I have answered more questions on the canonicity of Scripture (i.e. how was it determined which books would be considered Scripture) in the last four years of my ministry than I have in the previous fifteen and all of those questions have come from people under 35 years of age. It seems to me it is another indication that millennials are disenchanted with the postmodern idea that there is no overarching meaning to life. As image bearers of God we are inherently religious and have an innate desire to know our deeper history. So millenials are asking historical questions: “Why do we worship as we do?,” “What is the history of this theological idea?,” “What did the ancient church sing?,” and “How did we get our Bible?” It is an exciting era for me as a pastor.

Let’s break the question down and first ask how we got our Old Testament. Our own Dr. Bob Vasholz has done groundbreaking work on this subject, so I would urge you to read his book The Old Testament Canon in the Old Testament Church on the subject for a fuller explanation than I will give here. However, I will try to give a brief explanation anyway.

The subject begins with Moses and his reception of the law of God at Mt. Sinai. To validate to Israel that Moses was an author of divine Scripture, God gave an empirical demonstration of his presence with Moses. All the senses but taste were engaged: there was the vision of lightning, the sound of thunder, the smell of smoke, and the feeling of a trembling earth (Ex. 19:18-25). Not only did Moses survive these awe-inspiring signs of God’s presence, he descended the mountain with a glow on his face revealing that he was approved by God to speak on his behalf—he “wrote down everything the Lord had said” (Ex. 24:4). Thereafter when Moses would enter the tabernacle, the cloud representing Mt. Sinai would settle over his tent and Moses would emerge with a glowing face (Ex. 34:29-35). The people knew that what Moses wrote down in those meetings was from God. Therefore, as Moses wrote down God’s Word he placed the scroll in the Ark of the Covenant (Dt. 31:26). In other words, the Old Testament Church only had to ask whether or not a scroll was in the ark to discern whether a book belonged or not.