37: 1 Thess. ii. 13; iv. 8: 2 Pet. iii. 1, 2, etc.

4. The Canon of the New Testament

Joseph Angus, The Bible Hand-Book (1868), chapter 2, “On the Authenticity and Authority of Scripture”. Assigned excerpt. The interpretations are the author’s.

The question of the authority of the books of Scripture is sometimes put in another form, and it is asked whether the whole belong to the Canon; a question settled, if it is once proved that they are the production of inspired men. It is sometimes said, indeed, that we prove the inspiration of the books by first proving their canonicity; the church has received them, and therefore they are Divine. The reverse, however, is the accurate order. They are Divine, and therefore the church has received them. The books are now received as canonical because we have satisfactory evidence of their inspiration; and if there had been other books not recognized in the present canon, but demonstrably of Divine origin, we should be bound to give them a place among the rest.

The question, therefore, of the canonicity of the books of Scripture is three-fold. Is each book the production of its professed author? is it authentic? and was the writer in composing it under the special guidance of the Spirit? Genuineness and authenticity are both involved; and though the present section is placed between the sections on those subjects, the argument needs the facts of both.

We begin with the New Testament. In the early church many writings were extant, professing to give an account of the life and character of our Lord; but four only were received as authoritative. It was admitted on all hands that these were the productions of the Evangelists whose names they bear: the Gospels of Mark and Luke being respectively penned under the care of Peter and Paul. The apostle John, moreover, is recorded to have acknowledged publicly the authority of the first three Gospels, and added his own to complete them. These books, therefore, were written by apostles to whom our Saviour specially promised his Spirit, that He might guide them into all truth, bring to their remembrance whatever He himself had told them, and qualify them to give his gospel to the world. In the same way, though less directly, John is supposed to have attested the book of Acts.

So of the Epistles of Paul. There are thirteen of them which bear his name. Other disciples were witnesses of his having written them. Generally he wrote by an amanuensis, who also became a witness of the genuineness of his writings; in these instances he added his subscription and salutation. His Epistles were sent by private messengers. Nine of them, moreover, were addressed to public bodies. The earliest of them he commanded to be read in the public assembly; the second, and indeed all the rest, were read in public too; and we know from Ignatius, Polycarp, and Clement, and especially from Peter, that his Epistles were regarded as inspired Scripture, and read with the Law and Prophets of the Old Testament and the Gospels of the New. To complete this evidence, it should be added that the language of Peter was used by him after all the Epistles of Paul to the churches had been written, and that he applies to them a name (“Scripture”) which, though occurring fifty times in the New Testament, is never applied to any other than the present canonical books. The conclusion, therefore, is that these Epistles are Paul’s, and that they have what Paul claimed for them, and what the early church and a chief apostle ascribed to them—inspired, and therefore canonical, authority. They are not the words which man teaches: they are the words of the Holy Ghost.

All the parts of the New Testament mentioned thus far were deemed, as soon as published, to be Divine, as were 1 Peter and 1 John. The remaining books of the New Testament were called, as we have seen, Antilegomena, or, from their forming a part of the Canon only after a second revision, the Deutero-Canonical. That position in the Canon they gained gradually; at the beginning of the fourth century they were received by most of the churches, and at the end of that century they were received by all.

The special evidence of each book it is not necessary to give now. The point to be noticed is that the doubts which existed had reference not to the canonicity of the writings of James, Cephas, John, and Jude, but to the question whether the writings bearing their names were really written by them. Nor can these doubts excite surprise. The subject was one of deep interest. Many spurious compositions were abroad under the names of these very apostles. Apostolic teaching might be quoted in defence of caution. The internal evidence of the authorship of these Epistles is peculiar; the Epistle to the Hebrews, for example, is without the author’s name, and differs in style from most of the Epistles of Paul. The style of 2 Peter differs in the same way from the style of the first Epistle. In James and Jude the authors are described not as apostles, but as “servants” of Christ, while in 2 and 3 John the writer describes himself as a presbyter or elder, not as an apostle. Jude also refers to stories which were supposed to be contained in apocryphal writings. All these Epistles, moreover, were addressed either to Christians generally or to private persons, not to particular churches. No body of men, therefore, were interested in preserving them, and external evidence in their favor was necessarily scanty. All these causes of doubt did operate, as we know. In the end there was universal conviction; and the very doubts which deferred the reception of a small portion of Scripture in certain parts of the early church now serve to confirm our faith in the rest.

5. The Canon of the Old Testament and How It Was Preserved

Joseph Angus, The Bible Hand-Book (1868), chapter 2, “On the Authenticity and Authority of Scripture”. Assigned excerpt. The interpretations are the author’s.

The canonicity of the Old Testament is best established by the New. Our Lord received as Scripture what the Jews delivered to him as Scripture, and the apostle speaks of the advantage of the Jew as consisting chiefly in his possession of the “oracles of God.” As an evidence of the close connection of the two dispensations, and of the sanction given in the New Testament to the Old, it may be noticed that the former has not less than 263 direct quotations from the latter, and that these quotations are taken from almost every book. The obvious allusions to the Old Testament are even more numerous, amounting to upwards of 350.

That at the time of our Lord the Canon was fixed as at present is established by decisive evidence. In addition to quotations in the New Testament from particular books, Josephus and Philo both testify to the books themselves, and to the reverence with which the Jews regarded them; the former expressly stating that the Canon he was setting down was received by all Jews, that they all would contend for it to the death, and that none had ever dared to add to, or take from, or change anything in the sacred books.

Testimonies no less decisive will be found in the next paragraph. In examining this list it must be remembered that when certain books are omitted from professed catalogues of the Old Testament Scriptures, there is the greatest probability that each of those books was included in the preceding book: Esther, for example, in Nehemiah; Ruth in Judges; and Lamentations in Jeremiah. The fact that some books are not quoted in the New Testament is accounted for on the simple principle that the writers had no occasion to quote them. That all our present books were included at the time of our Lord in the Old Testament Canon is undoubted, and as such they are quoted under the usual Jewish division.

The authorities referred to in the preceding paragraph, may be classed as follows: The New Testament, which is really authoritative, refers to all Scripture under the threefold division of Law, Prophets, and Writings. It also appeals to each of the books, except Ruth, Ezra, Nehemiah, Canticles, Ecclesiastes, and perhaps Lamentations. The version of the LXX, which is evidence, includes them all. The son of Sirach, B.C. 130, mentions the threefold division; as does Philo, A. D. 41, quoting from all except Ruth, Chronicles, Nehemiah, Esther, Canticles, Ecclesiastes, Lamentations, Ezekiel, and Daniel. Josephus, b. A. D. 37, enumerates them according to their classes, including all the present books. Melito, 177, mentions all except Esther, Nehem. and Lam. Origen, 230, mentions all, without exception. Athanasius, 326, mentions all except Esther. Cyril (Jerusalem), 348, mentions all, as also the Council of Laodicea, 363; Epiphanius, 368; and Hilary, of Poictiers, 370. Gregory of Nazianzen, 370, mentions all except Esther; as does Amphilochius, 370. The Apostolic Canons, of uncertain date, but not later than the end of this century, mentions all; as also the Apostolic Constitutions. These are Greek authorities. Of Latin authorities, the chief are Jerome, 392; Rufin, 397; 3d Council of Carthage, 397; and Augustine, 395; and all agree in enumerating the whole.

How the books of the Old Testament were preserved, is a question of some difficulty, and we can but give the most probable solution. The books of the law were placed in the Tabernacle with the ark of the covenant, and were kept there during the journeyings in the wilderness, and afterwards in Jerusalem. To the same sanctuary were successively consigned the various historical and prophetic books, from the time of Joshua to that of David. On the erection of the temple, Solomon deposited in it the earliest books, and enriched the collection with the inspired productions of his own pen. After his days, a succession of prophets arose, Jonah, Amos, Isaiah, Hosea, Joel, Micah, Nahum, Zephaniah, Jeremiah, Obadiah, and Habakkuk. They all flourished before the destruction of the temple, and enlarged the volume of inspiration by valuable additions.

About 420 years after the temple was built, it was burnt by Nebuchadnezzar. What became of the MSS. of the Sacred Scriptures is not known. In Babylon, however, Daniel speaks of “the book of the law” as familiar to him, and also of Jeremiah, and of other prophets. Shortly after the conquest of Babylon by Cyrus, the Jews were released from captivity, rebuilt the temple, and restored Divine worship, being encouraged to persevere by the exhortations of Haggai and Zechariah. About 50 years after the temple was rebuilt, Ezra is recorded by tradition to have made a collection of the sacred writings, as he certainly took great pains to expound and enforce the ancient law (see Neh. viii. 1, 3, 9). To this collection were added (probably by Simon the Just) the writings of Ezra himself, with those of Nehemiah and Malachi, and thus was completed the canon of the Old Testament; for, from the days of Malachi, no prophet arose till John the Baptist, who connected the two covenants, and of whom it was foretold that he should precede the great day of the Lord. Mal. iii. 1.

The collection of the canonical books is generally said to have been the work of the Great Synagogue, a body which included Ezra, Nehemiah, Haggai, Zechariah, Malachi, and afterwards, Simon the Just. The existence and labors of this body are distinctly referred to in the most ancient Jewish writings. After the captivity, synagogues were established in Judea, and throughout the world, and copies of the inspired Scriptures were so greatly multiplied as to make the preservation of particular MSS. rather a question of curiosity than of historical importance.