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10 As I have already indicated, in some sense Christians started with a canonin that the founder of their religion was himself a Jewish teacher who accepted the Torah as authoritative scripture from God, and who taught his followers his interpretation of it. The earliest Christians were followers of Jesus who accepted the books of the Jewish Bible (which was not yet set as a “canon,” once and for all) as their own scripture. For the writers of the New Testament, including our earliest author, Paul, the “scriptures” referred to the Jewish Bible, the collection of books that God had given his people and that predicted the coming of the Messiah, Jesus.
    It was not long, however, before Christians began accepting other writings as standing on a par with the Jewish scriptures. This acceptance may have had its roots in the authoritative teaching of Jesus himself, as his followers took his interpretation of scripture to be equal in authority to the words of scripture itself. Jesus may have encouraged this understanding by the way he phrased some of his teachings. In the Sermon on the Mount, for example, Jesus is recorded as stating laws given by God to Moses, and then giving his own more radical interpretation of them, indicating that his interpretation is authoritative. This is found in the so-called Antitheses recorded in Matthew, chapter 5. Jesus says, “You have heard it said, ‘You shall not commit murder’ [one of the Ten Commandments], but I say to you, ‘whoever is even angry with a brother or sister is liable to judgment.’” What Jesus says, in his interpretation of the Law, appears to be as authoritative as the Law itself. Or Jesus says, “You have heard it said, ‘You shall not commit adultery’ [another of the Ten Commandments]. But I say to you, ‘whoever looks at a woman to lust after her in his heart has already committed adultery with her.’”
    On some occasions these authoritative interpretations of scripture appear, in effect, to countermand the laws of scripture themselves. For example, Jesus says, “You have heard it said, ‘Whoever divorces his wife should give her a certificate of divorce’ [a command found in Deut. 24:1], but I say to you that everyone who divorces his wife for reason other than sexual immorality, makes her commit adultery, andwhoever marries a divorced woman commits adultery.” It is hard to see how one can follow Moses’ command to give a certificate of divorce, if in fact divorce is not an option.
    In any event, Jesus’s teachings were soon seen to be as authoritative as the pronouncements of Moses—that is, those of the Torah itself. This becomes even more clear later in the New Testament period, in the book of 1 Timothy, allegedly by Paul but frequently taken by scholars to have been written in his name by a later follower. In 1 Tim. 5:18 the author is urging his readers to pay those who minister among them, and supports his exhortation by quoting “the scripture.” What is interesting is that he then quotes two passages, one found in the Torah (“Do not muzzle an ox that is treading,” Deut. 25:4) and the other found on the lips of Jesus (“A workman is worthy of his hire”; see Luke 10:7). It appears that for this author, Jesus’s words are already on a par with scripture.
    Nor was it just Jesus’s teachings that were being considered scriptural by these second-or third-generation Christians. So too were the writings of his apostles. Evidence comes in the final book of the New Testament to be written, 2 Peter, a book that most critical scholars believe was not actually written by Peter but by one of his followers, pseudonymously. In 2 Peter 3 the author makes reference to false teachers who twist the meaning of Paul’s letters to make them say what they want them to say, “just as they do with the rest of the scriptures” (2 Pet. 3:16). It appears