Welcome to Defenders, the teaching class of Dr. William Lane Craig. Today, the Doctrine of Revelation, Part 10.

For more information and resources from Dr. Craig, go to reasonable faith.org.

Today we turn to the subject of canonicity. If the doctrine of inspiration of Scripture is true, then there is

automatically drawn a line between those books which are inspired and those which are not.

There are inspired books and there are books that are not inspired. So the doctrine

of inspiration implies that there is an authoritative body of inspired literature with precise

literary limits to it.

This body of writing is inspired and is therefore the Word of God to us.

These writings therefore belong to what is called the canon of Scripture.

Now what do we mean by the word canon with one N, not two? Well, canon is a word

that means rule or standard. And when we talk about canonicity, we're talking about those

literary limits to inspired books that are God's

word to us. The canonicity of Scripture concerns the question of which writings belong to

this inspired body of literature to which we give allegiance as authoritative. This

is the question of the canon of Scripture, which books ought to be in the Bible. Now let's

treat this question with respect to the Old Testament and the New Testament separately.

With respect to the Old Testament, Jesus and the Apostles accepted the Jewish canon of

Scripture that existed at that time. The Hebrew Bible, which was used by Jesus himself, as well as the apostles,

is the same Bible that Protestants today called the Old Testament. So Jesus used the same Old Testament

canon of Scripture that Protestants recognize today.

The 24 books of the so-called Masoretic text of the Hebrew Bible are the books which were

recognized by Jesus to be inspired by God and to be God's word to us.

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