Greetings. Does anyone know of a book I can buy to learn how they decided what book belonged in the canon and which book didn't?
Thanks in advance.
A book on how the Bible canon was decided upon?
by dgp 12 Replies latest jw friends
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grewupjw1969
Hope this helps... It has a recommended source at the endo of the article
http://www.gotquestions.org/canon-Bible.html
Grewup
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Terry
Congratulations on investigating THE MOST IMPORTANT premise of christian belief!
I have read about 14 books on the bible canon so far. They fall into two categories.
1. Apologist scholars who want to prop up the bible no matter what
2. Textual critic scholars who want to show both sides of the story.
It is important to read BOTH so that you can see what the most troubling issues are and how attempts are made at explaining those problems away.
I would make one suggestion to you. Please get a background in the facts about the Bible FIRST by reading these two books:
1. Who Wrote the Bible?by Richard Elliot Friedman
Interview with Richard Elliott Friedman, author of The Bible with ...
2. Misquoting Jesus by Bart Ehrman
Video results for misquoting jesus by bart ehrman
Misquoting Jesus, Stanford Lecture, How Bible ...
10 min - Nov 13, 2007
www.youtube.com -
Terry
New Testament Books which are now accepted by Christians, but which were for a time rejected, are Hebrews, James, 1 Peter, 2 Peter, 2 John, 3 John, Jude, Revelation.
Books now excluded from the canon, but which are found in some of the older manuscripts of the New Testament, are Shepherd of Hermas, Epistle of Barnabas, 1 Clement, 2 Clement, Paul’s Epistle to Laodiceans, Apostolic Constitutions.
Books accepted as canonical by some Jews, and for most part by the Greek and Roman Catholic churches, but rejected by the Protestants, are Baruch, Tobit, Judith, Book of Wisdom, Song of the Three Children, History of Susanna, Bel and the Dragon, Prayer of Manasseh, Ecclesiasticus, 1 Esdras, 2 Esdras, 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees, 3 Maccabees, 4 Maccabees, 5 Maccabees.
The only books of the bible which are accepted as divine by all Jews and all varieties of Christians are the first five books of the Old Testament: the Pentateuch.
There are lost books of the bible, which should have been included into the canon. These books are cited by writers of the Bible, and
they are: Book of the Wars of the Lord, Book of Jasher, Book of the Covenant, Book of Nathan, Book of Gad, Book of Samuel,
Prophecy of Ahijah, Visions of Iddo, Acts of Uzziah, Acts of Solomon, Three Thousand Proverbs of Solomon, A Thousand and Five
Songs of Solomon, Chronicles of the Kings of Judah, Chronicles of the Kings of Israel, Book of Jehu, Book of Enoch.
What we know as the "canonized" bible was not assembled in anything like it's present form until the 3rd century by a council of bishops
(although it was still debated for centuries after). They chose which books should be included in the bible, which books were inspired by
God, by vote, just as we might vote on a law. (Can you imagine that some books missed out on being The Word of God by one vote?)
Were they any more qualified to judge which books were divine than anyone living today? Is their judgement and knowledge any better than ours?
What ever happened to the Gospels according to Thomas, Jade, James, Peter, and the Gospel of the Hebrews, of the Egyptians, of
Perfection, of Judas, of Thaddeus, of the Infancy, of the Preaching of Peter, of the Shepherd of Hermas, the Epistle of Barnabas, the
Pastor of Hermas, the Revelation of Peter, the Revelation of Paul, the Epistle of Clement, the Epistle of Ignatius, the Gospel of Mary, the
Gospel of Nicodemus and of Marcion? They were all not considered inspired (or inspired enough). They did not get voted in. There
were also the Acts of Pilate, of Andrew, of Mary, of Paul and Thecla, and many others. If the bishops at the Council of Laodicea in 365
had voted differently, millions of Christians would have believed differently. The vote of the one is the belief of all the others.
There is one important question for you to consider: why are we bound by their opinion?
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palmtree67
Terry,
I'm just in the process of learning all of that!
2 things:
1. I am wondering, too, what qualified these people above others to decide Bible canon. Because it seems some of their decisions to include or not include certain books were motivated more by political desires and wanting to keep control of the "laity".
2. Why wasn't I taught this as a Witness?
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JWoods
There is one important question for you to consider: why are we bound by their opinion?
And this question is especially important for Jehovah's Witnesses - who actively promote the idea that the church was apostate at the time of the canon convention. And who yet still accept this canon!
What Terry has pointed out is important too, for ex-JWs - many of us need to release some of the awe we hold for the traditional protestant bible and realize that it is an unproven approximation of many ancient religious documents.
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leavingwt
Congratulations on investigating THE MOST IMPORTANT premise of christian belief!
Many apoogists use "Personal Revelation" to trump Scripture.
"God told me. . ."
Case closed.
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dgp
Thank you, Terry. I followed your earlier advice and have five of Mr. Ehrman's books, namely:
Misquoting Jesus: The story behind who changed the Bible and why.
God's problem: How the Bible fails to answer our most important question - why we suffer.
Jesus: Apocalyptic prophet of the new millennium.
Jesus interrupted: Revealing the hidden contradictions in the Bible (and why we don't know about them).
The Orthodox corruption of scripture
I also got:
The complete Dead Sea Scrolls in English
The Story of the Scrolls: The Miraculous discovery and true significance of the Dead Sea Scrolls
These two books are by Geza Vermes, a scholar who was involved very much with the studies of the scrolls.
I also have a copy of the Gnostic Gospels. Yes, plenty of reading material...
I'm thinking of getting
Breaking the Code: Understanding the Book of Revelation http://www.amazon.com/Breaking-Code-Understanding-Revelation-Leaders/dp/0687497795/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1271091957&sr=8-7
and
The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development and Significance
Both books are by Bruce Metzger. Ehrman dedicated Misquoting Jesus to this man.
I would like to know how the Old Testament / Hebrew Scriptures canon was made, however.
I followed a link that a person whose nick escapes me now suggested. I think this would fall under the "apologists".
I really noticed Palmtree's question. It's not just Jehovah's witnesses who are not told this kind of things. Catholics aren't told this, either. In my particular case, I had the fortune of being told something very unorthodox by my Theology professor (we were in a Catholic College and HAD to take a Theology course), a priest. He said that he believed in Jesus not because of the Bible, but because there were eyewitnesses to the fact. That single comment snowballed into making me an atheist. Maybe this is why we don't learn this kind of things.
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dgp
Oh, and I'm not bound by other men's choice of books for the Canon. That is so clear to me. I don't have to believe what they believed, just because they believed it.
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Leolaia
If you want to read a definitive book on the subject, look for Lee Martin McDonald and James Sanders' The Canon Debate (2002).
For a good website on the subject, see http://www.ntcanon.org.
First of all, if you have any notion that the canon was decided by fiat at the Council of Nicaea, that is a fiction which unfortunately is popular on the internet. The development of the canon was a gradual process over centuries, and one that was largely determined by the local community and its needs, and definition of a broader community beyond the local (which involved the heresiological disputes that defined what "orthodox" was supposed to be). As Sanders notes, if one wants to study the canon, one has to ask which canon of which community. Even today there are a plethora of different canons in Christianity (if one compares, for instance, the Protestant canon with the canon of the Nestorian Church and with those of the Anglican Church or the Russian Orthodox Church or the Roman Catholic Church or the Ethiopian Orthodox Church, etc.). So, for instance, the later gnostic gospels were never up for contention in the proto-orthodox canon because these were used in other religious communities which had their own canons (where these gospels were indeed canonical). Similarly, the Essene books that were canonical for the Essenes were never recognized by the Pharisees (and thus were not admitted to the canon of the Tanakh of rabbinical Judaism), yet they were canonical for many early Christians (such as Tertullian, or even the author of Jude), and even today remain canonical in the Ethiopian Orthodox Church (which still recognizes 1 Enoch and Jubilees as scripture). It was in fact the rise of the rabbinical canon as definitive for Judaism that indirectly inflenced the shape of the (Western) Christian OT canon.
