The Foundations of the Bible

The Christian Faith, whilst eminently practical in its character, is to some extent literary in its origin. A man may believe in Christ and yet be unable to read; but probably his teacher is a reader; and certainly Christians have a strong tendency to become readers. There can be little doubt that a great impetus was given to the copying trade through the issue of the books of the New Testament towards the close of the first century of our era, and that Christianity was speedily established as a literary religion; its adherents, however lowly, regarding the possession of a Gospel or some other sacred book as a very high privilege.

But Christianity sprang out of an older Faith; and that, too, was literary. The Lord Jesus and His immediate followers were not only Israelites nationally, but they were possessors of certain sacred books which had come down to them from ancient times and were regarded as of the highest authority. “The Law,” “the Law and the Prophets,” “the Scriptures,” “the Holy Scriptures,” “the Old Testament or Covenant,” “the Psalms”—these are constantly referred to as the common property and sacred heritage of all Israel. They are regarded as containing Divine utterances, whether of the nature of promise or warning, history or prophecy, law or doctrine. These old books are quoted about six hundred times in the New Testament; the mission of Christ is regarded as the fulfillment, in every detail, of utterances which they contain; the teaching of Christ claims to be judged by them; and the Christian views of God, of sin, of judgment, of righteousness, and of the Incarnation, Death and Resurrection of God’s Son, presuppose such a theological foundation as is laid in the Old Testament. All adherents of the Israelite or (to use the more popular word) the Jewish creed were professedly at one with the founders of the Christian Faith in this respect. However much they might differ in questions of interpretation, however distant their hearts might be from the God whom they professedly followed, however vexed and angry they might be with Jesus of Nazareth for the authority and simplicity with which He set forth the great central truths contained in the Law and the Prophets, yet the books to which He referred were indubitably the books to which they held sacred…

(R. B. Girdlestone, The Foundations of the Bible: Studies in Old Testament Criticism, London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1890, 1-2; Excerpt from Chapter I, The Foundations of the Bible)