Answers to Common Questions About the Bible by H. Wayne House & Timothy J. Demy

Author:H. Wayne House & Timothy J. Demy
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780825405402
Publisher: Kregel Publications
Published: 2014-03-11T23:00:00+00:00

27. Could more books properly be added to the Bible today?

The current Bible that we possess was composed by prophets of God in the Old Testament times and apostles of Christ in New Testament times. These were necessary requirements for the authority of these books. The prophets were the very mouthpieces of God and spoke the words of God. These words were revelations of God’s mind for the people of God. Similarly, the apostles of the New Testament were given the responsibility to communicate, through the Holy Spirit, whatever Jesus had taught (John 14:26), with the promise that the Spirit of truth would lead them into all truth (John 16:13). Peter tells us that holy men of God were carried along by the Holy Spirit in declaring the Word of God (2 Peter 1:21).

With respect to the authors of the New Testament books, there was an absolute requirement of being a witness of Christ’s resurrection or writing as a surrogate for one who was a witness, as in the case of John Mark for Peter and Luke for Paul. For the twelve disciples, in specific, this was necessary because they were to communicate the words and works of Jesus in His ministry; they had to be with Him from the baptism of John through the resurrection (Acts 1:21–22). Paul was a witness of the resurrected Lord, but he had no personal knowledge of Jesus’ earthly ministry, something that was not required of him since he did not write a gospel.

In view of the above, no book could be added by a contemporary author to the sixty-six books we now possess. But what if another book from Old Testament times or New Testament times were to be found that was written by a biblical prophet or apostle? We know that Paul wrote other letters, so what if one of these were discovered? This would be an unlikely scenario, since the church of the early centuries would already have had access to those letters, but the fathers of the early church never speak of any. It is highly doubtful that they would be found; being written on papyrus and not preserved by the church, they would have perished long ago. Moreover, even if we did find such books, we would have no way of determining whether they were genuine.

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