How many drafts did the New Testament go through before the church fathers decided upon what they wanted?

Question

people to believe?

Answer 1

"Misquoting Jesus" by Bart D. Ehrman. He's a Religious Studies professor at Univ of NC at Chapel Hill. Used to be a conservative Christian, but after researching the texts and scrolls of the writers, he became a non-believer real fast.

Answer 2

There were no drafts of the New Testament. Certainly the texts that they used were copies of copies etc. Unlike modern scholars they did not group various manuscript familes nor try and decipher their texts by means of redaction criticism.

The decision which the Church Fathers were faced with was which books (not versions or revisionist drafts) were to be considered as part of the New Testament Canon. The books that were rejected were those who were understood by the Church to be in some way defective.

Conspiracy theories aside, the Church was quite open in this process.

Answer 3

First of all, there are lots more gospels than the four in the canonical Bible.[1] Prior to Constantine, there were lots of Christians out there with lots of different understandings of Christian teaching. One big argument was over to what extent Jesus was resurrected, whether the resurrection was only metaphorical or literal and if it was literal, just how literal it was. Did he come back corporally and actually walk the earth? Did he just come back in dreams? This was all debated by early Christians.

Constantine ordered the Council of Nicaea and posted archers overlooking the meeting with orders to shoot anyone who disagreed with his personal views on Christianity. That doesn't sound very Divinely inspired to me. Also, the church fathers didn't really decide much. Oh, I'm sure they were allowed to argue over matters that Constantine didn't care about, but Constantine more or less decided what would go in the canonical New Testament.

So, don't know if that answers your question. I don't know how many drafts they went through, but you have to understand the above history before you can answer your question.

Answer 4

You have no clue nor understanding as to how the Scriptures were formed??

No computers, no word processors, no drafts; just a quill pen and some parchment ... written as they were inspired by God.

Later the "church fathers" made a list of the Scriptures which were generally accepted as Inspired Scriptures.

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A book is said to be of canonical authority when it has a right to take a place with the other books which contain a revelation of the Divine will. Such a right does not arise from any ecclesiastical authority, but from the evidence of the inspired authorship of the book. The canonical (i.e., the inspired) books of the Old and New Testaments, are a complete rule, and the only rule, of faith and practice.

Answer 5

There were no "drafts" involved, and the Church Fathers didn't decide. The bishops of the Catholic Church, gathered in Council at Carthage in North Africa, in 397 AD, defined once and for all time the Canon of Scripture - the authoritative list of the 73 divinely inspired writings which comprise the Christian Bible. They worked with completed texts, and discerned which of those texts would be included in the list and which would not. Nothing has changed since that time. (Except of course in Protestantism, whose founder tried to throw out 10 books of the Word of God, and succeeded in throwing out 7 of them).

Answer 6

No definite number, it was mainly what to keep and what to leave out. Mainly decided by the various councils at Nicea in the early 4th century, most particularly the one in 325AD where 300 or so senior churchmen thrashed out some sort of consensus-if I remember correctly.
You'd do better to find out for yourself, rather than asking on this forum, so I'd be better not answering I suppose, but it seems a waste of electrons to throw this away now I've started.

Answer 7

Depends which book you're talking about.

Mark Mathew and Luke were cobbled together from earlier sources, Mark came first, Mat borrowed from Mark, Luke borrowed from Mark and Mat with some embellishments of his own, John seems to have other sources, that's why it seems so much different. Acts might be by the same writer as Luke, Half of Paul's letters are authentic, the other half written after Paul in his name to give them authority, the other letters, who knows, and our favorite Revelations written about 100 ce by someone taking lots of drugs. Many many other books were in circulation for the first 300 years of the church's history, after Constantine made the christian church the 'official' religion of the empire he noticed that every region had a different kind of Christianity, so he told the different bishops spread across the empire to get together, work out an official list of books, an official teaching, and official dogma, and what they came up with, after much fighting, backstabbing, name calling, infighting, murder, and drinking all night were the 'official' 27 books of the new testament, after much editing, and the 'official' Catholic or Universal Church we all know and love.

Answer 8

No drafts. Most of the New Testament is letters from one person to another. The Gospels all harmonize.

I guess it would be like asking how many times do you draft you question to Yahoo! Answers before you get what you wanted to get across to people?

Answer 9

Quite a few.
The KJV was commissioned by James the first who had the final word on every chapter and book to make sure it met with his approval.

We also know that the Vatican council spent quite a bit of time deciding what would be in and what would be out.

I got my information from a Theologian

Answer 10

The New Testament consists of the Gospels, written by Jews, Mathew & John being eye witnesses, and letters written to the early Church.

Some were written when the writers were in confinement for their faith. Those are the ones in the bible and are true to their original letter form.

The Old Testament books are confirmed of by Jesus & accepted by the Jews.