Did the Catholic Church compile the bible?

Question

If not, what "early church" or early chirstians did? IF it were not a Catholic church made thing, then why did certain books need "cannonization" to enter the Holy book?

Answer 1

Yes, mostly.

The New Testament canon of the Catholic Bible and the Protestant Bible are the same.

The difference in the Old Testaments actually goes back to the time before and during Christ’s life. At this time, there was no official Jewish canon of scripture.

The Jews in Egypt translated their choices of the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek in the second century before Christ. This translation, called the Septuagint, had wide use in the Roman world because most Jews lived far from Palestine in Greek cities. Many of these Jews spoke only Greek.

The early Christian Church was born into this world. The Church, with its bilingual Jews and more and more Greek-speaking Gentiles, used the books of the Septuagint as its Bible. Remember the early Christians were just writing the documents what would become the New Testament.

After the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem, with increasing persecution from the Romans and competition from the fledgling Christian Church, the Jewish leaders came together and declared its official canon of Scripture, eliminating seven books from the Septuagint.

The Christian Church did not follow suit but kept all the books in the Septuagint.

1500 years later, Protestants decided to change its Old Testament from the Catholic canon to the Jewish canon. The books they dropped are sometimes called the Apocrypha.

With love in Christ.

Answer 2

No. The canon did. Scholars composed of the Christian Church who decided which books of the bible to accept as doctrine. The protestant canon included 39 books in the Old Testament and 27 in the new. The Roman Catholic canon added 7 more books in the OT and some additional books. The Jewish bible has the same OT books as the Protestant bible. Canon means the list of books of the Bible accepted by the Christian church as genuine and inspired. The OT canon was formed before the time of Christ. The word catholic church usually refers to all Christians. OT means old testament. Hope this helps. There are several books that were not considered to be accurate and therefore were removed. The methodist statement of the Apostles Creed states "I believe in the holy catholic church" as part of the creed.

Answer 3

Yes. At the Council of Nicea they assembled a large group of bishops and cardinals and what have you and voted on which of the thousands of documents they had that they wanted to have in a central book and called it the bible (la biblia, which means I believe "The books"). They also voted on the nature of God (chosing the modern "trinity" idea of a schizephrenic God over the original idea of multiple gods) and other doctrinal issues.

Interesting to me that they voted on this stuff. It was not a decree from heaven and no one claimed to be the successor to Christ to be able to tell everyone how it should be. They voted. They even voted to make Peter the successor to Christ and called the Pope the successor to Peter.

The last interesting thing is the Counsel was convened by a pagan emperor who was hoping to come up with a central christian religion in order to better control his subjects. He did not believe any of it.

At that time it was not called the Catholic church (which means "universal" by the way...the universal church). It evolved into the catholic church.

Canonizing means the "authorities" accept that a book is divine. The intersting thing is, these authorities denied and threw out reams of information that they did not feel showed christianity the way they wanted it to. There were writings from all the apostles, not just 3, but only those 3 were viewed as close enough to each other to maintain a central story-line. Now it means the catholic church controls what is added and what is not.

They even decided to put the book of revelation at the end, which was interesting because there is evidence that several of the letters of Paul actually post-date it. Why is this interesting? Because by putting the book of revelation last, they conveniently have the scripture that says "if anyone add to or take away from this prophecy, they are not of God" or something like that. That was in reference to John's own prophecy, not the Bible itself since John wrote it NOT in the context of a collection of books. But by putting that last, they can claim that if anyone tried to add any of the other equally legitimate documents at a later time, they are not of God.

(Final note, contrary to popular belief, King James did NOT compile the bible we have now. He commissioned a group of scholars to go back to the original cannon of compiled books and re-translate them into the King James version of the Bible. Because he chose scholars that were not just religious icons (read: catholic or protestant clergy) but scholars that were experts at that time in ancient languages and culture, many believe his version to be the most accurate translation available today, with fewer transcription errors and biases written in by the translators themselves.)

I ti s all kinda funny huh?

Answer 4

The early church was the one that compiled the bible; however, it was NOT the papacy/roman catholic church that we see today. The early church relied upon the apostles as final arbiters of belief and each of the early christian communities had leaders/bishops (note: the apostles' communities are called Nazorean; Paul's are called Pauline). All councils on establishing theology and belief (after the apostles death) involved a meeting of the different leaders/bishops (e.g. council of nicea). Only when the line of bishops/leaders of the roman christian community decided to emphasize their importance did we get the development of the papacy (resulting in revisionist history where the early line of roman bishops were identified as a chain of popes).
Note: The gospels were the perceptions of the teachings of the apostles . Paul was heavily influential in defining and spreading christianity; his letters to the various early christian groups (e.g. epistles to romans, thessalonians, corinthians) were incorporated into the bible. The gospels all were written before 125 AD.

Answer 5

"In medieval Europe monks reproduced books by diligently copying entire texts in a monastery room called a scriptorium, which was designed for that purpose...

Cultural activity during the early Middle Ages consisted primarily in appropriating and systematizing the knowledge of the past. The works of classical authors were copied and annotated. Encyclopedic works, such as Etymologies (623) by St Isidore of Seville, which attempted to present the collected knowledge of humankind, were compiled. At the heart of all learned activity stood the Bible, and all secular learning became regarded as mere preparation for understanding the holy text."

Answer 6

the compilation and approvement of certain books of bible took place through hundred of years.I know I will sound silly but church decides what chapters should be included as to boost the faith amongst the followers-how they know?Well the special division of vatican will be rsponsible for choices that type(I would say maybe with approval of pope but I am not sure) and if you would ask them they will say that the wholy ghost guides them with the choices.
I used to have a lecture of bible at my uni who is one not many priests specialising in bible-he used to show off so much that he holds manuscrpts of bible nobody even knows they exist-but I have to admit the man was a common idiot with loads of personal problems which would influence his judgements on certain topics.

Answer 7

no they did not the bible we read was compiled be king james the 1st he was not catholic .

Answer 8

well. all the big christian religions manipulated, forged, add, renewed, modified the Bible. Its simple! To meet perfectly its dogmatics, ideology...

Answer 9

Yes...I believe so. Sadly they did a relatively good job for those people who can't think for themselves.

Answer 10

Yes, when there was no other church and it had not become as corrupt as it is today.

Try: http://www.bible-researcher.com/canon.html