Modern Christians live in a unique historical position compared to our predecessors. We can read, and we have a great deal of information, technical and scientific capabilities, and a vast collection of ancient writings that can help us understand the Bible. We also have a Bible. When Paul was writing his epistles, the Gospels most likely had not yet been written. Early Christian communities may have had various books of what we now call the New Testament along with other Christian writings of the time that we do not consider inspired. Many have been lost to the ages, and some we only know from the pieces quoted by the Church Fathers. Paul even mentions other letters he had written that may never be found. For example, in Colossians 4:16 Paul instructs his readers to pass the letter on to be read by the church of Laodicea and “in turn read the letter from Laodicea.” Is this another epistle from Paul? If we find it, should we add it to the New Testament? Did Paul make a doctrinal mistake or was it in some way not “inspired” and God made sure it was lost? These questions get to the heart of your personal view of how the Bible was put together. Is the canon closed, or can books be added or removed? Did God oversee the original writing, the transcriptions, the assembly, and each of the translations? If so, why did He allow so many differences between texts and collections? Which canon is The Canon?
These are serious questions for Bible scholars today, but they may not have troubled more Christians in the Early Church. Since the majority of early Christians would not have been able to read, they had to trust their bishops to gather writings and the Church to decide which books should be in the Bible. Generations of believers were unable to read the languages they spoke, let alone the Latin translations or the original Greek and Hebrew texts. As literacy began to become more common, the language barrier and the Church’s authority still prevented Christians from examining the texts for themselves and coming to their own conclusions. It was at this point in history that a radical movement began. People started to question the Church’s authority, translate the Bible into familiar languages, and even judge whether or not certain books should be included. Martin Luther led this movement, and he personally translated the Bible into German.
Luther’s Bible included German translations of most of the books recognized as canonical at the time, including Tobit, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees, The Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, Baruch as well as some sections of Daniel and Esther which no longer appear in most Protestant Bibles or the Hebrew Tanakh. He placed those seven books and the disputed parts at the end of the Old Testament and labelled the section “The Apocrypha,” lowering the status of the books. He said they were “not to be esteemed like the Holy Scriptures” but that they are “useful and good to read.” This distinction eventually led some publishers to leave them out of printed Bibles. The King James English translation followed Luther’s example and marked those books Apocryphal, but included 1 2 Esdras and the Prayer of Manasseh-which did not appear in the German Bible and failed to be approved for the Catholic Bible at the Council of Trent. Interestingly, Luther also doubted the canonical status of several New Testament books: Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation. He placed those books at the end of the New Testament in his Bible. He explained his criticism in the prefaces to these books for his published New Testament. Many of these books and others were also disputed by the Church Fathers, and a distinction was made regarding the seven Old Testament books even by Jerome in the 4th century while he was working on the Latin translation.
There are so many interesting stories surrounding the history of these books and the assembly of the different canons. I’m pointing all of this out only to demonstrate this fact:
The Bible is a collection of books, and the choice of books differs between several Christian denominations (the Eastern Orthodox Church has the largest canon) and Jewish scholarship. We may read it as one leather-bound book, but it’s still a collection, a sacred library, and the list of books and their wording contain some variation.
This is not to say that these additions and deletions are arbitrary or disingenuous. A great deal of scholarship, study, and debate took place, and many books were rejected for good reasons agreed upon by every group today. For example, we have a deluge of late Christian texts falsely written under the names of figures close to Jesus and appearing only in foreign languages such as Coptic and Syriac and as such were deemed inauthentic (regardless of how they were presented in the Da Vinci Code.)
Scholarly guidelines were used to judge the works, and different groups worked with different criteria to come to their conclusions. You may choose to agree with Luther, the King James translators, the Council of Trent, the people who compiled the Tanakh, or those who made the Septuagint translation used by the early church and modern Orthodox churches. Either way, you can’t read “the Word of God” until you accept the reliability of one or another human being or institution. From each unique position in history, the information available to these experts has been different. For example, the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered only sixty years ago, and have provided incredible insight into that time period and given us much older Hebrew texts to study. The findings contained the oldest manuscripts of the Law and the Prophets along side many other writings and apocryphal works. Jewish experts once believed that Tobit was written in Greek, but fragments written in Aramaic and Hebrew were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls. Modern scholarship also suggests that Judith was originally written in Hebrew. If those two books were excluded from the Tanakh because the compilers couldn’t find an early Hebrew version, are they not eligible for reconsideration in light of the new evidence? If one of Paul’s disputed epistles is found to be authored by a secondary source in Paul’s name, should it be removed? What about the ending of the Gospel of Mark? Most Bibles include the longer ending of Mark-verses 9 through 16-which feature verses about handling snakes and drinking poison. There are also ancient texts featuring a shorter ending, and the oldest copies stop at verse 8 and appear to lack a conclusion. If an older manuscript of Mark is unearthed with a different ending, should we “fix” Mark 16 and eliminate the questionable verses about snake handling and drinking poison?
These important questions highlight the need for scholarly work to better understand the Bible, and to examine each text’s authenticity and reliability. I think that the Bible is worthy of in depth study inside and out, and this tradition can be seen throughout church history.
Some resources:
www.bible-researcher.com/canon2.html
www.sacred-texts.com/bib/apo/index.htm
http://www.bible-researcher.com/antilegomena.html
mod synthesis 
Curtis
May 12, 2010
I just typed a really long well thought out response and then clicked post without filling out my name and it all got deleted. I don’t have time to retype it all…. we’ll have to discuss this in person 🙂
Curtis
Darlene Harper
May 13, 2010
I’ll start with your line : “These questions get to the heart of your personal view of how the Bible was put together. Is the canon closed, or can books be added or removed? Did God oversee the original writing, the transcriptions, the assembly, and each of the translations? If so, why did He allow so many differences between texts and collections? Which canon is The Canon?” … I believe that it’s all put together the way God wanted it to be. It’s been a lot of years since we’ve had the “Holy Bible” as we know it today. It’s stood the test of time, and there’s nothing in it or left out from it that would lead someone astray from the truth that lies within it. The gospel is clear — the history is clear, Jesus is clearly the son of God who was of a virgin birth and died and rose again so that we might live. I can’t help still thinking that if we question it too much, we tread down a dangerous path. I wouldn’t want to find something and then later see clearly that I was “dreadfully wrong” and caused myself and others to doubt the “truth” of the bible. You may be unique in your faith, but a lot of people that think this way don’t have much faith in the bible at all. They feel it was written by various people with their own ideas. A lot of people that I run into feel that they have the right to have their own ideas just like the many who wrote in the bible (as they were people just like them). They have no faith to believe that what is written is the word of God and is “profitable for instruction in righteousness.” They don’t trust it or anything but their own thinking, and seem to feel they have the right to decide what is right and wrong, that “truth” is an individual and relative thing — that’s the danger. Without clear direction, there is NO direction. Without clear belief, there isn’t much of anything left. This is how I feel —- I wish I could have read Curtis’ response 🙂
modsynth
May 13, 2010
Thanks, Darlene. Did you see my response on the Letter To Kevin post? It answers some of your concerns.
I’m no Martin Luther, but your comments can be aimed against him just as well. I know you don’t agree with my opinions, but a lot of what I’m saying are just facts. Only the Jews had just the start of the Bible for a long time, and many people were converted and became Christians before any of the New Testament was written. So many people didn’t have a Bible, which is partly why I do not think a particular completed book is promised to any of us. Hundreds and hundreds of years after Christ a version of the Bible was compiled. Over 1000 years later Protestants lowered the status of some books, and Luther went after many more (read the link to his introductions at the bottom of this post.) Even after those 16th century translations, refinements have been made to the manuscripts, and several small parts or words were removed – like in 1 John 5:7-8. None of this erodes the truth of the central message. Placing your faith upon human scholarship and the idea that God is supernaturally doing things I don’t believe He claimed to do seems to make our faith vulnerable. This is the flip side to your concern that acknowledging the slightest error leads to a dangerous collapse of faith. I know you don’t agree, so if you are going to judge my faith by how similar my view of the Bible is to yours than I’m sure you will find me lacking. If we were both in Jerusalem during the 1st century we could have both believed the witness of the apostles and had little religious baggage to sort through and argue about. History, for better or worse, has given us much more to think about and argue over.
Darlene
May 13, 2010
Tony, please know that I would never judge your faith or anyones for that matter. Because you are searching this out and have a different view of the bound bible than me, doesn’t mean a whole lot when it comes to faith. I feel that if you are in error — it could cause someone to doubt their own faith, where it comes from, if “any” of the bible is at all accurate. Then again, there are people I can think of that live in a way that make Christians look like the worst on earth — and that’s a way to create doubt in one’s faith also. So, I believe God can handle wherever your quest for knowledge will lead you. It just seems to me that you’re personally coming to conclusions that just “can’t be right” because it contradicts so much that is recorded in the bible, i.e. made in His image, that humans have dominion over all creation, etc. I’m not posting comments to convince you of anything, otherwise I would be comitting to study and study and study. I’m posting because “I always have something to say” and although you seem way intellegent enough to investigate the facts, at least some of your conclusions cannot be proven as facts.
modsynth
May 14, 2010
This post was pretty much just factual, and it’s certainly not intended to cause doubt. If someone does get confused, maybe it’s because they’ve been taught a false or over-simplistic version of how the books came to be accepted or rejected. I don’t think things should be hidden or misrepresented. I want to put faith on solid ground and in the light. Really, that’s what this is all about.
Darlene
May 16, 2010
When I say cannot be proven, and not totally factual, I don’t mean just this post, I was meaning the evolution, etc. and other of your conclusions. And, you personally made need more knowledge to put your faith on solid ground, but I believe that most of us feel the bible does that already 🙂
Darlene
May 16, 2010
Tony, Tracy found this quote by Matthew Henry and I thought I’d share it with you — it says a lot :
“The first verse of the Bible gives us a surer and better, a more satisfying and useful, knowledge of the origin of the universe, than all the volumes of the philosophers. The lively faith of humble Christians understands this matter better than the elevated fancy of the greatest wits.”
modsynth
May 16, 2010
Thanks. Matthew Henry’s point is pretty much the opposite of the Augustine quote I used in one of my comments to Scott, but the cool thing is that you and I, Augustine and Henry, the Pope and R.C. Sproul, Ken Ham and Francis Collins all agree about Genesis 1:1.
As for standing on the Bible alone, we have to acknowledge that we are understanding the Bible through several lenses. We are using theological doctrines and devices to interpret what we read, and also applying what we outwardly observe and personally think. If you believe the earth is rotating around the sun, you must admit to doing some reinterpretation of certain verses based on secular science. It’s easy to do when your pastor and everyone around you agrees with heliocentricity, but it really was a big deal a while back. You said you don’t agree with Paul about women ministers, and you don’t observe the Sabbath or Levitical law, so you must have found a way to understand the text beyond it’s clearest and strictest reading. I know your reasoning, but it is still reasoning-not a straight forward reading and application of the Bible. It’s this reasoning that varies from person to person. Two can look at the same book and walk away with different conclusions. That’s why so many people using the Bible for doctrine and affirming inerrancy still come to differing conclusions. There is always need for interpretation.
Darlene
May 16, 2010
Tony, I have to say that I truly do admire you for “going against the grain”. I am the same way so much that I won’t buy what a pastor says just because he interprets something a certain way. I look at the bible as a whole and what makes sense to me, and hope and pray that I’m correct about it — and I hope you really do understand where I’m coming from. I admire your honesty and y0ur quest to deeper understand what God has given us through the scriptures. Most of what I have problems with is “some” of your conclusions that you’ve come to as a result of your studies, i.e. the evolution of humans. Although I mentioned that in highschool during my biology class I hadn’t had a “real” problem with my teacher mentioning that some believe that God created evolution, since then, I feel very different about it and it’s mostly because of the bible and that I’ve had more thought about the issue. When I asked you the question about “when did we get souls, or do all animals and everything that God made have souls?” you didn’t have an answer. To me, there’s no way that animals, i.e. dogs, chickens, monkeys” have the same type “souls” that we do, the ability to know right from wrong, a sin nature, the need of a saviour, etc. My mom just wrote on her feelings of the birth of Annaliese. She was writing about how we are “fearfully and wonderfully made” and used the bible to talk about creation and the wonder of it all. She says, “In the book of Genesis we are told that the earth, the heavens, the galaxies and all therein were spoken into existence, all, that is — except man.. Man alone was created in the image of God. Man alone was fashinoned by the hands of the Divine Maker. Only man is able to speak, has been given a personality and endowed with moral nature…” I couldn’t agree with her more, not just because that’s what I think, but because it makes sense with the entire gospel, the reason Jesus came to earth, the reason we need a saviour for our sins. I sat on the plane (a “deadhead” flight where I wasn’t working) and looked out the window at the beautiful sky and ground below me. I was thinking that I am here for a reason, that there is purpose in my life, that He knew me and planned me way before I was even born. This fact is important to me, and makes me know that I’m special and mean something to the Great God of this universe. I am not something that has evolved from another animal. I was made in His image, just like the bible says. There is NO way that evolution of humans will ever be proven — because it couldn’t have happened to fit in with the gospel. If I believed in evolution, I would definately be a vegetarian. I wouldn’t feel that we humans have any right to kill any of God’s creation, as everything is just as precious as the other because He made all of us. I feel that anyone believing in evolution has got to be off track on their thinking because of the things I’ve mentioned. It just doesn’t fit and never will 🙂
John W
June 10, 2010
Tony, question:
Do you believe that the heart of Christianity is its historicity? In other words, that the gospel is that God became flesh and died vicariously to pay for human sin in history? Because it’s possible, though not orthodox, to completely reject the Bible as inspired, and yet to accept the historical accounts as accurate enough for genuine faith, since what matters in Christianity is that Jesus actually died on a real hill outside Jerusalem in the first century and came out of the tomb 3 days later, not that you have a magic book with secret messages from God in it. In this view, the value of the Bible is that it transmits testimonies of what happened in history, not that it is somehow Oracular and able to save on its own account.
modsynth
June 11, 2010
Yes, John, that’s pretty much my view except that I don’t reject inspiration altogether. Christianity is about Jesus, and I believe that those of us fortunate to be born on this side of history should read the writings through that lens and worship God, not the text. As I said in my Letter To Kevin post, trying to make the Bible be things it never claims to be, or imposing on it a standard of absolute perfection doesn’t seem to hold up. Some people get freaked out when they find a contradiction or see the human element in the editing/compiling process and reject everything, but that seems to me an unnecessary overreaction. We don’t have to put our faith in the Council of Trent or Martin Luther, just Jesus.
( …and if I wanted to be orthodox, I would be an Orthodox or Roman Catholic christian. I’ve been raised Protestant, and much to the horror of the Reformation-era Roman Catholic Church, I take full advantage of that liberty and read and study on my own. I acknowledge that this makes some things messy and complicated. The good thing is it creates a free-market scenario where ideas are allowed to compete and be subjected to diverse testing, not the approval/disapproval of one assembly or supreme leader.)