lysår

I understand that certain books do not have accepted canonical status with every Christian denomination like Catholicism, Orthodox, Protestant, and as a result they each have different bibles, give or take a book or three...

My main question is: Who decided to include the basic draft of currently accepted books as a whole into the modern versions of the holy bible?

What type of authority was required for "men" to be able to decide what was holy scripture (accepted canon), and which were just the irrelevent writings of men?

I can't recall off the top of my head, but I once saw a historical documentary that claimed the books of the old testament (aka - the Pentateuch) were disputed, even in their day, and that alternative versions of these ancient writings have been found.

1. They said the writings coud vary slightly. (You might expect that with cultures of orally passing on information, and through scholars/scribes of the time copying, editing, and maybe clarifying certain words..?)

2. To finding some versions of the writings with contradictory accounts. (Like from a rogue jewish sect in one case)

I'll try to find the name of the documentary, but in the mean time I hope someone with a reasonable knowledge in the field could answer any of the questions above.

Toto

Start here: The Formation of the New Testament Canon

steve_bnk

http://www.bidstrup.com/bible.htm

For Christians originaly by a convention and by edict of an emporer. Questins like the divinity of Christ came to a head at the Council of Nicea 325 C.E.

In large part the decsions were political. Fast forward to the rrformastion and peole wrer being burned at the stake for printing bibles that deviatd from the RCC cannon, and eventulay protetsnast burned each other.

Our mythical American pilgrims fled to to America in large part becaue of the comflict over what would be the protestant bible and what would be the requiremenst for things like a mass.

The major idea is that there are no direct teachings or docunments of any kind traceable directly to JC, if he indeed existed, at least as the person Christians think he was.

JC was a Jewish rabai. The Christian bible(ie NT) was cobbled together by commitee from a number of documents, not all in agreement.

judge

You will probably get lots of info about the protestant and catholic bibles. The canon used in the east was and always has been different from that used in the west.
We dont know how they arrived at it. All we know is that as early as we can go they only used 22 NT books (not 27 as in the west). Later on they accorded the other 5 books some status, but they are still to this day not considered canonoical.

This seems to be some sort of evidence that those 22 books were the earliest ones going around.
BTW be careful of the Richard Carrier article Toto linked to as it is quite wrong about the eastern canon. I pointed this out to Richard Carrier in a thread here a few years ago. His response was that he was only summarising Metzger so it wasn't his fault if his article was misleading.

Doug Shaver

What Toto said. I have read numerous accounts of the canon formation, by people whose biases ranged all the way from mindless inerrantism to rabid conspiracy-mongering. Carrier's seems, for its length, to be the best by far in terms of presenting an impartial assessment of the extant evidence. It isn't perfect, but it's probably as good as you'll get without undertaking the relevant research on your own.

Kapyong

Gday,

The canon was not decided by a convention, nor an emporer[sic].

It formed over many years as various people and groups approved or rejected various books.


Only according to the fictional Da Vinci Code.

In reality, Christ was considered divine from the earliest writers (e.g. Paul.)



BOOM!
Deviants get blown up by our cannon !
"Put on the artillery of God."


K.

David B

I've sort of gathered, over the years, that some guy called Irenaeus had a lot to do with what became canonical.

He was a guy who seems to have been seriously into numerology, which makes anything he said pretty suspect, IMV, and who decided that there had to be four gospels on numerological grounds.

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

David B

steve_bnk

The original canon was decided at the Council of Nicea. Constantine had made Christianty the state religion and needed an offical dogma. Everything since then have been revisions.

As the RCC evolved they contolled what was canon and what was not, the arbiters of dogma with the pope being god's mouthpiece on Earth and the final decider on any religious authenticity.

It wan't until the rerformation that the bible was allowed to be printed in English. The RCC would exceute those who trasnslated the bible into any common language.

The reformation kicked off a second round of conflict on what went in the bible. Part of it incudes Henry VIII's creation of the English state religion which needed a bible that sanntioned his rule and state religion.

As in Nicea, the protestant bible came about in part as compromise between sects and the needs of heads of state to have a common dogma to end the religious violence.

The writings attributed to Paul were one of many, some sects at the time of Nicea believed in dvinity, some did not. The gosples were most certainly written as religious promotional literature for bringing in converts, and were likley embelsslished from any earlier sources.

The question as to if the first close followers of JC actualy beiieved in divinity and ressurection is one of ongoing debate. You can peruse the other threads that have been discsussing these questions for quite some time.

Kapyong

Gday,

No it wasn't.
That's an urban legend, oft-repeated, but not true.

Read the canons of the CoN here :
http://www.newadvent.org/fathers/3801.htm
Note well - no mention of the bible canon at all.



Kapyong

lysår

Thanks one and all for the links, and I'll being reading each of them for a better perspective.