Is the Christian Bible Complete?

Have you ever stopped to consider how the Christian Bible came about? There is no divine contents page to inform us which books should be included, so just how did the collection of writings that make up scripture come into being?

The list of books that constitute the Bible are known as the canon. Historically, the canon came about through a process. The most widely accepted criterion among the early Church Fathers by which a book should be included or rejected in the canon was “apostolicity” [1]. For them, apostolicity meant that a book’s authorship could be traced back either to an apostle of Jesus or to someone in close proximity to an apostle.

The problem is that there are books in the New Testament which are completely anonymous, we literally have no idea who authored them, so we cannot verify their origin. A good example is the Book of Hebrews. Traditionally, its author was believed to be Paul the Apostle, and it was included in the collected writings of Paul from a very early date. However, doubts about Pauline authorship have been raised since the second century. Eusebius recorded that “some have rejected the Epistle to the Hebrews, saying that it is disputed by the church of Rome, on the ground that it was not written by Paul” [2]. Tertullian attributed the epistle to Barnabas, and while Origen commended those churches that attributed Hebrews to Paul, his own judgement was: “But as to who wrote the epistle, only God knows the truth” [3]. Some of the reasons for doubting Paul as its author is the fact that the text as it has been passed down to the present time is internally anonymous. The book also has notable stylistic differences compared to Paul’s other writings. Some have tried to justify such discrepancies by claiming that Jewish hatred of Paul led to him writing it anonymously and changing his style of writing. The fourth century bishop Severian of Gabala wrote:

The problem with this explanation is that it is pure speculation. The consensus among most modern scholars is that the author is unknown and the evidence against Pauline authorship is considered too solid to be disputed. New Testament scholar Donald Guthrie commented that “most modern writers find more difficulty in imagining how this Epistle was ever attributed to Paul than in disposing of the theory” [6]. Professor of New Testament studies Daniel Wallace, who holds to the traditional authorship of the other epistles, states that “the arguments against Pauline authorship, however, are conclusive” [7]. F. F. Bruce, one of the most highly regarded New Testament scholars and a conservative Christian wrote: “The author of “The Shepherd of Hermas” is not known. So is Hebrews, the anonymous Epistle that we today find bound up with the Pauline writings” [8].

In light of these serious doubts about the origin of at least some of the books of the New Testament, we cannot affirm with certainty that there is a connection between those books and the apostles of Jesus. In other words, their apostolicity is brought into question, and by extension so is the soundness of the canon since apostolicity was its foundation in the early Church. A Christian may say let’s put aside such man-made standards, instead let’s just look to see what the earliest believers were reading and take that as the inspired canon. This does not help us, as in the first few centuries of Christianity different groups had different canons. For example, the Codex Sinaiticus, which is the oldest surviving complete Bible, included the writings known as the Epistle of Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas. The Codex Alexandrinus, another early Bible, included the writings known as the First and Second Epistles of Clement. These two canons not only differed from one another but also are different when compared to the canons of today.

In the first few centuries of Christianity, there was no such thing as a standard list of books. In fact, the idea of an official canon did not come about until much later. The “closed canon” of the New Testament has its beginnings in 367 CE when bishop Athanasius wrote a letter to his church instructing Christians to recognise 27 books as inspired literature. It is important to note that prior to Athanasius, no single Christian authority ever instructed anyone to have only 27 books in their canon of the New Testament. For various reasons, it became necessary for the Church to know exactly what books were divinely authoritative. This helped in the establishment of Christian doctrine and determined what should be read in church services. Even today, Christian Bibles have different canons, ranging from the 66 books of Protestants, 73 books of the Roman Catholic Church, and 81 books of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church. So before answering the question of whether the Christian Bible is complete, they must first tackle the problem of which version of the Bible is the correct one.

Christians may respond by saying that the lack of canonical unity across denominations is not a problem as there is a subset of books common to all the canons so we should treat these are the core inspired texts. Now it’s true that the various canons that exist today have much overlap, such as the four Gospels, the writings of Paul, the Book of Acts and so on. But even if we take this approach and just consider the books that are common to all canons, we still face serious questions about its completeness. Within the common canon there are many internal references to books and epistles that are now lost:

1. Missing Epistle from Laodicea

Paul, the earliest known Christian author, wrote several letters (or epistles) in Greek to various churches. The New Testament contains many such epistles written to the Romans, Galatians, Colossians and others. In his epistle to the Colossians, Paul gives instructions to the Christians to exchange the epistle with the one he wrote to Laodicea:

This epistle to the Laodiceans is nowhere to be found in Bibles of today. Historically, different groups put forward their own versions of a Laodicean epistle in order to try and fill the “gap”, but scholars generally reject these as forgeries [9].

2. Missing Epistle to the Corinthians

The New Testament contains a series of letters that Paul wrote to a community of Christians in Corinth. The New Testament contains two of these letters, titled ‘First Epistle to the Corinthians (or ‘1 Corinthians’) and ‘Second Epistle to the Corinthians’ (or ‘2 Corinthians’). In the first letter that is found in the New Testament, Paul makes mention of an earlier letter that he had already written to the Corinthians:

What happened to Paul’s earlier letter to the Corinthians? The New Testament does not have it as it is lost. What we do have are the two follow-up letters that he wrote.

3. Jude and the lost Book of Enoch

The Book of Jude in the New Testament makes reference to a prophecy of Enoch:

In the various canons of the Bible that exist today, such a prophecy can only be found in the Ethiopian canon which contains the Book of Enoch:

Even though the Ethiopian canon does contain a book called Enoch, and even though it matches the prophecy that is quoted in Jude, there is evidence to suggest that the Ethiopian text is incomplete. One of the startling discoveries among the Dead Sea Scrolls was the presence of texts not found in the modern Old Testament. In 1956, during the excavation of the Dead Sea Scrolls at Qumran, a new version of Enoch was discovered. Now, some of these ancient scrolls do correspond to the Ethiopian version, such as Enoch 1:9 which can be found in Qumran scroll 4Q204. But there are large portions that are different to the Ethiopian version, such as Qumran scrolls 4Q209 and 4Q211. So even the Ethiopian canon’s version of Enoch may be incomplete.

Christians may argue that there never was such a book called Enoch and that the version found in the Ethiopian canon is not a legitimate text. However, historically there are many Church Fathers who considered Enoch to be divinely inspired scripture. Tertullian believed that Jude was referring to a physical writing by Enoch and also wrote positively concerning it:

Origen appeals to the Book of Enoch and the Book of Psalms, describing both as ‘Scripture’:

4. The missing books of the Old Testament

There are a multitude of books referenced within the Old Testament that are nowhere to be found in the canons of today:

i. The Book of Wars

Here are what some Bible commentaries have to say about the Book of Wars. Barnes’ Notes on the Bible says:

Clarke’s Commentary on the Bible says:

Gill’s Exposition of the Entire Bible says:

Geneva Study Bible says: “Which seems to be the book of the Judges, or as some think, a book which is lost”.

ii. The Books of Chronicles

The Old Testament books of 1 Chronicles and 2 Chronicles both make mention of a number of seemingly lost books which are said to have recorded the events of the lives of David and Solomon:

The Prophet Nathan seems to be an important individual. Not only are his lost writings mentioned in both 1 Chronicles and 2 Chronicles, but he features prominently in the lives of David and Solomon throughout the Old Testament:

• He forbade David from building a temple (2 Samuel 7; 1 Chronicles 17:1-15);
• He rebuked David about Bathsheba (2 Samuel 12);
• He anointed Solomon (1 Kings 38-39).

Clarke’s Commentary on 1 Chronicles 29:29:

Clarke took the same approach to 2 Chronicles 9:29: “These books are all lost”.

According to the Geneva Study Bible, “The books of Nathan and Gad are thought to have been lost in the captivity”.

Scofield Reference Notes simply said, “These books have perished”.

CONCLUSION

The situation with the Christian Bible today with its diversity of canons poses some serious problems. Different denominations have different collections of books in their Bibles, yet they all make the claim that they possess the word of God. If Christianity is the truth and God wants mankind to follow it as a religion, then why did He not protect its foundation, the scriptures? We’ve looked at some proposed solutions for this problem of canon diversity, but ultimately the issue of incompleteness impacts all canons due to the presence of internal references to missing writings, both in the Old Testament and New.

This lack of uniformity across the canons is a direct result of the Bible not defining its own contents. A list of books did not simply drop from the heavens, nor does the Bible contain a divine contents page. Rather, the different lists of books that exist today all came about through a process. This undermines the claim that the Bible alone is sufficient for salvation (a position known as “Sola Scriptura”, meaning Scripture alone), as the Bible itself relies upon later traditions to define itself.

I invite my Christian readers to investigate the Qur’an, the foundational scripture of Islam. Muslims have no doubt about the Qur’an’s completeness. Not only does it clearly define itself, it is that which was revealed to and recited by the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him), but it was also memorised in its entirety during his lifetime. Even after the Prophet’s death, when Muslims were faced with the task of compiling it into book form for the first time, there was no disagreement among them about its content. The fruits of this are that Muslims today, regardless of denomination or sect, all possess the same Qur’an.

Further Reading

To learn more about Jesus from both the Islamic and Christian perspective, please download your free copy of the book “Jesus: Man, Messenger, Messiah” from the Iera website (click on image below):

References

1 – Lee Martin McDonald, Formation of the Bible: the Story of the Church’s Canon, p. 100.

2 – Eusebius, Hist. Eccl. 3.3.5; cf. also 6.20.3.

3 – Eusebius, Ecc Hist, Bk 6, Ch 25.13-14 quoting Origen.

4 – Severian of Gabala, Fragments on the Epistle to the Hebrews (prologue).

5 – Richard Thiele, A Reexamination of the Authorship of the “Epistle to the Hebrews”, p. 41.

6 – Donald Guthrie, New Testament Introduction, p.688.

7 – See:

https://bible.org/seriespage/19-hebrews-introduction-argument-and-outline

8 – F. F. Bruce, Chapter 3 in The New Testament Documents: Are They Reliable?.

9 – James Kelhoffer, Miracle and mission, p. 151.

10 – Tertullian, On the Apparel of Women I 3:1-3.

11 – Origen, De Principiis IV.