[soc.religion.christian] The canons

poc@cathedral.cerc.wvu.wvnet.edu (Pedro Oscar Cubillos) (03/20/91)

	I have a question for this group. How did each of the Christian
religions got to adopt their canon of the OT and NT or whatever they call
the books of the Bible.

	My background: I do not believe in God but I am interested in
the history of religions.

	Thanks
		Oscar

[If you want to know the details, there are a number of historical
studies on the subject.  Here's a summary based on the Oxford
Dictionary of the Christian Church:

There's no difference among churches about the NT.  The NT is those
books written by Christians, describing the life of Jesus and events
in the early church.  The kernel, which is the 4 gospels and 13
letters of Paul, was accepted by about 130 A.D. and were considered to
be on the same footing as the OT between 170 and 220.  Discussions
persisted about other books, especially Hebrews, Jude, 2 Peter, 2 and
3 John, and Revelation.  The first list that exactly agrees with the
current NT is from 367.  However by the 200's the disagreements were
over just a few books.  (Indeed those that form the original core are
probably the most important, even now.)  There are a few books not on
the current list that were accepted in some areas, e.g. the Shepherd
of Hermas.

This discussion is based on what I'd call the "mainstream" church,
i.e. what became the Catholic and Orthodox branches, from which the
Protestants and other current groups also came.  There were other
groups such as the Gnostics and Arians, which were wiped out
(sometimes forcefully).  The Gnostics had very different ideas about
religious documents.  The mainstream church accepted only documents
whose ancestery could be traced back to the apostles.  Modern scholars
think their judgements may have been a bit optimistic in some cases.
However apostolic needn't have meant that one of the original apostles
actually wrote it, just that the authority for the book could be
traced back to them.  Gnostics valued creativity, and their gospels
tended to be rather fanciful when evaluated by our standards.
Somewhere in the middle are books that circulated in orthodox circles,
but which are more legendary.  They have stories of the child Jesus
giving life to a clay pigeon and things like that.  These books also
didn't make it into the canon.  In general I'd say the only document
that current scholars think has some claim to having independent
historical content that didn't make it in is the Gospel of Thomas.  It
has some parables and sayings that may well go back to Jesus, and do
not appear in the NT.  It may also have Gnostic influences.  That
is a matter of debate.

The OT is a set of books that Christians inherited from the Jews.
Since the earliest Christians were Jews (as Jesus was), their initial
bible was simply the Jewish one.  The NT was added later, as Christian
books came to be written and to be accepted generally by the Church.
There are disagreements among various Christians groups about the
exact contents of the OT, primarily because there were disagreements
among the Jews.  During the first centuries A.D., many Greek-speaking
Jews accepted books that are not part of the Hebrew OT, and which are
not considered part of the Jewish Bible by modern Jews.  Generally
these books describe more recent events than in the Hebrew OT.
Apparently Christians originally accepted this larger OT canon from
the Greek-speaking Jews.  Doubts were expressed by Christians in the
4th and 5th Cents. about the books that did not appear in the Hebrew
OT.  Generally they continued in the Christian Bible, though with
occasional doubts expressed.  In the 16th Cent. Catholics definitively
accepted them in the Council of Trent, and Protestants definitively
rejected them.  Protestants tended to have doubts because the texts
for some doctrines they didn't like tended to come from these books,
and because Protestant revival of Biblical scholarship based its OT
ideas to some extent on Jewish scholarship, and by the 16th Cent.
the Jews accepted only the Hebrew OT.

The following information is based on the introduction to the
Apocrypha/Deuterocanonical books in the Oxford Annotated Bible.  It
uses the book names adopted by the New Revised Standard Version.

The exact set of Greek OT books is different in different sources.  In
fact there are now several different sets accepted by different
groups.  Beyond the Hebrew canon, the Roman Catholic Church accepts
Tobit, Judith, additions to the book of Esther (i.e. sections in the
Greek but not the Hebrew text), Wisdom of Solomon, Ecclesiasticus,
Baruch, the Letter of Jeremiah, the Prayer of Azariah, Susanna, Bel
and the Dragon, 1 and 2 Maccabees.  The Eastern Orthodox churches
include these plus 1 Esdras, Psalm 151, the Prayer of Manasseh, and 3
Maccabees, with 4 Maccabees in an appendix.  Slavonic Bibles approved
by the Russian Orthodox Church include the Roman Catholic list plus 1
and 2 Esdras, Psalm 151, and 3 Maccabees.  There are confusions about
naming, because some editions refer to the Hebrew books of Ezra and
Nehemiah as 1 or 2 Esdras (or both), thus causing what I've called 1
and 2 Esdras to become 2 and 3 Esdras or 3 and 4 Esdras.  Some Latin
manuscripts even have a 5 Esdras, breaking what I have called 2 Esdras
into 3 books: 2, 4 and 5 Esdras.

cms@gatech.edu (03/25/91)

In article <Mar.20.03.38.53.1991.9265@athos.rutgers.edu>, poc@cathedral.cerc.wvu.wvnet.edu (Pedro Oscar Cubillos) writes:
> 	I have a question for this group. How did each of the Christian
> religions got to adopt their canon of the OT and NT or whatever they call
> the books of the Bible.

OFM comments on the deuterocanonicals:

> In the 16th Cent. Catholics definitively
> accepted them in the Council of Trent, and Protestants definitively
> rejected them.  

 Correct me if I'm wrong, but I was of the understanding that 
Protestants reject the deuterocanonicals as a matter of tradition, 
however, there is no definitive or authoritative statement that "these 
are the books of the Bible and there are no others."  It is a strong 
tradition, I'll admit, however, Protestants base their belief that the 
Bible is the Word of God on the traditions of men, whereas Catholics 
base their belief that the Bible is the Word of God on the Tradition 
of God given through the Church.

> Protestants tended to have doubts because the texts
> for some doctrines they didn't like tended to come from these books,
> and because Protestant revival of Biblical scholarship based its OT
> ideas to some extent on Jewish scholarship, and by the 16th Cent.
> the Jews accepted only the Hebrew OT.

 Don't forget the Councils of Alexandria and Jamnia.

-- 
                                   Sincerely,
Cindy Smith
	        	 _///_ //  SPAWN OF A JEWISH       _///_ //
      _///_ //         <`)=  _<<     CARPENTER   _///_ //<`)=  _<<
    <`)=  _<<	 _///_ // \\\  \\   \\ _\\\_   <`)=  _<<    \\\  \\
       \\\  \\ <`)=  _<<             >IXOYE=('>   \\\  \\
                  \\\  \\_///_ //   //  ///   _///_ //    _///_ //
emory!dragon!cms       <`)=  _<<   _///_ // <`)=  _<<   <`)=  _<<
                          \\\  \\<`)=  _<<     \\\  \\     \\\  \\
GO AGAINST THE FLOW!                \\\  \\ A Real Live Catholic in Georgia

[Characterizing the Catholic tradition as the tradition of God and
Protestant tradition as the tradition of men seems to me one of the
more inflammatory positions I've seen recently.  I suppose we'll get
responses talking about the Whore of Babylon.  Can't we avoid this
sort of thing??  Deciding what is definitive for Protestants is sort
of difficult, since all the Protestants that I know subject all creeds
and other doctrinal standards to Scripture.  Thus no doctrinal
standard can ever be totally final.  But the major Reformers rejected
the authority of the deuterocanonicals, and all the Protestant creeds
and confessions that I know of do not include them in the list of
books.  So from a practical point of view I believe this was a
definitive decision.  --clh]

c9037544@cc.newcastle.edu.au (David Williams) (03/25/91)

In article <Mar.20.03.38.53.1991.9265@athos.rutgers.edu>,
poc@cathedral.cerc.wvu.wvnet.edu (Pedro Oscar Cubillos) writes:
> 
> 	I have a question for this group. How did each of the Christian
> religions got to adopt their canon of the OT and NT or whatever they call
> the books of the Bible.
> 
> 	My background: I do not believe in God but I am interested in
> the history of religions.
> 
> 	Thanks
> 		Oscar

The Old Testament was organised by Ezra, and a 120-strong group of students that
he organised (the name eludes me for the moment). They had certain criteria for
a book before they called it a part of the "Word of God".
Christians accept the Old Testament, due to this, and that Jesus and the
apostles quoted so freely from it. (They did not quota from the Apocrypha,
except for two quotations in Jude. Paul however, quoted from pagan poets twice.)
When Jesus refers to "The Law, the Psalms, and the Prophets" he is referring to
the whole Old Testament, in the three divisions as arranged by Ezra and his
school.
All of the New Testament books were written before the end of the first century.
The authors were contemporaries of Jesus, such as Mark and Luke, or his actual
apostles, such as Matthew, John and Peter, his actual brothers (ie: children
of Joseph and Mary) such as James and Jude, and Paul, who had a revelation of
Jesus on the Damascus road. Such authority gives some weight to their writings.
Peter refers to Pauls' writings as scripture, and elsewhere quotes from the
book of Luke. Paul himself claims authority for his writings (However, books in
the Apocrypha deny any inspiration, such as the conclusion to II Maccabees).
And in the field of numerics, 6 is the number of man, and 11 is the number of
revelation. 6 x 11 corresponds to the 66 books of the Bible, and indicates it is
the revelation of God to man. In the book of Exodus, chapter 25, the lamp-stand
is a type, or symbol, of the Word of God. The seven-fold flame refers to the
Holy Spirit, and the number of all the ornamentations and such comes to 66.
There are 39 on one side, and 27 on another, the exact number of the books in
the Old Testament, and the New Testament.
Hopefully, this answers the general side of your question, as to the Bible as a
whole. Hopefully others will be able to answer more specific parts.
The books of the Apocrypha are rather dubious (apocrypha means 'mysterious').
The books of the Maccabbees are good, in that they are history, but others, such
as the conclusion to Daniel are quite basically just stories. The book of Mormon
is also just a story, many parts contradicting the rest of the Bible, or in fact
just an extract from it, Isaiah being a favourite. The fact that everyone seems
to use King James english in books that are supposed to be very old is a bit of
a giveaway...I must finish here...I am being plagued by a mad mail writer! Sorry

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| David Williams                      | University of Newcastle, Australia    |
| c9037544@cc.newcastle.edu.au        | Computer Science student              |
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