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), 449-451.
Whoever ranks himself as a disciple of Christ must receive his testimony on the canon, as on every other subject. But we go farther than this. Not only must we, as Christians, receive the Old Testament just as it was when our Lord approved of it, but we should also see with admiration the hand of God in the preservation of the ancient canon.
“Whence came this marvelous concert of an entire race, otherwise so constantly in rebellion against God, this unanimous agreement of this people for three thousand years, in receiving and maintaining, with undeviating firmness, one only and the same canon of Scriptures? Certainly, it comes from God alone. But, at the same time, under this action from above, there must also have been a common thought, an established principle among this people in regard to the canon, a principle furnishing security to all, small and great, learned and unlearned, to the great Sanhedrin solemnly reporting to its king the oracle of Micah,[1] and the humble synagogue, to the poor Jews of the dispersion in Macedonia, daily searching with care the Scriptures of their canon (to kaq hmera anakrinonteV taV grafaV), to see if Paul’s doctrine was conformed to their teaching;[2] to the pious Jewish mother, married to a Greek of Asia Minor, who early trained her little son[3] in the knowledge of the true God, teaching him daily from the Holy Book.
Now, what was this common source of assurance to all the people of every grade of intelligence? It was not science, but faith in a doctrine, faith in God, faith in the “Word itself.” No one can doubt that the faith of the Jewish race in their religion was as rational as the faith men now have in modern science. But it was not founded in a knowledge of the history of the canon, such as we have concerning our New Testament canon. The canon of the Old Testament had no history. The Hebrews, in the time of Christ, possessing no literary monuments besides the Scriptures itself, could no demonstrate the authenticity of their sacred books by documents outside of the book itself, as we can that of the New Testament Their holy books came from too remote an antiquity to present a contemporary literature, or even a literature of ages subsequent, of any real weight. The writings of the old Greeks quoted by Josephus were too recent to have any importance as testimony; while those of the Egyptians, Assyrians, and Persians had no religious relations with the sacred literature of the Hebrews. They had, then, as a test of the Old Testament, only the Old Testament itself. Now, who could say, in the days of Josephus and of the apostles, any more than we can, by what human means Moses provided for the preservation of his books after they were placed in the holy ark (Deut. xxxi. 26)? By the priests? Josephus seems to think it was;[4] but who can affirm it? What prophet wrote the closing scenes of the Pentateuch, describing the death of Moses, his burial, the long mourning that followed it, and making this declaration: “And there arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses?”[5] Joshua, do you say? That might be; but who knows? Who wrote Job? In a word, no one knows which of the prophets put the last hand to the twenty-two books of the Old Testament to give them to the church for all future time. There are many conjectures; but who knows?
And if you do not know the authors of all these Scriptures, it is entirely sufficient to be able to say, with Jesua Christ, that they were prophets.
All the elements of science for the canon of the Old Testament, then, are wanting. Yet the faith of the Jewish church was more solidly founded than on the basis of science. It was founded on the declarations of God, his character and his acts. They knew that he had given them these Scriptures, and had preserved them, because he is faithful. ‘And if you had lived in the days of Jesus Christ, a faithful Israelite, you would have believed with all the Jews, and with Christ, in the canon of the Scriptures. And if you had doubted the canon, Jesus would have said to you as to the – Sadducees: “Do ye not therefore err, because ye know not the Scriptures of God?” (Mark xii. 24.)
Our faith in the Old Testament, as we have seen, is founded on the testimony of him who is above Moses and all the prophets, and on the testimony of his inspired apostles, in addition to all that sustained the faith of the ancient Jews in these sacred oracles. Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ, explains to us the mystery of the preservation of that canon. He tells that God gave it in trust to the Jews (episteuQhsan ta logia tou Qeou). And the whole of their miraculous history is but a suitable accompaniment of so sacred a charge, and was an indispensable means of securing to the world the preservation of these sacred documents.
[1] Matt. ii. 6.
[2] Acts xvii. 11.
[3] apo brefouV. 2 Tim. iii. 15.
[4] Against Apion, Lib. i. chap. 2.
[5] Deut. xxxiv. 10.
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