When was the OT Bible canonized? When was the NT Bible canonized?

Question

What was the time line for each or were they written overnight and approved as such?

Peace and Love

I just found a very interesting time line. If anybody is interested:

http://gbgm-umc.org/umw/bible/timece.stm

http://gbgm-umc.org/umw/bible/timebce.stm

Answer 1

If you are sincere about wanting forgiveness of you sin and humble your self and pray believing that God will forgive you He can and I believe that He will.

He knows the very intents of your heart. You can lie to and deceive me but you can't deceive Jesus Christ.

Any attempts to deceive man or Christ are sins. Do not be foolish and risk your own soul.

Answer 2

Well, it definately was not an overnight process but rather one that took a VERY long time. Here is a link that is simple but quite good.

http://gbgm-umc.org/umw/bible/canon.html

I think it is very important to remember that writing in that day and age was not the same as how people write today. There were no copyright laws and often times people wrote as disciples of other teachers.

Interesting enough, the OT was not canonized until about 40 years AFTER Jesus' death. This is one of the reasons the Protestant and Catholic OT canons are different. Catholics use the older books that were in circulation during Jesus' life---Protestants went along with the Council that came about after Jesus' death.

Oh, and the person stating that Matthew was the first book of the NT needs to go back to school----there is NO doubt that the first things of the NT to be written were pauls letters and the first Gospel to be written would have been Mark----you can look up the Macan priority and the Two Source Hypothesis if you want more information on that.

Oh, and the guy under me that says the Protestant Cannon came about in 400 AD----what a laugh, there wasn't even a protestant church until the 1500's----so take that for what it is worth!

Answer 3

Both OT and NT were canonized more or less in their present state at about 400 AD. There are no autographs (originals) of the books in the present bible, so we are working with copies of copies of copies.

So, while we have none of the autographs of the Bible, the early manuscripts we do have have and that are known to be genuine, by the most conservative estimates, have 200,000 differences between the wording in them, and while many are not meaningful, some completely change the doctrine of the church. (Ehrman, Bart, Ph.D.; Misquoting Jesus: The story behind who changed the Bible and Why; Harper Collins, 2006 -- p. 89). less conservative estimates range up to about 400,000 -- and there are programmers now endeavoring to write a program that will be able to count the exact number of variances.

And that's only the start of the difficulties for the Bible. If you only use the Textus Receptus (Received Text) as it is printed in modern Bibles then you are looking at enormous problems anyway -- in fact insurmountable ones. The World does not have corners (Isaiah 11:12), nor does it sit on pillars (I Samuel 2:8), nor water (Psalms 24:1-2). God did not establish a solid dome over the earth (that's what firmament literally means) and he does not have a palace on top of it from which angels can come and go up Jacob's ladder -- which might be reached by the tower of babel -- and where he keeps "treasuries" of hail and snow (Job 38: 22-23). For the sake of all that is decent, you can't even harmonize the 1st and 2nd chapters of Genesis with each other, say nothing of being able to defend the Biblical creation as scientifically factual. That's no surprise though, as the Bible tells us that beetles have four legs (Leviticus 11: 21-23) and that rabbits chew their cuds (Deuteronomy 14:7). It says that pi is 3, not 3.14 (I Kings 7:23 and 2 Chronicles 4:2) and that the mustard seed is the smallest seed in the world and grows into a tree [neither of which are true] (Matthew 13: 31-32). It is hardly a font of rational thought or scientific accuracy. Furthermore these errors only scratch the surface. Try harmonizing accounts in Joshua and the telling of the same tales in timeline in Judges sometime. If you can you are more proficient than any theologian I've ever met, and I've met a few.

Late bronze age men created the OT and early iron age ones the NT. It is not surprising therefore that God cannot lead Israel to defeat Iron chariots after promising he would (Judges 1:19), and it is not surprising that the flight of Israel from the god Chemosh, after the king of a city the Jews were beseiging and that God had promised them they would overthrow The King of the city offered his own son to Chemosh as a human sacrifice, resulting in Chemosh driving the Israelites away (2 Kings 3: 19-27) -- further it is not surprising that no punishment is mentioned -- the Israelites were still sacrificing their own children, as is evidenced in several places, but most graphically in Judges 11:30-39

The long and short of it is, the Bible is a mythic book, written by bronze and iron age men who were recording primarily oral legends in written form. In any realistic sense it is drivel. You can see, just in the passages I noted above from 2 Kings -- the last vestiges of polytheism fading away. Chemosh was supposed to get power from human sacrifice, just as Jehovah did -- and that power allowed him to turn the table against Israel, despite the fact that God was with Israel.

Read the verses, read the context -- to all the things I've suggested, calm your breathing and thinking and ask yourself if this is really the God of the Universe you are reading about -- or a tribal deity, which has now evolved into the one we worship. I think you will find biblegod sadly lacking -- something the liturgical churches have been saying for hundreds of years. If you find yourself unwilling to even look -- ask yourself why? Are you willing to sacrifice the truth, in order to maintain a comfortable myth for yourself?

And if you want a chuckle, read the second, and theoretically final version of the ten commandments. They are in Exodus 34: 10-26. That is the covenant Yahweh actually made with Israel. No seething here.

Of course the Bible has nothing to do with Christianity, which is simply believing in Jesus Christ.

Have a nice day.

Regards,

Reynolds Jones
Schenectady, NY
http://www.rebuff.org
[e-mail]

Answer 4

Sorry this is generalized, someone will probably give you more specific numbers.

The first five books of the OT were originally passed as oral tradition (the Jewish culture was nomadic and community-focused, so oral made the most sense). It was common for those training to be rabbis to memorize ALL of the scripture over their adolescence (insane, but true) -- it was simply how the culture worked, and much of the text was arranged in such a way to make memorization easier.

I don't know the numbers, but I'd say a few centuries before Jesus Christ. Jesus is recorded as knowing and reading the scriptures, and various NT passages make reference to specific OT scriptures. (Many things that Jesus said, in fact, referred to passages in the OT that he expected his listeners to know as common information.)

The earliest OT physical manuscripts we have (I think) are the Dead Sea Scrolls, which contained many of the OT books plus some other documents -- these are dated to the century around Jesus and show only cosmetic transmissions errors compared to today's current translations.

The Council of Nice in the mid-300 AD's produced an official NT canon. Please note that they did not simply hand-pick books willy-nilly as part of the canon (or go through some nefarious scheming process, as I've seen some suggest here).

What they really did was formalize the "unofficial" NT canon that had already come into use throughout the Christian church and was in practice at the time.

The NT documents themselves, we can date to anywhere between 70-200 AD or so, I think. We can really only date things based on the earliest physical copies found, as well as details within the texts that would tie them to known history.

Answer 5

I'm not quite sure when the O.T. was canonized, but the Protestant N.T. was finally canonized around 400 AD. The old testament was considered the word of God by the early church since it's foundation after the Holy Spirit had come upon the 120 believers in the Upper Room on the day of pentecost.

Answer 6

Some other dates of interest:

The Septuagint, while really just a Greek translation made in Alexandria and not an effort to establish a canon, essentially set the books of the Old Testament as Christianity would come to see them in about 200 BC or so.

Wikipedia has details on much of the rest of it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_canon

Answer 7

Before any written texts, there were oral teachings (of One God)
The Pentateuch ("The Law"), is the first 5 books of the Old Testament (Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy). First written by Moses (inspired by God) c.1,300 B.C. to c. 454 or 100 B.C.
OLD TESTAMENT: 46 completed books c. 100 B.C.(note: 46 books, NOT only 39 as is in the Protestant versions)
THE SEPTUAGINT: (the sole and official canon of the Catholic O.T.) c. 280 or 250 B.C. to 100 B.C. Under Pharaoh of Egypt: Ptolemy Philedelphus commissioned 70 Jewish Scholars (Scribes) to translate into the vernacular (common language spoken at the time): GREEK This is the Greek translation that Jesus and His Apostles (and Jews at the time) used, and quoted from as well.(After the dispersions of the Jews, they began to lose their Hebrew tongue, and Greek, which was the universal language at the time, became their spoken tongue.)
After the death of Jesus, and many of His Apostles, c. 100 A.D., in the village of Jamnia (in ancient Israel -see "Jabneh") the Sadducees (enemies of Christ and non-believers in the resurrection, life-afer-death, and angels...) assembled a completely new version of Jewish scripture, omitting some books entirely and rewriting others. The result is the JAMNIAN CANON, or, the PALESTINIAN TALMUD. (There is also another version known as the BABYLONIAN TALMUD.)In Acts 5: 17-19, it states that the Sadducees were particularly zealous enemies of Christianity.
One of them for instance (Aquila) removed the word PARTHENOS (virgin), from Isaiah 7:14, and rendered it NEANIS (a young woman)shall conceive. That way they could assert that the prophecy didn't match what the Christians were teaching.
An interesting note: Since the deviation from the True Old Testament, Judaism has splintered into many different sects. (Sounds familiar as has happened to Protestants, there are currently 33,000 different Protestant sects with more new ones being established each year.)
During the Reformation, the Protestants rejected the Catholic Bible and adopted the (altered) Hebrew Bible, that does not have the complete 46 Books and verses. This is why the Protestant's "Old Testament" part of their Bible has only 39 Books, and incomplete passages/verses in parts.
Thus, the (altered) Hebrew Bible is what the Jews today use, and the Church has the TRUE, complete, Old Testament. So we see that the two differ.
The Prostestants have the Hebrew Old Testament as part of their Bible, and the Catholic New Testament. So we see that before the Reformation the True Church has always kept intact the True Scriptures - Old and New. And after the Reformation, after using the Bible for over 1500 years, Man altered the Bible, by adopting the altered Hebrew Bible, and through Martin Luther, even added words to the Bible! Praise the Lord our God, through Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit, that as Jesus promised, He guided His Church, to make sure that the true Bible was kept intact, and His teachings unchanged in His True Church.
Because non-Catholics do not have the fullness of Truth or the fullness of the WHOLE Bible, they do not understand all the teachings of the Apostles or have that unbroken link from the Apostles. Because of the altered Prostestant bible, they have come up with many "new" and contradictory theories and dogmas, even among themselves. That is not to say that they do not have some truths, for those that believe in the Trinity - Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, and Jesus as Savior and the Way, and are Baptized as Christ instructed by using water "In the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit", are Christians. They are just the separated brothers and sisters of R. C. Christians. Remember, Christ founded and established ONE Church, and promised to guide THAT Church throughout the Ages, in all fullness of truth. He did not establish and found thousands and thousands of churches. He left us a visible voice on earth, the vicor of Christ, who upholds all of Christ's and His Apostles teachings. Just as in the Old Testament the High Priest was the one who spoke God's words to the people and taught them, and made the decisions with God's blessings, so too has Christ continued this God-made tradition by giving us a "high" priest (Bishop)on earth - the Pope (which means papa--father). In Matt. 23:1-3, "Jesus spoke to the crowds and to His disciples, saying, 'The scribes and the Pharisees have taken their seat on the chair of Moses. Therefore, do and observe all things whatsoever they tell you, but do not follow their example. For they preach but do not practice." We see that even Jesus upheld the teachings just as we are to do today with the teachings of His Church - the Holy Roman Catholic Church. By the way, the term "Roman Catholic" is a name give by non-catholics during the Reformation, -- it is really called the Church. But the name is used (R.C.) to distinguish it from all the other churches in the world today. Before the Reformation, it was only known as the Church - a universal (which is what "catholic" really means)Church for all men who want to know Christ and be Christian.

Answer 8

The canon of the Bible was officially determined in the fourth century by the Catholic Church and Catholic Popes.

Answer 9

the last book of the OT (malachi) is believed to have been writted sometime after 460BC. The first book of the NT (matthew) is believed to have been written in the A.D. 70s.

Answer 10

Canonized by whom?

The bible as we know it was canonized by the Catholic church in 397 CE (ad) at the Council of Carthage.

Answer 11

the NT was canonized in the fourth century i dont know about the OT.