The Reliability of New Testament Scripture and the Mauratorian Fragment

The authenticity and reliability of scripture is not necessarily a popular go-to subject. Sometimes we might feel that it is better not to peek behind the curtain, fearful of what we might find. And sometimes the whole debate is trivialized with the circular-argument (begging the question) fallacy. People might use 2 Tim. 3:16 and Ps. 12:6-7 to "prove" that God supernaturally wrote and preserved his word, but the argument is not valid. ^[1] We can hope that their conclusion is correct, even if their argument is faulty.

In a real sense, the authenticity of all scripture depends on the authenticity of the New Testament. That's because the New Testament has so many references to the old, so many that the New Testament boldly confirms the old. The OT will stand or fall with the NT. So what confirms the new, apart from circular reasoning?

To understand the non-trivial nature of the problem, consider that the first five books of the New Testament, the four gospels and Acts, are all written anonymously. Unlike Paul in his epistles, the writers of these books never self-identify. That presents the problem in stark relief. The biographies of our Lord are written by anonymous writers. We attribute them (correctly in my opinion) to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John--but those men, unlike Paul, did not attach their names to the text.

I am not a canon scholar. So take this for what it's worth. For me, there are three reasons to feel confident about the authenticity of scripture, two rational and one irrational (I don't mean that pejoratively) reason.

The irrational reason is the most important. It is (what we take to be) the supernatural internal conviction of the Holy Spirit that what we read is true. This is, to me, a very compelling reason, although non-believers will attribute our credulity to weakness, gullibility, stupidity, indoctrination, etc. But I don't feel weak, gullible, (particularly) stupid, or indoctrinated. So I feel confident that the bible is the word of God because of, rather than in spite of, the fact that I have no compelling reason to do so. I feel the same way as I do about my certainty that the doctrine of election must be the reason behind my belief and conversion: I'm either right about this or I'm insane--for there is no other explanation.

What about the two rational reasons? They are, truth be told, not so much reasons as plausibility arguments.

The first is the self-consistency of scripture. I find the New testament to be entirely self-consistent. The greatest potential inconsistency is when we encounter James writing about the importance of works. But that is dealt with easily and satisfactorily. To this day when I read scripture I am almost alway running a self-consistency test in my head. For the programmers out there, it's constantly running unit tests.

The second rational reason is ancient tradition. ^[2] This involves going back as far as possible and asking: what did the church believe was scripture? Our earliest answer to this question probably comes from a fragment of ancient text, the Mautaorian fragment. ^[3] It is a 7th or 8th century Latin fragment discovered in the 18th century. The fragment is believed by many experts to be a translation of a document from the 2nd century. In so much as it lists a canon, it is telling us, assuming it was representative, what the Roman church accepted as canonical.

The fragment is cut off at the top, and starts by referring to Luke as the third book. It follows it with John--so it is a reasonable assumption that the Missing two books are Matthew and Mark. Furthermore, though as mentioned the gospels are written anonymously, this shows (assuming it is a 2nd century list) that very early at at least the 3rd and 4th gospels were attributed to eponymously.

Taken from the wiki article, here is the canon as found in the fragment:

I have to tell myself not to dwell too much on the absence of Hebrews in the list. To me, Hebrews contains a treasure trove of comforting and beloved theology. Of the books not on the Mauratorian list, it is that one that would break my heart if were not really canonical, which of course can never be demonstrated. But I can perform the thought experiment, and all I can tell myself is that Hebrews, as much as I love it, does not establish the gospel, the rest of scripture does, and it does so clearly and unambiguously So the accuracy of the gospel is not at risk in this thought experiment, just some awesome (but not salvation-necessary) doctrine on the priesthood of Christ.

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^[1] In a doubly fallacious argument, I have heard some argue that the KJV version of Ps. 12:7, which seems to refer to the "words of the Lord" from v. 6, while the later translations do not (e.g., the ESV has it referring to us (God's people) rather than them (possibly the words)) as "proof" that the KJV is the most faithful translation--essentially because it claims to be the best.

^[2] There is also a supernatural aspect to the tradition argument, namely the belief that God would supernaturally preserve his word. That is, the conclusions of the fallacious arguments, say those based on 2 Tim. 3:16, are nevertheless correct. I believe that--to me it is the Protestant version of the Roman Catholic argument from Sacred Tradition. In this argument, God supernaturally intervened in the construction of the canon. If you believe the 66 books of the bible all belong in the canon, and not others do, then you have a sacred tradition. What does that mean? Among other things it means your are violating one of the solas, namely Sola Scripture, because the bible's table of contents do not appear in any of the scriptural books, and yet you accept is as infallible. I love Sola Scripture, but I accept this solitary exception.

^[3] It is not vitally important, but Wikipedia states that the fragment is a Latin translation of Greek. That is not a certainty. Some scholars argue a number of reasons that it does not read as "translated Greek", and that the original may have also been in Latin.