Who decided what is considered part of the Bible? Didn't the medieval church modify what it said? The list of books in the Bible is referred to as the "canon". Note that the list of books is different from the contents of the books. That is, while the final *list* was not frozen until the 4th Cent., the text of the individual books was frozen earlier. I keep seeing claims that the Bible was tampered with in medieval times, and that we are dealing with translations of translations. This is silly. Modern translations are made directly from the Greek, which is the language in which the NT was written. (It's not the language Jesus spoke, of course. There are theories that the Gospels may be based on collections of his sayings in Aramaic, the language he presumably spoke.) The earliest complete manuscripts are from the 4th and 5th Cent. However we now have papyrii from much earlier. While there are gaps in them, taken all together they take us back to the 3rd Cent. for much of the text, and give cross-checks back into the 2nd Cent. E.g. we've got a copy of most of Paul's letters that was made around 200, and most of John from 175-200. The canon wasn't established by a single group at single time. There were discussions over some period of time about the status of various books. There are some official decisions, but they functioned primarily to ratify and publicize what had been agreed to by a more informal process. The Gospels and most of Paul's letters were regarded as scriptural from as far back as we can see, certainly by 130. Around 200 AD, the "Muratorian canon" gives the list of books being used at Rome. It differs from ours by omission of Hebrews, 1 & 2 Peter, 3 John, and addition of Rev. to Peter and Wisdom of Solomon. The Shepherd of Hermas is to be used in private but not public. The first occurence of the current list of NT books is Athanasius' festal letter of 367. It was made official at a council in 382, and reaffirmed by Trent. However during most of this period, debates were over relatively "minor" books. Debate persisted especially about Heb, Jude, 2 Pet, 2 and 3 John, and Rev, with fewer books being under debate as time went on. In discussions about the status of books, the criterion most widely cited is that they are "apostolic". This could mean that they were written by the apostles, but it also includes gospels that had the authority of an apostle but weren't written directly by them. (E.g. Mark was considered to be based on Peter's memories and to have his authority.) This whole discussion was part of the general argument over authority going on between "Gnostic" and "Catholic" parties. Our Bible is of course that of the Catholic side. Generally the Catholic viewpoint was that teachings should be traceable back to the Apostles though a chain of authorized interpreters, whereas the Gnostics emphasized freedom and creativity. The Catholic criteria tended to curb the sort of inventiveness that went on among the Gnostics, and on average, the gospels that "made it" are more likely to have some real historical content than the Gnostic gospels. Similarly with Acts compared to the various apocryphal acts. However historical reliability in the modern sense wasn't exactly what either side was after. The way "apostolicity" was actually judged was fairly flexible, and involved whether a plausible case could be made for some association with an apostle, how widely the book was used among the Catholic church, and an evaluation of the contents of the book. Nevertheless, while historical reliability may not have been the exact goal, it does look like most of the primary source material about Jesus and the very earliest church made it, and that the Gospels that are not in the NT are unlikely to have much of historical value (except for studying the groups that produced them). This is less the case for letters and other documents. For church history after the the period covered in Acts there are certainly sources outside the NT that are relevant. (But certainly not things like the apocryphal acts of Paul and Thekla.) One partial exception in the area of gospels is Thomas. While it portrays Jesus speaking somewhat more like a Gnostic than a Jew at times, many scholars feel that it has some genuine material not present in the canonical gospels, and earlier forms of a few sayings that are present both places. The result of all of this is that it's very hard to respond to comments that the choice of books in the NT was just a matter of church politics. It is absolutely true that discussions about the status of books was tied up in the battles between the Catholic and Gnostic groups. However the way authority was defined by Catholics means that the books that they accepted are much more likely to be "historical". That is not necessarily a condemnation of Gnostic views. In some ways I am more sympathetic with their model of the church. And some of their books are interesting reading. As for the OT, most of the discussions were far enough back that we don't have accounts of them. One of the problems is that Jews didn't have a concept exactly like that of our "canon". There were discussions in the 1st Cent. about which books "made the hands unclean" (i.e. required a special purification after you had handled them, because of their holiness), but this is not necessarily the same as later Christian discussions abuot a NT canon. Among other things, it is clear that different books had a different status. The Torah has a supreme status in Judaism that is somewhat different from the other books of the Hebrew Scriptures. There's a legend that this status goes back to Ezra. Whatever the scholarly doubts about Ezra's role, it seems that in about the 5th Cent. BC the Torah did take on a unique authority within Judaism. But it is fairly clear that by then there were also other books that were treated as authoritative, normally called prophets. Remember that in the Jewish reckoning the historical books are part of the prophets. There is also reason to think that books later classified as "writings" were initially considered part of the Prophets. The NT, as other Jewish writings, tends to talk about the Law and the Prophets (as well as the Psalms, of course). It may be that Prophets referred to everything other than the Torah. It appears that by the end of the 1st Cent. AD, Palestinian Jews used roughly the set of books inclinded in the Protestant OT, and described them as the Law, Prophets, and Writings. I will refer to this as the Hebrew Scriptures. Sometimes the final list has been ascribed to a council of Jamnia ca 100 AD, but this is conjectural, and my impression is that there probably was never a formal council endorsing a canon. The Catholic Church eventually adopted a list of OT books that was based on the contents of the Septuagint, a widely used Greek translation of the OT made (I think) in the 2nd Cent BC. (We don't know any of the details of its production, except legends.) This includes more books than the Hebrew Scriptures. The additional books are called "apocrypha" by Protestants. This is a pejorative term. The official "neutral" term is "deutero-canonical". These books were written during 300 BC to 100 AD, primarily from 200 BC to 70 AD. (I'm quoting the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church here. The dating may be a controversial statement.) It is not clear what the exact status of these was for Jews. It appears that deutero-canonical books were used by Alexandrian Jews and probably other Greek-speaking Jews as well. It is not so clear that all books had equal status, nor that the exact list of authoritative books was fixed. At any rate, as Judaism became more "standardized" in its efforts to survive the destruction of Jerusalem, the smaller Hebrew canon came to be the official one. Christians initially seem to have used the Septuagint as their Bible (not surprising, since most of them would have spoken Greek rather than Hebrew, and came from areas where the Septuagint was used by Jews). In the 4th and 5th Cent. there was some debate among Christians about the status of those books (and portions of books) present in the Septuagint but not in the Hebrew canon. Gregory of Nazianzus and St. Epiphanius opposed them, as did Jerome. Ambrose and Augustine favored them. By and large the larger set continued being used. The council of Trent (16th Cent.) made a final authoritative decision to accept the larger list. (One of our readers supplied lists from Synods at Rome (382), Hippo (393), and Carthage (397), all including the deutero-canonical books. It should be clear that these books were in general use. I believe my source referred to Trent as the final decision because these synods were not general councils.) The Orthodox did not find it necessary to formalize the canon until a Council in 1672 at Jerusalem. As with the Catholic church, they simply continued using the traditional canon, whichdates back to Athanasius and earlier. The 1672 council was called to deal with a Confession by Cyril Loukaris. It had significant Calvinist influences, and as part of that limited the canon. The council reaffirmed the traditional Orthodox use of the deutero-canonical books. My source on this comment that it 'simply said that the "Deutero-Canonical Books" were genuine parts of scripture. That did not really change the opinion of Athanasius and others that while part of the Bible they are not on the same level as the rest of the Old Testament.' Note that different Orthodox churches have slightly different sets of deutero-canonical books, though the differences small. Protestants generally used the Hebrew canon. Part of this is that Protestantism was based on a renewal in Biblical scholarship, and this naturally used the Hebrew Scriptures, since Hebrew was the original language. Jewish scholars were involved in this renaissance of Hebrew scholarship, and of course they only accepted the Hebrew Scriptures. There were also concerns that some doctrines that the Reformers disapproved of were justified primarily by references from the additional books (e.g. purgatory). I'd say the official definition of the canon for Catholics is the council of Trent. Oddly enough, there is no authoritative decision that can be pointed to for Protestants as a whole, because there wasn't a single Protestant council. However all the churches that came out of the Reformation (with the usual exception of the Anglicans, if you consider them to have come out of the Reformation) agreed on using the Hebrew canon for the OT. I don't know of any single official document for the Hebrew canon. One often hears that Luther removed James from the Bible because he disapproved of it. It is true that he referred to it as a "right strawy epistle". He thought it didn't emphasize justification by faith enough. I've seen evidence that he did suggest that not much would be lost if it were removed from the Bible. But he didn't actually do so. It is present in his German translation. ------- What I was trying to say is that, based on textual criticism, we can be reasonably certain that the Bible we have now is what was written then. No, this does not, in itself, prove that the text is inerrant, but I believe I was replying to a point about the Bible having been changed because of poor translation and scribal errors. Here's an interesting point of textual criticism--A.T. Robertson wrote: "There are some 8,000 manuscripts of the Latin Vulgate, and at least 1,000 for the other early versions. Add over 4,000 Greek manuscripts and we have 13,000 manuscript copies of portions of the New Testament. Besides all this, much of the New Testament can be reproduced from the quotations of early Christian writers." Though I admit that there are some very bad translations of the Bible (that's why I study Greek), we can be fairly certain that the better translations are an accurate representation of what the early N.T. writers had to say. About the Old Testament, Jewish scribes were extremely careful as they copied down the manuscripts. They could not write one letter without looking back to the original to check it. And they were wary of correcting even spelling or punctuation errors in the original--these they would correct only in the margin. The Dead Sea Scrolls contain, among many other things, a complete manuscript of the book of Isaiah dating to about 125 B.C. (about 1000 years older than any MS previously known of that book). In Isaiah 53 (166 words) there are only 17 letters in question. 10 of these are merely differences in spelling, and 4 of which are merely stylistic changes (added conjunctions and the like) which have no effect on the meaning. The final three letters comprise the word "light," added in verse 11 without affecting the meaning greatly. After 1000 years, this 166 word passage has only one word in question. Finally, Gleason Archer said that the copies of Isaiah from these scrolls "Proved to be word for word identical with our standard Hebrew Bible in more than 95% of the text. The 5% of variation consisted chiefly of obvious slips of the pen and variations in spelling." I'd say that's a pretty good record of translation! >What are the earliest copies of various books of the Bible? >This is a legitimate question, not rhetorical. >[I don't know about the OT. For the NT here's what I know: The >earliest complete manuscripts are from the 4th and 5th Cent. However >we now have papyrii from much earlier. While there are gaps in them, >taken all together they take us back to the 3rd Cent. for much of the >text, and give cross-checks back into the 2nd Cent. E.g. we've got a >copy of most of Paul's letters that was made around 200, and most of >John from 175-200. --clh] The following information is from Josh McDowell's book, "Evidence That Demands a Verdict" (which I also used for much of the info above, though I did not quote directly). Some of the texts we now have: Chester Beatty Papyri (200 A.D.) contains papyrius codices, three of them containing major portions of the N.T. Bodmer Papyrus II (150-200 A.D.) Contains most of John. These are the earliest manuscripts mentioned in this book. Others date between 325 A.D. (a copy of almost the entire Bible) and 550 A.D. Another source of information we have on the early New Testament is in the writings of the early church fathers. Sir David Dabrymple wrote "Look at those books. You remember the question about the New Testament and the Fathers? That question aroused my curiousity, and as I possessed all the existing works of the Fathers of the second and third centuries, I commenced to search, and up to this time I have found the entire New Testament, except eleven verses." Clement of Rome (95 A.D), a man who knew some of the apostles personally (Tertullian writes that Clement was appointed by Peter) quoted from Matthew, mark, Luke, Acts, I Corinthians, I Peter, Hebrews and Titus. Ignatius (70-110 A.D.), the Bishop of Antioch who also knew the apostles, quoted from Matthew, John, Acts, Romans, I Corinthians, Ephesians, Philippians, Galatians, Colossians, James, I and II Thessalonians, I and II Timothy and Peter. 2,400 of the quotes in Clement of Alexandra's works come from only 3 books of the New Testament. (150-212 A.D.) The list goes on and on. Authors of the "General Introduction to the Bible," Geisler and Nix, concluded that "A brief inventory to this point will reveal that there were some 32,000 citations of the New Testament prior to the time of the Council of Nicea (325). These 32,000 quotations are by no means exhaustive, and they do not even include the fourth century writers. Just adding the number of references by one other writer, Eusebius, who flourished prior to and contemporary with the Council of Nicea, will bring the total citations of the New Testament to over 36,000." So, perhaps there's more detail there than the question warranted, but this is a topic which interests me greatly, especially because so many people have asked me, "How can you believe the Bible?" Of course, I have other reasons for believing in its authority than the fact that it has been passed down accurately from the time it was written. Those reasons have to do with what it says, and I won't get into that here. Melinda K. Allen -- Melinda K. Allen The LORD is close to the brokenhearted allenmk@ucsu.colorado.edu and saves those who are crushed in spirit. allenmk@tramp.colorado.edu Psalm 34:18 From sarto!jhpb@uunet.uu.net Wed Apr 29 23:21:03 1992 Received: from rodan.UU.NET by aramis.rutgers.edu (5.59/SMI4.0/RU1.4/3.08) id AA07560; Wed, 29 Apr 92 23:21:03 EDT Received: from relay2.UU.NET by rodan.UU.NET with SMTP (5.61/UUNET-mail-drop) id AA28059; Wed, 29 Apr 92 23:21:00 -0400 Received: from uunet.uu.net (via LOCALHOST.UU.NET) by relay2.UU.NET with SMTP (5.61/UUNET-internet-primary) id AA13489; Wed, 29 Apr 92 23:21:09 -0400 Received: from sarto.UUCP by uunet.uu.net with UUCP/RMAIL (queueing-rmail) id 232015.17453; Wed, 29 Apr 1992 23:20:15 EDT Newsgroups: soc.religion.christian Path: jhpb From: jhpb@sarto.budd-lake.nj.us (Joseph H. Buehler) Subject: Re: Dating the Canon (was coptic monophysites) In-Reply-To: kilroy@gboro.glassboro.edu's message of 29 Apr 92 06:36:59 GMT Message-Id: Sender: jhpb@sarto.budd-lake.nj.us (Joseph H Buehler) Organization: none References: Date: Thu, 30 Apr 1992 04:03:15 GMT Content-Type: text Content-Length: 2060 Apparently-To: Darren Provine writes: According to my notes, the Third Council of Carthage in 397 approved the list written by Athanasius, but was technically only a synod. The Roman Catholic Church set their Canon at Trent in 1551, and the Eastern Orthodox Church made theirs official in Jerusalem in 1672. The moderator remarks: [There seems to be a good deal of disagreement on where the canon was agreed to. My information (from the Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church, but I think I've seen similar information elsewhere) is that an unnamed council in 382, probably in Rome, approved a list containing the current canon (including the deuterocanonical books, so 66 is the wrong number). This list was reaffirmed by Trent. ---clh] Denzinger's Enchiridion Symbolorum, a standard Catholic doctrinal reference work, has the sections of the two synods, that of Rome in 382, and Carthage in 397, that deal with the canon. Both of them adopted the same canon that Trent settled on. But there was still some variety in the canon used in the 4th century. As noted, St. Athanasius did not use the current Catholic canon. St. Jerome, ca. 400 AD, the translator of the standard Catholic Latin translation, the Vulgate, translated certain books only because of their use in the Church. He did not consider them on the same level as the rest of the Bible. Since his comments on the subject were handed down as prefaces in the text of the Vulgate, this caused some puzzlement over the centuries as to the exact status of the deuteros. What seems to have happened was that there was some argument over some of the books for a while, after which everyone just settled down to using the Catholic canon. There was no particularly heated controversy on the subject, so Catholics had no occasion to explicitly finalize the canon until the Reformation. I was unaware that the Orthodox had a finalized canon, as Catholics do because of Trent. Would someone care to provide more information? What is this council in 1672 at Jerusalem? Path: igor.rutgers.edu!rutgers!concert!news-feed-1.peachnet.edu!gatech!howland.reston.ans.net!cs.utexas.edu!natinst.com!news.dell.com!paladin.american.edu!auvm!LEO.UNM.EDU!jkgruet Comments: Gated by NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU Newsgroups: bit.listserv.christia Comments: ******************************************************** Comments: * The following "Approved" statement verifies header * Comments: * information for gateway passage. No approval of the * Comments: * content is implied. * Approved: NETNEWS@AUVM.AMERICAN.EDU * Comments: ******************************************************** Message-ID: Date: Wed, 27 Jul 1994 22:34:00 MDT Sender: CHRISTIA@ASUACAD From: "James K. Gruetzner" Organization: University of New Mexico, Albuquerque Subject: TAN: New Testament Canon (was Luther on James) In-Reply-To: Lines: 70 In one of her delightful posts, Cat cited several statements by St.Martin Luther concerning the general epistle of James. One point that came from that was that the good Brother Martin did himself doubt the apostolicity and canonicity of that book. It also is apparent that, despite his doubts, he included it in his translations of the New Testament, and did not expunge it. What was not mentioned was that this belief was not a Luther-an innovation, but something traced back to the early Church. It reflected a distinction made by the early Church, albeit something we in these days forget. When looking at the canonicity of various New Testament writings, differentiation was made between those writings universally accepted as undisputably apostolic in origin and those that weren't. Although various terms have been used for these categories, the one I'm most familiar with are: *homologumena*: the undisputed writings (the 4 gospels, Acts, the 13 Pauline/deutero-Pauline epistles, I Peter, and I John); *antilegomena: those disputed writings generally accepted as canonical, but with some doubt (Hebrews, II Peter, II John, III John, James, Jude, Revelation). Other terms are often used; compounding this is that some of the church Fathers use the term *scripture* for both canonical and non- canonical writings (e.g., Origen called the Didache "scripture", but didn't think they were canonical). Athanasius basically came up with our present 27-book canon, arguing basically on the nature of apostolicity (connected with an apostle and the apostolic age) and breadth of acceptance (with a compromise on Hebrews (not liked by Latins) and Revelation (not liked by Greeks). This was accepted especially with the influence of Jerome, although it took awhile. (The Encyc.Brit. reports that the Codex Sinaiticus (mid-4th.C.) included the Letter of Barnabus and the Shepherd of Hermas; and the Codex Alexandrinus (5th C.) included I & II Clement.) The RCC (or HRC, whichever you prefer) delimited the 27-book NT as canonical; many Protestant groups did the same in their confessional writings. (Interestingly enough, the Lutheran confessions do *not* include a listing of canonical books.) So what? you may ask. Several points we've been discussing here. a. The early church used as its marks of canonicity mainly apostolicity, universality, and christology (i.e., doctrinally sound). Many good writings were deemed good-but-not-canonical for one reason or another; many bad writings were ruled out. The church did not gain precedence over scriptures by this process, just as John the Baptist's pointing out the Christ in no way can be said to put him above Christ. b. The purpose of the scriptures is to bear witness to the gospel of salvation through Christ Jesus. Any interpretation of scripture that does not point towards Jesus errs; all the scriptures are to preach Christ. c. All important and essential doctrines and practices can be found in the main books (the homologumena). Disputations about the other books (the antilegomena) do not compromise the Christian witness. Sorry for so long--and this is *abbreviated*! Yet, methinks that this is of some importance in our use of scriptures in the practice of our living and witness. God bless you all! Yours in Christ, James James K. Gruetzner (jkgruet@leo.unm.edu)