What Bible Did The Early Christians Use?

 

What Bible Did The Early Christians Use?

Brett A. Todd

John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, once said, “I want to know one thing, the way to heaven—how to land safe on that happy shore. God himself has condescended to teach the way: for this very end he came from heaven. He hath written it down in a book. O give me that book! … Let me be homo unius libri.”

Christians have long been known as the people of the Book.  But which book are we talking about? The one that makes up 66 books of the Bible?  Or, are we talking about the book(s) that the early Christians used, or perhaps what Jesus and his disciples used?   There is a difference.  So, what Bible did the early Christians use?

There is an assumption among Christians in this modern era that early Christians, even the twelve Disciples, and Jesus used the same Bible as Christians today.  But this is not correct.  Actually, the Bible we use today was not officially adopted by the Church until the Council of Trent (1545–1563) in the 16th century.  This helps explain why Martin Luther (1483-1546), the Reformer, could be so openly critical about the book of James which he believed should not be in the Bible.  The Bible had not been officially authorized.

Christians have always had a Bible (Scripture), although different from what we use today.  For Jesus and his disciples, they viewed the Hebrew Scriptures, what we call the Old Testament, as their Bible. Throughout the Gospels, Jesus quotes or refers to the Hebrew Scriptures.  In Mark 9:48, for example, Jesus quotes Isaiah 66:24, almost verbatim, word for word, “for their worm shall not die, their fire shall not be quenched”.

Almost from the very beginning of Christianity, early Christians saw a need for additional scriptures–with the words of Jesus.  Out of this need, the four Gospels were born. 1 Timothy 5:18 shows this development when the author not only quotes the Hebrew Scriptures, but also, a saying from Jesus, “‘You shall not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain,’ and, ‘The laborer deserves to be paid.’”  The words, “You shall not muzzle an ox while it is treading out the grain” are from Deuteronomy 25:4, and “The laborer deserves to be paid” is a saying of Jesus found in Luke 10:7.  Soon, not only were the Gospel stories part of the Bible, but also the writings of Paul and others.  (See Ehrman, Hurtado, and Kümmel). And don’t forget, there were other early Christians using other books that are not found in our Bible today.

Obviously, there is no easy answer to the question: What Bible did the early Christians use?  The birth of Christianity was also the birth of new sacred books and the Bible as we have it today that seems to be evolving and changing, with new manuscripts and manuscript fragments and new Bible translations.

In our next article, we will talk a little bit about anti-Semitism in the Bible.