If god guided the writers of the bible, why did man throw some of the books away?

Question

A lot of people on this site like to post how the bible is fact and the word of god. Yet it isa known fact that sometime during the 3rd or 4th century (forget exactly when) that the religious leaders of the christianity gathered and decided which books to include in the new testament and which to get rid of.

Well if god guided the writers, why did man decide to throw it awayand not just any man, but the religious leaders. If god guided the leaders, then isnt does that mean that gosd is fallable since first he guidedthe writers and then told the leaders that thioswe books were wrong?

Answer 1

No, wise guy,
Concerning the precise moment that you mention, at the beginning of Christianity, it was necessary to determine which books were really inspired by God and which were not.
Read your catechism. Those books not believed to be inspired by God are called "apocriphal"

Answer 2

None of those books have been "thrown away". They are all available to be read if you want. I have read many of them, and long before the DiVinci code suddenly made them fashionable.

The books that make up the New Testament were carefully choosen based on:

1) Historical evidence of their age.
If every known copy of the New Testament were to disappear tomorrow, all but 11 lines of it could be recreated from letters and books that quote the New Testament, all written within 150 years of the resurrection of Christ. Every since book in the New Testament (excep the 1 chapter long book of 2 John and 1 chapter long book of Philemon) have at least one quote from them in other writtens before the year 100AD (The books were written between 50 and 90 AD). The council referred to many of these letters as their reason for including the books they did into the New Testament. The gnostic gospels that were not included (in fact, not even discussed by the council) have no quotes from them prior to 250AD, and many were not even written until AFTER the council had decided.

2) How commonly used the books were.
Looking across the churches in the early 400's century when the council meet, they made a list of what books were being used. They found that 24 of the 27 books they would adopt were in use in over 95% of churches already. The two or three they rejected, were found in only a handful of churches. And in those they were often either separate books, or lumped together in the back as "second class" books.

3) Whether they were already recognized as scripture.
Way back in the second century, an early church leader named Ignatius had put together a list of the books that were already accepted as scripture in his time, and mentioned a couple others (including the Gospel of Thomas) that were rejected. His list exactly matches the one finally approved in the 4th century. So people has already decided those books were scripture almost two hundreds years before the Nicene council ever meant. The council just affirmed that decision.

The writings that were "thrown out" were done for the same reason we would throw out writings from today. Would you suggest that the DiVinci Code be added to the Bible just because it is about Jesus? Of course not. Its age make it unlikely to have been written by someone who know Jesus (one of the conditions to get onto the New Testament list). Same with the gnostic gospels - they were written too late.

Or, they were never accepted by an church as scripture. Two hundred years from now I doubt that you will find any church that has added Dan Brown's book to the bible. Why? They know it is a work of fiction. Same with the "thrown away" writings. There was not any church anywhere that ever included them in a collect of scripture. They knew they were false. Just because they mention Jesus does not make them "inspired".

Finally, one has only to read through the New Testament writing and see how well they hold together, and support each other, to know that they belong together. Twenty-seven books by 9 writers that compliment each other without contradition. Quite an accomplishment.

Answer 3

Consider this, maybe man threw out these books because God inspired them to do so. Many of the Apocryphal books, which are the writings that some have included in certain Bibles, were rejected by others because they do not bear evidence of having been inspired by God.

For example, The book of First Maccabees, while not in any way to be reckoned as an inspired book, contains information that is of historical interest. It gives an account of the struggle of the Jews for independence during the second century B.C.E. under the leadership of the priestly family of the Maccabees.

The rest of the Apocryphal books are full of myths and superstitions and full of errors. They were never referred to or quoted by Jesus or the writers of the Christian Greek Scriptures.

Since God inspired the Bible, it is logical to reason that he would keep it free from these myths and superstitions so that his valuable truths could shine through.

Answer 4

First you need to understand how the bible was put together.

When first started to the finish time was more than one mans lifetime. No one group of men decided what was going to be included in the bible.

Writings went through strict authenticity tests, and when all was said and done, only the writings that could be 100 percent authentic were included.

Now some writings that were found to be authentic were left out of the bible, but were considered historical documents, rather than GOD inspired documents.

This is the main reason that the Catholic Church portion of this very diverse group of men, left the group. The Catholic church did not dispute the writings that are in the bible, but they did include the historical documents in their printing of the catholic bible. I have read these documents and they are clearly marked as historical documents in the Catholic bible.

You can get books with the Lost books of the bible. I have one and some of them are way out in left field, but still interesting reading from a non biblical stand point.

In order to understand why certain books were omitted from the bible, you would have to go back to the writings of the men who omitted them and read the reasons why they were left out.
Without doing that, we would be making an argument without knowing at least the written facts as to our argument.

Answer 5

Those books were taken out because they didn't meet the same standards as the majority of the books. They either didn't involve God at all, or where written about things that really muddled up things.

I think the biggest reason why these certain books where removed from the bible was because they either were not God-inspired, or their was no way to prove that it was.

The book of Enoch, which is one of these books that was removed, is written about when in ancient times angels decended to heaven and took mortal wives. The union created giants. The book of enoch really goes into detail about the specific angels and what gifts they bestowed upon the humans they came to dwell among. God isn't mentioned at all. In fact, that book mentions certain chracters that are supposedly of great importance, that only show up in that book.

In more modern days, this book was used as a basis for Alester Crowley's 'Enochian Call', which is said to have contained incantations and spells derived from the book of enoch and the Necronomicon.

Can you rightly say that something that has inspired witchcraft, and other things that are said to be wrong in the rest of the Bible, to be something that was God-inspired?

I think not.
The early church fathers had good reason to leave out certain books.

Answer 6

Not all the writers met the test. Lets assume God guided the writers, and God guided the council that put it together. The books that were left out were not written by men God guided. There were piles of writings that did not get the green light because they did not met the tests laid out. It was more than just a few guys sitting around going "hey, I like this story, lets throw it in", there were requirement to be met, tests to be passed, it wasnt a quick fly by hte seat of your pants operation.

So assuming God had a hand in it, means he included only what he wrote, only what he inspired to be written rather, making an infalliable God, and an inspired book.

Answer 7

I ask that question to myself all the time. Why did the Nicaean councils toss out the Gospel of Thomas and keep that horrid Revelation? Revelation made it into the canon by a single vote, and that was because the guy who voted got his "Johns" mixed up. He thought the author was John, brohter of Jesus, when the writer was actually an acid-tripping fellow named John who lived in Patmos.

Sheesh. Imagine how much better Christianity would be without stuff like "Left Behind" and all the hollering about the "End Times".

I won't even get into the errors- both deliberate and accidental, that have worked their way into copies of the Bible during the Dark Ages. We have to suffer the consequences of the ignorance of our ancestors, it seems.

Answer 8

If God directed the writers of the scriptures, don't you think that he would have also guided people as to what books to keep and what books to throw out? If God created the whole world in six days, don't you think he could make sure the right books got into the Bible and those that contained something that could possibly be misleading to be thrown out? God knows what he does and why and we don't.

Answer 9

cause those books where the ones that the religious leaders new would make their religion look bad.

I like dukalink6000's answer cause that is what im talking about. they decided that it confused the issue (disproved) and so the threw them out because if a normal christian saw them they would probably have been one of the following: shocked, disgusted, or laughing their heads off at how stupid they had been.

also, all you people who say those books werent "inspired by god", how do you know they werent? how do you know that the modern bible is "inspired by god"? your just making up the rules as you go so that you always win.

Answer 10

You are making an assumption that the books that were thrown out were indeed written by men inspired by god, and not men who wanted fame, money, etc. That in itself requires someone to filter out the wrong material. The ones they chose were written either by an apostle, or by someone who interviewed an apostle. Many of the other teachings were from a friend of a friend of a friend, who knew Jesus's cousin.