is it true that at the Council of Nicea they discarded a lot of books that should've been in the bible?

Answer 1

This is a quote from Thomas Paine, 1797

"The Popish Councils of Nice and Laodicea, about 350 years after the time the person called Jesus Christ is said to have lived, voted the books that now compose what is called the New Testament to be the Word of God. This was done by yeas and nays, as we now vote a law.

"The Pharisees of the second temple, after the Jews returned from captivity in Babylon, did the same by the books that now compose the Old Testament, and this is all the authority there is, which to me is no authority at all. I am as capable of judging for myself as they were, and I think more so, because, as they made a living by their religion, they had a self-interest in the vote they gave."

Now, that does not make them wrong, or right. The process can make one skeptical, as it did Paine. Thus, you have to go to the reasoning to see if made sense. I have not.

Edit: Someone mentioned the Gospel of St. Thomas. I can see why this was not included.

http://www.misericordia.edu/users/davies/thomas/Trans.htm

Answer 2

Well, it was the Council of Laodicea, not Nicea, that did this, but it's true nonetheless. There are books that should've been in the Bible that were thrown out. First saw it on a documentary on the National Geographic channel, looked it up, it's most definitely true. Early church leaders didn't like things that were preached in some of the books, deemed them heretical, apocryphal, and kept them from being added to the Bible.

There's also differences between denominations and their Bibles. Catholics, Orthodox, Jewish, Protestant, some have books that others don't. Probably even more books missing or omitted between various versions of the Bible as well. The Bible I happen to own is a New Revised Standard Version. I suppose with a name that holds the word "revised" in it is probably a good clue that something's been tinkered around with.

At any rate, while I can't say the differences between various versions, I do have sites on the versions and Council of Laodicea.

http://reluctant-messenger.com/council-of-laodicea.htm

There's the site on the Council of Laodicea, including books that have been excluded from the Bible, as well as a bit of history.

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

I'm not often fond of wikis as they're too easily edited by people looking to put their own spin on things, but I plug that one for the fact that they made a very nice, neat table of the main versions of the Bible and what books are in them and where compared to the others.

So yes, books were discarded for various political reasons of the time during which church leaders were deciding upon the matter.

Answer 3

That would be the Council of Trent, not Nicea and it was books which must be considered "as sacred and canonical".

Some Protestant Bibles have "discarded" these books.


The Bible not only contains the word of God; it is the word of God. The primary author is the Holy Ghost, or, as it is commonly expressed, the human authors wrote under the influence of Divine inspiration. It was declared by the Vatican Council that the sacred and canonical character of Scripture would not be sufficiently explained by saying that the books were composed by human diligence and then approved by the Church, or that they contained revelation without error. They are sacred and canonical "because, having been written by inspiration of the Holy Ghost, that have God for their author, and as such have been handed down to the Church". The inerrancy of the Bible follows as a consequence of this Divine authorship. Wherever the sacred writer makes a statement as his own, that statement is the word of God and infallibly true, whatever be the subject-matter of the statement.

It will be seen, therefore, that though the inspiration of any writer and the sacred character of his work be antecedent to its recognition by the Church yet we are dependent upon the Church for our knowledge of the existence of this inspiration. She is the appointed witness and guardian of revelation. From her alone we know what books belong to the Bible. At the Council of Trent she enumerated the books which must be considered "as sacred and canonical". They are the seventy-two books found in Catholic editions, forty-five in the Old Testament and twenty-seven in the New. Protestant copies usually lack the seven books (viz: Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, and First and Second Maccabees) and parts of books (viz: Esther 10:4-16:24, and Daniel 3:24-90; 13:1-14:42) which are not found in the Jewish editions of the Old Testament.

Answer 4

It is true, that many texts were rejected as appropriate for the Bible. The term "should've" is relative and subjective as were the judgments on all the gospels. What is necessary to understand is that the Bible, the so called revealed word of God, is an anthology of texts assembled by a group of men under the sponsorship of the Roman Catholic Church. Is it so hard to imagine that these men might have entertained political, economic and other motives in the selection of these texts? Who appointed them and gave them enough scholarly knowledge, particularly by today's standards, to make these determinations?

The Bible contains some great stories and literature. It is beyond me however that anyone can call it the "revealed word of God" with a straight face.

Answer 5

For sure.

You must realize that it had been three centuries AFTER the public ministry of Yeshua Messiah/Jesus Christ and, by then, His followers had grown exponentially. And the only way for His teachings to propagate was through the subsequent writings of His devout disciples--starting from His own mother, His siblings, His apostles, and thousands of scribes later...

The formation of the early RCC via the Council of Nicaea discarded not only hundreds, but even thousands, of books and scrolls that didn't suit their needs at the time. For the most part they abolished, burned, banned or kept them HIDDEN in their Archives and deemed them to being "heretical", which was/is grounds for excommunication.

In one sweeping motion across the entire Holy Roman Empire, the Church began its purgation and complete obliteration of the Brotherhood of Essenes --from whence Yeshua's family came and belonged to--and all the Sabbath Keepers [the Jews] which resulted in the Jewish Diaspora, i.e., the "scattering of the Jews" throughout the World in order to survive persecution.

The Holy Bible itself DOES NOT contain or even mention about the Essenes, which was the THIRD LARGEST Jewish population following the Pharisees and the Sadducees.

These discarded or other "extraneous" books eventually became known as the Gnostic Gospels, including the recent discovery [pre-1950s?] of the so-called DEAD SEA SCROLLS that was unearthed in one of the Essene communities in Qumran, west of the Dead Sea... that rocked the world of the biblical scholars into controversy of contents of the Holy Bible up to the present time.

And so far, the Vatican remains silent about the discrepancies found therein...

Peace be with you.

Answer 6

You could probably google this and decide for yourself, but let me think back to my College days (at a Christian University) The Council of Nicea met and reviewed all documents that were from or thought to be from "Biblical" times. I was taught that they through prayerful consideration and weighing all evidence decided which ones were more worthy of "canonization" If it seemed silly or did not follow the tone of the authoritative works they left it out. Look at any Bible that has the Apocrypha in it and read Bell and the Dragon and decide for your self it it has "Biblical" Merritt. The Maccabees is also the right period but show little in the way God was working through His people.

These "other" books are easy enough to find online or at a Christian book store. Read them and judge for yourself. As for me I find there is enough in the Bible they produced to keep me busy serving God with out fear of being misled.

Answer 7

Not exactly. They had criteria for determining which books should be in the Bible. Martin Luther and Henry the 8th took several books out of the Catholic Bible. Those books are now considered good books, but not God-inspired. They were not part of the Jewish Torah, that's why they were removed.

Answer 8

As I understand it it wasn't about excluding certain books, but rather deciding which books were worthy of inclusion. Let's face it, any time you have a committee compiles an anthology some author is going to get his nickers in a twist because his work was not included.

Of course, it would be silly to believe that the selection of books wasn't colored by the political and philosophical landscape of the time.

There are a set of books called the Apocrypha that contains some of the books that were not included.

Answer 9

Well, there was some bitter feeling about the inclusion of Hebrews and Revelation, as well as the exclusion of Shepherd of Hermas and the Epistles of Clement and Barnabas, but on the whole, they chose well enough. Some of the books were nearly incomprehensible, some were ridiculously pious (such as the "infancy gospels") and some, such as the Gnostic literature, were going down a very different path.

You can read some here:
http://www.pseudepigrapha.com/
Bring coffee.

Answer 10

No, they discarded books that did not belong in the Canon. The 66 books of the Bible were not put there arbitrarily. They had to meet specific qualifications, such as Apostolic authority, to make the cut.