Rev Hellier (Life & Work, December 2022) seems to have respect for the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament in that he quotes from them. Yet he seems to have questions about their origins.

The Scriptures of the New Testament are the main record that we have of the life of Jesus.

The majority of church authorities place confidence in the judgement of the Jewish rabbis who set the canon of the Old Testament in the century before Jesus was born. The orthodox church fathers then formalised the canon of the New Testament at the Council of Carthage in 397 AD. Since that time the ‘catholic’ church, in its general sense, has accepted that that decision was definitive. The early creeds no doubt influenced the church fathers at that council, rejecting the gnostic gospels as not being part of the canon.

Jesus had no problem with the then accepted Old Testament. He pointed out that the experts of his time “knew neither the Scriptures, nor the power of God...” (Matt 22:29). Maybe we have the same problem today. Jesus himself said that “Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or a tittle of the Law shall in no wise pass away...’.

The confidence we have in the manuscripts is their early date and the evident care exercised by the scribes of that time. The discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls was evidence of that. The transcription errors between the different manuscripts, from different sources, is minimal, and rarely affects the meaning. We should have confidence in the content of OT Scripture, as being an accurate representation of the original text, and a similar claim has been made by experts like the late Prof F F Bruce for the New Testament.

If we do not have confidence in the Scriptures, I suggest our ‘faith is in vain’, as the Apostle Paul stated in relation to the resurrection, in 1 Cor 15...

Perhaps we need Jesus to come alongside us to interpret to us ‘all the Scriptures’ as he did for the couple on the road to Emmaus.

Tony Crow, Bearsden