Diogenes the Cynic

The earlier attempts to define a Canon were not universally accepted, by the way.

Phlox Pyros

Virtually, yes.

Diogenes the Cynic

There is no "virtually" with canon. If there is any disagreement then there isn't a canon. For the first couple of centuries, Christians diverged quite widely on what books should be accepted as authoritative. Take the Gnostics, for instance...

Toto

Is there something wrong with telling Christians that the Bible may not be the literal word of God? Should they not acknowledge that most educated and Biblically literate people in this country do not regard the Bible as the literal word of God?

Febble

Well, include me in too, together with the entire congregation and Dominican community at the Easter Vigil at Blackfriars Priory in Oxford last week. The homily was on the subject, and took for granted the above views. Concelebrating was Fr Timothy Radcliffe, until recently Master of the Dominicans (wishful thinking in some quarters had him down a while back as a papal candidate). He didn't look particularly disturbed over his cocoa afterwards (although it was 2.00am).

Magdlyn

Catholics have a larger canon than Protestants, and while they were/are anti-gnostic heretic hunters, are more comfortable with "tradition" (discredited apocrypha and writings of "Church Fathers") than Protestants are.

More on establishment of canon:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_canon

In other words, these so called disputed and rejected books were popular but he didn't like them.


Note that Athanasius was favored over Arius at the Council of Nicea on the nature of Jesus Christ, which was what the council set out to determine in 325.

I believe Rev John was not accepted until the 15th century.

pharoah

May I point out that there is still no universal agreement among Christians concerning the canon? The Catholics accept the Apocraphya, Protestants don't. Also, I'd like to suggest that in my opinion the commentaries and other extras typically found in many Bibles are so biased to the theology of the person or organization that published it that it amounts to being yet another book in that bible.

SkyDancer_0202

well then, I know a few christians who are falling for it, because they are claiming that this is "going to drive a wedge' into christianity.


I refrained from being rude and saying "good"

SkyDancer_0202

imo, its rather stupid (from a religious person's standpoint) to believe Judas was NOT doing what Jesus/God wanted. If Judas hadn't "betrayed" him, he wouldn't have gotten to make that pretend sacrifice of his life for all of us sinners. If Judas had "chosen" (free-will and all that) not to "betray" Jesus - then what? Did God have a back-up plan?

S.C.Carlson

Different parts of canon were canonized at different times. I think that it is safe to say that among orthodox Christians, the four-fold gospel collection was closed by the early third century. (If Gaius who denied John was heterodox then the gospel collection was effectively closed for the orthodox even earlier.)

For the Pauline corpus, the only live issue is whether Hebrews belonged in it or not. The other thirteen letters were accepted since Tatian. As for the General Epistles, there was little dispute over whether 1 Peter or 1 John were in, but it took until the fourth century for the others to make it in. Same for Revelation.

Discussion of when canon as a whole was closed, which, in any case, did not happen at Nicea, and the gospel of Jesus is largely beside the point, because the relevant sub-collection of the canon had been closed for at least century earlier.

Stephen