Since the early years of Christianity, various myths, legends, and even conspiracy theories about the origins of the Bible have enjoyed wide circulation. The discovery in recent decades of many books that were not accepted into the Christian canon has only added to this speculation, spawning numerous best-sellers and television programs. Though the number of theories has grown, however, the three most popular are sufficiently well defined that we can consider them as we might various options on a multiple-choice quiz. So read carefully and then make your selection.
The Big Three
A: Holy Dictation. Promoted by conservative Christians, this view stresses the inerrancy -- that is, the factual accuracy in all matters of faith, history, and science -- of the Bible. Authors, in the grip of the Holy Spirit, received a divine revelation directly from God that they transcribed without error. So while the biblical authors may have written in their own voice and style, the contents of their compositions were nevertheless divinely inspired and controlled. For this reason, there are no errors of any kind in the Bible; hence, if the Bible says the world was created in seven days then, indeed, it was created in seven days.
B: Imperial Decree. Popularized by historical works like The Gnostic Gospels and fictional books like The Da Vinci Code, this view suggests that the official and final contents of the Bible were established by ecclesial councils ordered by Emperor Constantine and his successors. The intent of these councils was both to provide theological unity to the fledgling Christian empire and to stamp out the rise of feminism and other movements in the heavily patriarchal and increasingly orthodox early Christian church. According to Elaine Pagels, divergent theologies like Gnosticism were a threat to the unity and power of the imperial-backed ecclesial authorities, while for Dan Brown there existed a conspiracy to suppress the "true" story of Jesus' romantic relationship with Mary Magdalene, their unrecognized child, and Mary Magdalene's significant influence in the early church.
C: Forgeries & Falsehoods. Who wrote the Bible? All too often, this view suggests, it wasn't who the actual authors purported to be. Rather, much of the New Testament was written either by persons whose identity remains irrecoverably anonymous or by frauds impersonating famous and powerful Christians of an earlier generation. While the gospels represent the former case, many of the letters attributed to the Apostle Paul as well as those attributed to Peter and others represent the latter. As Bart Ehrman has recently argued, the checkered history of the composition of these books undermines the integrity of the New Testament as a whole.
So what do you think -- did you find a satisfactory answer? If not, it will help to remember that multiple-choice tests often offer a fourth choice, "D: None of the Above." As it happens, that choice would be the better answer for this question, as each of the first three possibilities is flawed. For instance, while Mormons have a story that describes the divine transmission of their holy book, Christians by and large have rarely made such claims. In fact, the theory of inerrancy -- a word never used in the Bible -- was only coined only a century ago by fundamentalist Christians seeking to defend the Bible from recent discoveries about its historical origins and fallible conclusions in the realms of history and science.
Similarly, there was no council -- imperial or otherwise -- that established the Christian canon once and for all. In fact, lists describing the most commonly accepted Christian writings that correspond closely to the present Bible were circulating a century or more before Constantine had his famous conversation. Later councils, like that at Carthage (397 CE), affirmed those books that had already gained wide acceptance. While early church leaders clearly opposed theological stances that were later to be described as Gnosticism, many of those writings had already lost favor in Christian congregations apart from and often before their rejection by ecclesial authorities. Similarly, although there is no question that the role and importance of women was grossly underemphasized in some books of the Bible, this reflects as much a strong cultural bias as it does any conspiracy. Further, at significant places in the New Testament women emerge as strong central characters. Note, for instance, that the women are the only disciples to remain at Jesus' cross and are the first witnesses and heralds of the resurrection in all four gospels.
Finally, passing off your work as another's is a more complicated issue than it might first appear. While claiming to be someone else for the sake of profit was roundly criticized in the ancient world as it is today, claiming the authority of a teacher or earlier leader in order to extend the thought and spirit of that author was met with more mixed reviews. Often, the symbolic and traditional importance of the work outweighs correct authorial attribution. For example, while most Jewish and Christian scholars recognize that King David wrote few if any of the Psalms attributed to him, almost no one argues that those Psalms have no merit or should be barred from the canon. At other times, decisions about the value of disputed works are based less on impartial criteria than on the critic's own stance toward the writings in question. That is, scholars both ancient and modern tend to reject such writings as forgeries when they themselves disagree with the content, yet affirm them as worthwhile when the works in question align with their own convictions. For instance, earlier in his career in his book Lost Christianities, Bart Ehrman not only lamented the exclusion of some extra-canonical books but also invited modern readers to reconsider their devotional and spiritual value even though he acknowledges that every one of the books rejected by the Christian church for inclusion in the New Testament makes a false authorial claim.
A Grassroots Process
So then where did the Bible actually come from? Or, perhaps better, what process led to the development of the contents of the Bible as we know them today? Typically, historians suggest two standards that influenced how early Christians came to give priority to some books over others as the New Testament canon came into shape, though neither of these elements ever functioned with the precision of agreed-upon criteria.
First, biblical books were frequently associated with one of the original apostles. The Gospels of Matthew and John are named after original disciples (although the texts that bear their names make no such connection), while Mark was thought to be a student of Peter and Luke a companion to Paul. With other books, however -- the Letter to the Hebrews, for instance -- it was more difficult to make such an association.
Second, books accepted as canonical tended to conform to emerging orthodox teaching. The key word in that last sentence, however, is "emerging." During the period in which the New Testament canon solidified, there was as yet no broad consensus about what would later become central tenets of orthodox Christianity. Often, the books that Christian congregations read most frequently influenced the development of accepted teaching as much as orthodox teaching shaped the choice of what books to read. This helps to explain the distinct pictures of Jesus presented in the four canonical gospels -- think, for instance, how different Mark's suffering Jesus is from John's cosmic Christ -- as well as the presence of books as divergent as Romans and Revelation.
Ultimately, the most important factors influencing the final inclusion or exclusion of books into the Bible tended to be far more pedestrian and pragmatic than any of the three theories we considered above might suggest: longevity and utility. That is, the books that ended up in the New Testament were those that proved themselves over the long haul as most helpful in sustaining Christian faith. While apostolic authorship and concerns for orthodoxy exercised some influence, the dominant factor shaping decisions about canonical status was to note what books Christians consistently read when they gathered for worship and instruction.
This "bottom-up" process was by no means simple or uniform. Some books came in and out of vogue, trendy for a time or in a particular place only later to lose favor. It's only in the fourth century that enough of a consensus on what books were consistently helpful had emerged so that a prominent bishop like Athanasius could name with confidence in a letter to his congregations those books that had been widely accepted (367 CE). Athanasius' testimony in the preface to his list is telling: "I beseech you to bear patiently, if I also write, by way of remembrance, of matters with which you are acquainted." To view Athanasius' recommendation as establishing, rather than recognizing, an emerging canon is therefore to overestimate the significance and authority of ecclesial authorities over local congregations, the places where these books were actually read week in and week out.
If this sounds uncomfortably similar to a popularity contest, perhaps we might view it instead as the long-term process by which the early Christians sorted and sifted through various reflections on the faith until a grassroots consensus emerged on what books proved most useful in sustaining faith. Looked at this way, one doesn't have to reach for conspiracy theories to understand why the gospels of Thomas and Judas and similar writings were ultimately rejected. More often than not, these documents contained little of the narratives of Jesus' life, death, and resurrection that Christians had come to know and cherish. They are, as even a casual reading will grant, often strikingly dissimilar from the other gospels and writings of the New Testament. Because these works were often absent sustained reflection on the cross, usually lacked a coherent narrative, and sometimes contained rather peculiar theological assertions, is not difficult to conceive that they rarely caught hold of the imagination of early Christian congregations.
Proposing that the composition of the New Testament was a long process of recognizing an emerging grassroots and congregational consensus certainly isn't as dramatic as either the religious myths or political and ecclesial conspiracy theories often ventured. Nevertheless, there is something both sensible and comforting in imagining that over time Christians would esteem most highly those writings that most ably encouraged them on their path as disciples of Jesus. After all, what better benchmark to employ than giving authority to those writings -- even writings as varied as those found in the Bible -- that had the capacity to create and nurture faith?
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it was the catholic church who declared what was the inspired writings of god (many christians of the one church thought revelation, hebrews,didache were and were not scripture) but in council of rome ,carthridge and trent the church declared the cannon and by what authority?
there was no hebrew cannon at time of apostles there were 3 hebrew cannons (pharisees, saduccess,essenes).
there was no caouncil of jamnia . protestant scholarship has shown no council ever took place.
jews disputed the cannon over two hundred years after christ.
there was tons of writing that christians considered from god and not from god. how do you know whats from god and not from god?
end of story it was the catholic church that declared the one cannon and as many protestant and catholic historians have noted it gods inspired word was later removed from protestant bibles.
References
1) why catholic bibles are bigger
2) where we got the bible our debt to the catholic church
3)loose cannons by michael barber
4) many more
Catholicsince33ad.com
"We affirm that inspiration, strictly speaking, applies only to the authographic text of Scripture, which in the providence of God can be ascertained from available manuscripts with great accuracy. We further affirm that copies and translations of Scripture are the Word of God to the extent that they faithfully represent the original."
Of course, it is well known that the original manuscripts (namely, "the authographic text of Scripture") do not exist. This position strikes many as a tad odd. Of course, the mainline Churches and the Roman Catholic Church does NOT share this strange position.
And as for your urging people to come to their own conclusions by reading the text themselves, I'm all for that...but be aware that if they do so without some guidance such as David Lose offers, the inherent inconsistencies within Scripture may serve more to raise doubts about the "consensus." After all, Marcion read the Hebrew scriptures and the letters of Paul side by side and decided that they couldn't be talking about the same God....
Yes there was, the council of Niceae was the first Ecumenical council where they created the entire ruler which the faiths themselves would be measured by. They also specifically put into order the order of books, chapters, and authors what we now recognize as the OT and the NT and the only alterations since then have been translations into different languages. After that the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed just sealed the deal to complete the work.
[45] Ehrman, Bart. Fact and Fiction in The Da Vinci Code, pp. 15-16, 23, 93
[46] Nicea Myths: Common Fables About The Council of Nicea and Constantine. Retrieved on 2010-08-20.
The hypocrisy and stunning intellectual absurdity of modern organized religion should be horrendously offensive to anyone with a right mind and a decent education.
There I answered the question and it wasn't even hard to do.
one side calls it a complete absolute fanasty; the other an absolute compete truth.
neither side has come to realize it is not all compete absolute wisdom or a compete work of ignorance. without realizing it both sides make the same errors by their denial and their blind faith.
now the word ignorance. a synonym for ignorance is unawareness. without our unawareness there is us just isness and you can call isness anything you want for isness cannot be defined. even isness does not define the infinite source of all that is, ie isness. ;-)
to define infinite is to limit infinite and to limit infinite is to put boundaries on infinite. christians infinite has no boundaries therefore you are within infinite not outside knocking on the myth of a hell or heaven door.
oh to find one christian that understands the concept of infinite as all and all. they still think they are separate from infinite and want to take personal responsibility for their unawareness. ie human ego thing of I am culpable and guility. :-(
*all* the Abrahamic sky-fairy stories are merely the anachronistic, incoherent and irrational ravings of Iron Age primitives;
*none* of them can withstand more than ten minutes critical inspection from anyone with access to modern investigative resources and even the most basic grasp of the power of Occam's Razor.
however, since I live in the US, I put most of my energy into opposing the noxious, destructive efforts of the Abrahamic faith which does the most damage here, xtianity.
Occam's Razor is often expressed as a law. It is a principle, and a very helpful one generally.
Apply Occam's Razor to this question: Is it rational to posit that a coherent collection of ancient documents that has consistently correctly identified and documented ancient peoples and locations could be considered reliable and worthy of further study and consideration?
Yes.
I must ask another question: Is a philosophy, system, or religion better disproved by its abuses or better proved by its closest adherents? I suggest that it is the latter, not the former. It is my hope that you would soon meet and get to know some of the latter, and to perhaps come to work alongside them to do good.
Jeremiah is my favorite character, an actor. He saved the old writings before the Temple of Solomon was burned, and hid them and others he had written in the destroyed Temple before he died, so that they could be later found.
Jeremiah did not write in Babylonian. He lived his whole life in Judea. Clearly there was an older written language which Moses and Jeremiah shared, that has vanished today.
And lo! Cyrus (Koresh or cHoresh) the Great of Persia (Iran) allows the Jews to return, and lo! Ezra finds the old books in the Temple ruins. Ezra learns to read the old writings, and writes a new Torah in the vernacular - Babylonian. And adds the Babylonian myths to the beginning.
Genesis is the Babylonian Cosmogenesis and Biogenesis, and the Garden of Eden is near Babylon. "Elohim" refers to the Babylonian pantheon, and Ia (Yah) is the Babylonian god who saved man from El (head of the pantheon) when El sent the flood.
That just covers the 6 books (5 "of" Moses and Jeremiah). Whew!
The rest are clearly historical, documenting (with the sacred traditions of embellishment, outright lies and propaganda) the Kings and Judges of Israel and Judah.
The Christian Bible came out of a Jewish Holocaust, the brutal Roman occupation of Judea (over a million Jews killed) that ended with the expulsion of the Jews. Many Jews thought such destruction meant the end times, and dreamed of a Messiah to save them. Judea was not saved. Roman victory was total. But of course, Israel and Judea had fallen many times in the past, and Israel vanished in about 700BC conquered by Assyria. It is interesting to note that Rabbi Akiva thought Bar Kochba to be the Jewish Messiah, like some did of Yeshua (Jesus) 80 years earlier. Both failed to expel Rome. Both were killed by Rome for treason. Both failed in the imagined Messianic mission of the day.
Hebrew often substitutes a cHet for a Hay to make a related word. Mashiach (Messiah) is too close to Moshe (Moses) for me not to notice. I believe that the yearning for a leader such as Moses gave rise to the word.
As for Christ, it is too close to "crossed" for me not to notice. There is a very beautiful Hebrew word "L'ha'criz" (L=infinitive, ha=the) which means "to announce". From which we get crow (and crow's nest), perhaps crazy, perhaps cross, and IMO almost certainly Krist, the announcer.
How bizarre.
Kind of like when you get trekkies, harry potter fans, or star wars fans that actually believe it to be real.