L. Gaussen, The Canon of the Holy Scriptures Examined in the Light of History, translated from the French and abridged by Edward N. Kirk (Boston: American Tract Society, 1862), 445-447.
[It is important to note that in every instance Christ, by citing the extant copies of the Old Testament (apographa), Divinely authenticates the current 1st c Hebrew text. The same is also true of the New Testament penmen when referring to the Old Testament. There is no time in which either the Lord or the New Testament penman possessed the Old Testament autographs. The providential preservation of Scripture must be embraced as a necessary and component part of the ministry of Jesus Christ.]
“We here invoke the testimony of the “Amen, the faithful and true Witness.” “What did the Immanuel, “the God of the holy prophets ” (Rev. xxii. 6), think of the Old Testament, and how did he treat it?
Never did he put its integrity or legitimacy in doubt; never did he manifest the least hesitation in regard to the divine authenticity of any of the twenty-two books of which it is composed; he has quoted from all or almost all of them with his own lips. Who then can discern the spirit of the prophets, if not he whose eternal Spirit quickened them all? (1 Pet. i. 11.) Who shall better tell us if such or such a book is from God or from man? “Chief, shepherd of the sheep by the blood of the everlasting covenant,” he has come to dwell among men; but who shall discern more correctly than he the voice of his own messengers from that of strangers and robbers? (John x. 5, 8.)
Now, we have heard him preaching these Scriptures himself; we have seen him take from the hand of the Jews in their synagogues the sacred scroll or volume as they extended it to him, opening it, and exclaiming before them all, “In the volume of the Book it is written of me!” We have heard him exclaim at their festival: “Search the Scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life.” (John v. 39.) We have, indeed, seen him go from one end to the other, explaining it: “beginning at Moses and all the prophets, expounding in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself;” (Luke xxiv. 27, 44.) Did he ever reproach the Jews or having altered the Scriptures? Never. He reproached them for constantly resisting the Scriptures, never for altering them. They were left to commit every crime but that. They rejected God, committed abominations with their infamous gods, and made their children pass through the fire; but never were they guilty of the crime so easily committed, of changing the Scriptures and introducing into them false books.’
All the course of Christ as Son of man attests thus that no human teacher ever thought more respectfully of the sacred volume than he. Whichever of its twenty-two books he quotes, it is always for him God who speaks. This book is the rule of his life; it is to this entire book that he conforms his holy humanity, and would have us conform ours, to be saved. The least word of this book possesses in his view an authority more permanent than the heavens and the earth. When he seeks to convince the Sadducees and Pharisees, now he proves the resurrection to them by one single word from Exodus;[1] now the true doctrine of marriage, by a single word from Genesis;[2] now his own divinity, by a single word from the Psalm cx., or another from the eighty-second; and again, before uttering it, he interrupts himself to exclaim: “And the Scriptures can not be broken!”[3] When he begins his ministry he already knows the Scriptures without having studied them.[4] When he contends with Satan, he three times strikes him with “the sword of the Spirit, which is the Word of God.” He says to Satan three times: “It is written.” Finishing his ministry on the cross, he again repeats the twenty-second Psalm; and when he resumes it after the resurrection, for some days, he still is engaged in explaining the Scriptures,[5] “beginning at Moses and all the prophets and the Psalms.” In a word, he quotes, as from God, Genesis,[6] Exodus,[7] Leviticus,[8] Numbers,[9] Deuteronomy,[10] Samuel,[11] Kings,[12] Jonah,[13] Daniel,[14] Isaiah,[15] Hosea,[16] Jeremiah,[17] Psalms viii., xxii., xxxv., xxxi., xli., lxix., lxxxiii, xci., cx., cxviii.,[18] and he quoted them, saying: “Have you not read the words of David, speaking by the Holy Spirit? Have you not read what God spake by the mouth of David?”
We see, then, how our Lord regarded the canon of the Old Testament. This was his science on this point, his sacred criticism: to receive all the Holy Scriptures of the Jews; to call them all in their detail, as in a body, the Law;[19] and to declare, “It is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than one tittle of the law to fail.”[20]
[1] Ex. iii. 6; 2. Matt. xxii.
[2] Matt. xix.4; Gen. i. 27.
[3] Matt. xxii. 43; John x. 27, 35.
[4] John vii. 15.
[5] Luke xxiv. 27.
[6] Matt. xix. 4.
[7] Matt.xxii.32, 37
[8] Matt, v. 22, 43.
[9] Matt. v. 33.
[10] Mark xii. 29; Luke x. 7, 27; John viii. 5, 7.
[11] Matt. xii. 3; Mark ii. 25; Luke vi. 24.
[12] Matt. xii. 42; Luke xi. 31.
[13] Matt. xii. 40.
[14] Matt. xxiv. 15; Mark xiii. 14.
[15] Matt. viii. 14; xv. 7, 8; xxi. 5.
[16] Matt. ix. 13.
[17] Matt. xxi. 13; Luke xix. 46.
[18] Matt. xxi. 16; John xix. 24; xv. 25; Luke xxiii. 46; John xiii. 18; John xv. 25; x. 34; Matt. iv. 6; Matt. xxii. 44; xxi. 42.
[19] John x. 34; xii. 34; Rom. ii. 14.
[20] Luke xvi. 17; Matt. v. 18.
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