So...where did we get the Bible from?

Question

and who decided which books and epistles would be included? how did they know their decision was 100% correct?

Please include at the least some history or some other documentation in your answer

Many thanks!

Answer 1

Who Wrote The Bible - Richard Friedman

It's interesting

Answer 2

A great, brief source of information about this is "Why Trust the Bible" from Rose Publishing (2006).  It only costs about $4.00 and it is very informative.

Answer 3

The Patriarch's and Prophet's of God.  

2Pe 1:21 For the prophecy came not in old time by the will of man: but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost.

Nebuchadnezzar gave his testimony in Daniel Chapter 4, which is so cool.

Rev 1:1,2 The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which GOD GAVE unto him, to shew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass; and he sent and signified it by his angel unto his servant John:  Who bare record of the word of God, and of the testimony of Jesus Christ, and of all things that he saw.

Answer 4

It fell out of the sky one day into luther's lap; he in turn alerted tyndale.  

Answer 5

OT from the jews and NT from council of nicea.

Answer 6

I SWEAR IF I EVER GET A TIME MACHINE ,IM KILLIN THOSE JERKS WHO MADE IT!

Answer 7

The Old Testament is a compilation of various sacred texts from the Jewish religion.  I have never compared the Torah (the official holy book of the Jewish faith) with the Old Testament, so am not sure which books the Christian OT has that the Torah doesn't and vice versa.

The New Testament was compiled and accepted at the Nicean Council from all of the Gospels and Letters, etc. that existed at that time.  The council decided which would become Canonical texts and make up what became known as the New Testament.  The OT and NT together make up the Christian Bible.  There are also the Gnostic Gospels which are the writings of other authors who did not make it into the Canon.  Some of these writings are more interesting and thought-provoking than the accepted books, in my opinion.

Answer 8

The Catholic Church compiled, canonized and preserved the Bible.  Even Martin Luther acknowledged this fact:

"We are compelled to concede to the Papists that they have the Word of GOD, that we received it from them, and that without them, we should have no knowledge of it at all." (Martin Luther, commentary on St. John)

Answer 9

Constantine and the council of nicea.

Answer 10

The imagination of humans - like all holy books.

x

Answer 11

The Hebrew scriptures began as tribal stories handed down from generation to generation.  When the Northern kingdom of Israel fell in 722 BCE, some refugees escaped to the Southern kingdom, Judah, where it was discovered that Northern and Southern versions of stories did not perfectly agree.  This started the priests and scribes writing the stories down, harmonizing the stories into a single account.  Further additions came at a time when the Southern kingdom was being threatened, when a "lost" book of scripture was discovered during a remodelling of the Temple, indicating that God would protect and prosper only those who remained faithful to him.  When the Southern kingdom fell in 586 BCE, this idea helped them rationalize their apparent abandonment by God and build hope that they would be redeemed later.  Exiled in the country of Babylon, they continued to refine the "Torah", as they called it, and also began writing down the stories and sayings of recent prophets, particularly those who emphasized the perils of unfaithfulness to God.

When Persia conquered Babylon, the Judahites, or Jews, were permitted to return home and rebuild.  Those who did found the rebuilding hard, and promptly blamed the presence of foreigners in their kingdom.  A wave of ethnic cleansing was accompanied by the pronouncements of new prophets, as well as those of dissenters from the official line.  From Babylon and Persia, Jews learned to compose books of poetry and wise sayings, as well as books of apocalyptic imagery that promised ultimate vindication.

Eventually, the Jews living in Persia and Egypt, as well as the Greek world in general, put pressure on the Jews in Palestine to translate their scriptures into Greek, which was the language of the known world.  This became the predominant form of the Jewish scriptures everywhere outside of Jerusalem, including for Christians.

Keep in mind, these were scrolls, not sections of a single great book, and while Torah, and most of the Prophets, were generally agreed on, many of the other Writings were not included in every listing of "Scripture".  It wasn't until after Jerusalem was destroyed in 70 CE that anyone thought to make an official list.  The rabbis who met intended to exclude any scriptures written after the time of Ezra, about 400 BCE, but they didn't really have the tools to evaluate.  So it came down to including only books that had Hebrew versions.  Since Christians weren't at that meeting, they happily accepted everything in the Septuagint.

Christians didn't have scriptures of their own.  After all, Jesus was coming right back.  But as time went on and the apostles died off, they decided it would be a good idea to write stuff down before it was forgotten.  Three men in different communities, with different viewpoints, collected the stories, sayings and deeds attributed to Jesus and write "gospels", about the time of the destruction of Jerusalem.  A few decades later, a fourth man wrote one, addressing new ideas about the divine nature of Jesus.  Letters written by Paul the missionary and passed around were preserved and copied.  In time, Christians began to consider them inspired.  Over the course of the next two centuries, various Christian leaders and scholars began to compile lists of their favorite writings.

But while Christianity was under persecution, they couldn't make a universal decision.  It was too hard to meet just to decide on a list.  Then Constantine legalized Christianity.  Despite their criminal status, Christians had made a lot of converts, and their theological disputes were beginning to affect public order.  So by legalizing their faith, he was able to demand that they get together and settle their doctrines, which they did.  One of the issues was the "canon" of Christian scripture.  Since there was no human way to determine what books were divinely inspired, the bishops prayed for guidance from the Holy Spirit, then made their decisions.  They set a standard: Was a book written by an apostle or someone close to an apostle?  This proved difficult to determine for books written two centures ago, so they settled on a backup criterion: Did it agree with Christian theology as they understood it?  Some books' status remained uncertain for some time, such as Jude, Hebrews, 2 Peter, Revelation, Clement and the Shepherd of Hermas. But by the end of the Fourth Century the final, official list was drawn up.  The Jewish scriptures was grandfathered in unexamined.  It wasn't until the 16th Century, when Martin Luther was fighting for his ecclesiastical life, that the list was called into question.

In the 5th Century, a man named Jerome was asked to translate the scriptures into Latin for the people of the Western Roman Empire.  He reluctantly agreed, but when he got to the Old Testament, he realized that he need to go to the Hebrew sources for the best translation. That's when he discovered the disputed, Greek-only books.  Not knowing what to do, he included them, but put them in a separate section of his translation. These came to be known as "Second Canon" or "Apocryopha" ("Hidden").

When Luther attempted to reform several abuses in the Church, he soon realized that he was in danger of being excommunicated. He quickly designed a campaign to undermine Church authority by usuing selected passages of the Bible to argue that only faith in Christ, not human effort, could win salvation. This invalidated any notion that the Church could intercede for Christians through sacraments or prayer. He further declared that Christian doctrine could only be based on the Bible, using another carefully selected verse to disparage developed Church teaching as "the traditions of men". Unfortunately, there were scriptures that contradicted his ideas. These were the Apocrypha, which reflected later developments in Jewish thought. He used their "controversial" status as an excuse to toss them out of the Bible (which naturally made Rome embrace them all the more). He also had problems with the leter of James, but couldn't come up with an excuse to revise the Christian list of scripture.

Answer 12

The Council of Laodicea in A.D. 360 produced a list of books similar to today's biblical canon. This was one of the Church's earliest decisions on a canon. Pope Damasus, 366-384, in his Decree, listed the books of today's canon.

The Council of Carthage, a local north Africa council of bishops created the same list of canonical books in 397. This is the council which many Protestant and Evangelical Christians take as the authority for the New Testament canon of books. The Old Testament canon from the same council is identical to Roman Catholic canon today. Another Council of Carthage in 419 offered the same list of canonical books.

  

Since the Roman Catholic Church does not define truths unless errors abound on the matter, Roman Catholic Christians look to the Council of Florence, an ecumenical council in 1441 for the first definitive list of canonical books.

The canon of the Bible refers to the definitive list of the books which are considered to be divine revelation and included therein. A canon distinguishes what is revealed and divine from what is not revealed and human.

Because God did not explicitly reveal what books are the inspired books of the Bible, title by title, to anyone, we must look to His guidance in discovering the canon of the Bible.

So the answer to your question is - God gave us the bible, through the Catholic Church.

Peace be to you all+

Answer 13

The bible was originally written on scrolls. Many bible scholars worked years over all that information they had to work with. They put the books in the bible that them deemed accurate, those that they thought were corrupt, they left out, like some of the books in the catholic bible, they have a few extra books there.If you want to know enough, do some research on it, I don't have the time for that right now. I have a companion bible that has footnotes and it gives references to that sort of thing. You can find one online, free, to read, its the kjv 16ll companion bible. It's the most accurate bible there is, in my opinion and also with a lot of bible scholars.You won't find the book of titan in it, I also have a catholic bible because I used to be catholic. I have since got 'unbrainwashed'.

Answer 14

From the Catholics.  They compiled the books of the Bible in the 4th century.

Answer 15

In first century Jerusalem there were at least four OT Canons in use by different Jewish Groups. There was the Canon of the Pharisees, the Sadducees, the Ethiopian Jews and the Diaspora/Essene Jews. Jesus and the disciples used the Septuagint which was the Canon of the Diaspora/Essenes. We know this because it is quoted in the New Testament. This Canon continued to be the Canon of Christians until after the Reformation and, in fact until about 200 years ago when the Protestants adopted a condensed version of the Canon eliminating the Deuterocanonicals from their Bibles. Even the AKJ originally contained the complete Christian Canon. It has been said by critics of Christ’s Church that the Deuterocanonicals were never believed to be inspired and just the opposite is true. The decision by Christians as to which books are inspired and useful for teaching was decided at the African Synods in the late fourth and early fifth century. There was never a question about their inspiration.

The OT Canon chosen by the Protestants is actually a Jewish Canon not chosen by the Jews until after the establishment of Christianity as a result of the spread of Christianity to slow the growth of the new group in Jerusalem after the fall of the Temple in 70AD. Until then as I said previously there were many Canons in use. The adoption of the Canon missing the Deuterocanonicals united the Jews against the Christians was decided in the Jewish Council of Jamnia because the Deuterocanonicals referred too strongly to the Messiah fulfilled in Christ.

Some Protestants will claim that only the Jews have the authority to choose Canon but the Church deferred that decision to Christ and the disciples and it is clear through biblical research, that the Septuagint is the Bible used by the first century Church and quoted in the NT Scriptures. The fact that Protestants choose to adopt the Canon that was approved by the same Jews that accused our Lord that resulted in His crucifixion suggests the source of this confusion as from the father of lies who led the Pharisees to accuse Christ and petition for His punishment. It is another way that Satan divides the body of Christ and separates the faithful denying Christ’s prayer that we all be one in Christ through His Church. The Christian Church has always used the Septuagint as Canon and never the truncated version of modernist Protestants.

Some Protestants erroneously believe that Catholics added to the Bible with the Deuterocanonicals but this shows an ignorance of their own history and the history of Christianity as witnessed by Christ’s Church. The facts are that the Protestants removed the Deuterocanonicals and even considered strongly to remove some of the NT books currently in use by Protestants and Catholics. Fr. Martin Luther was in favor of removing the book of James because it conflicted with His heretical man made doctrines of the “Solas”, Sola Scriptura and Sola Fide. The heretic Ulrich Zwingli wanted to remove the Gospel of John because of its teaching of the commandment to Eat Christ’s Body and drink His Blood which contradicted his view of a real absence of Christ instead of a real presence in the Eucharist. Even Fr. Martin Luther could not endorse such a departure from Scriptures and deny that Christ is truly and really present in the Eucharist in Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity.

In Christ

Fr. Joseph

Note:

Several answers erroneously said that the Bible was chosen at the Council of Nicaea but it was not. This was not even a topic of the Council of Nicaea but it was convened to confront the Arian heresy. Instead it was formed in the present state at the three African Synods presided over by St. Augustine and approved by Rome. I believe the reason that so many believe this false information about the Bible was that this came from the fictional work of the Divinci Code which was full of historical errors. God bless!

Answer 16

Prophets wrote about God and stuff like that. Us people found those documents and created what we know as the Bible.