2. Side by side with this question of the standard or authentic minimum of traditional teaching, and growing necessarily with it and out of it, was the question of the sources from which that teaching could be drawn, and of the materials by which the standard might be interpreted. The greater part of apostolic teaching had been oral. The tradition was mostly oral. But as the generations of men receded farther from the apostolic age, and as the oral tradition which was delivered came necessarily to vary, it became more and more uncertain what was the true form and content of the tradition. Written records came to be of more importance than oral tradition. They had at first only the authority which attached to tradition. Their elevation to an independent rank was due to the influence of the Old Testament. There had been already a series of revelations of God to men, which having once been oral had become written. The revelation consisted of what was then known as the Scriptures, and what we now know as the Old Testament. The proofs of Christianity consisted to a large extent in its consonance with those Scriptures. But the term Holy Scriptures was less strictly used than is sometimes supposed. The hedge round them had gaps, and there were patches lying outside what has since come to be its line. It was partly the indefiniteness of the Old Testament canon which caused the term Scripture to be applied to some writings of the apostolic age. But the question, Which writings? was only answered gradually. The spirit of prophecy had only gradually passed away. It was the common ground for the reception of the Old Testament and the New Testament; as the spirit of prophecy was common to both, it was but natural that both should have the same attributes. But prophecy was not in the first instance conceived as having suddenly ceased in the Church. The term Scripture (ἡ γραφή) is applied to the Shepherd of Hermas by Irenæus.[687] The delimitation of the body of writings that could be so denoted was connected with the necessity of being sure about the _apostolical_ teaching—the παράδοσις.[688] The term Scripture was applied to the recorded sayings of Jesus Christ (the λόγια) without demur.[689] It came to be applied also to the records which the apostles had left of the facts of the life of Christ. Then, finally, it tended more gradually to be applied to the writings of the apostles and of apostolic men.