Ever since the discovery of the scrolls, scholars have been eager to learn which Old Testament books were represented in the manuscripts discovered there. And it turns out that we have a manuscript from every single book from our Old Testament except one. The book of Esther. As a result, the absence of Esther has led to all kinds of scholarly speculation over the years about why the Qumran community (presumably the community associated with the Dead Sea Scrolls) did not have that book in their Old Testament canon. 

When we want to know how the New Testament canon developed, we have a number of sources at our disposal. Most fundamentally, we have patristic sources—the writings of the church fathers—which can show us when books were known, read, and cited.

We also have archaeological evidence at our disposal. We continue to find manuscripts of the New Testament, particularly at the site of Oxyrhynchus among other places, showing that early Christians knew and used these books in some fashion.

But what do we do when a particular book is missing from either of these sources? For example, Irenaeus does not mention (or quote from) the book of Philemon. Should we conclude that he didn’t know it or value it? Or consider the early second-century writer, Polycarp, bishop of Smyrna. If you study his writings, it seems clear that he knows the books of Romans, 1 Corinthians, Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, and 1&2 Timothy. So, should we conclude that Polycarp had just a 7-book Pauline canon?

Here’s where we are faced with a problematic trend in canon studies that I have observed over the years. Some scholars will conclude that if an author doesn’t use/cite a book that he doesn’t know it or value it. Or if a manuscript of a certain book is not discovered at a certain locale, then some will conclude that that particular community must not have known or valued that book.

The problem with this line of reasoning, however, is that it is a form of the argument from silence. And the argument from silence is regarded as fallacious for a number of reasons, the most obvious being that we simply don’t have enough information to reach a conclusion one way or another. After all, we have only a limited sample of a church father’s writings, and we have only limited samples of New Testament manuscripts that survive. Therefore, no certain conclusions can be reached by what is not present.

As a parallel example, consider Paul’s discussion of Jesus instituting the Lord’s Supper in 1 Cor 11:23-26—a topic he never discusses anywhere else. Now imagine for a moment that (for some reason) we didn’t have 1 Corinthians.

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