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till a considerable time after Jesus had ascended into heaven." Now it is not
difficult to answer this argument. If there is any force in the latter part of it, it
would affect the Qur'an as well as the Injil; for the Qur'an was not "collected"
and put together until after Muhammad's death, as we learn from the Mishkatu'l Masabih1
and from other Muslim authorities. But it should be explained that in reality there exists
only one Gospel, for the word Injil, though it is now used as the name of a book, and its
meaning is not often remembered by Muslims, really means "the Good News". "Injil" is only the Arabic form of the Greek
ευαγγελιον, which denotes this
(الِبشارة).
This Good News, this Divine Message of God's love and the way of salvation through Christ,
is one, though told in different ways, so that it may appeal to a larger number of
people, and may be supported by the testimony not of one man only, but of four. Again we
say there is only one Gospel. In the original Greek the title of the books shows this, for
they are called "The Gospel according to St. Matthew", "the Gospel according to St. Mark", &c. Only for brevity
is the shorter title "St. Matthew's Gospel", &c., employed. Each of the four
Evangelists told the Good News in his own way, under the guidance of God's Holy Spirit;
but the message was one and the same. The Book of the Acts of the Apostles shows
that this Gospel was preached by the Christians immediately after the Ascension in land
after land. But it was first of all preached by Christ Himself (Mark I. 15; xiii. 10; Luke xx. I), and therefore must have already "been sent down unto
Jesus", for He Himself claimed that His message was from God, saying, "The
things therefore which I speak, even as the Father hath said unto Me, so I speak"
(John xii. 50; compare John viii. 28; xii. 49).
With regard to the books which together form the
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New Testament, it is well known to all scholars that they were not received into the Canon
except gradually and after the most careful inquiry, lest by chance some book which was of
no authority and devoid of inspiration should be incorporated into this collection. This
examination occupied some considerable time, because some of the Epistles were private
letters to individuals (I and 2 Tim., Titus, Philemon, 2 and 3 John), and the rest of them
were in the first place addressed to individual Churches. But, from the writings of early
Christians which have been preserved, we know that the four Gospels were known and
recognized as authoritative between 70 and 130 A. D. A fragment of a work dating from
about 170 A.D. contains part of a list of the New Testament books. It is called the
Muratorian Canon, and, though torn, it mentions or implies the existence of every New
Testament book, except the Epistle of James, the second Epistle of Peter, and the Epistle
to the Hebrews. But the list when complete almost certainly included these also, for
elsewhere they were all received in the second century, with the doubtful exception of 2
Peter, which is not often mentioned in early lists. Considering that books were then very
costly, that most of the Christians were poor (I Cor. i. 26, 27), that the whole of the
New Testament books, if written in the large Greek letters then in use, and on rolls of
parchment, would form not a volume, but a small library, we are surprised to find them
all, or almost all, so early known in different lands. In the Laodicean Council of 363
A.D., in which (as we have seen above) the twenty-two Books of the Hebrew Old Testament
are mentioned, the Canon of the New Testament includes all our present New Testament,
except the Revelation of St. John. Hence we see that at that time there was still some
doubt about the latter; some Churches received it, and some had not yet decided to do so,
though they afterwards admitted it. The Council of Carthage in 397 A.D. gives a list of
all our present New Testament books, adding the |
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