Did the Catholic Church compile the books of the Bible?

Question

I have often met some Christians who, in reply to my question, say that early Christians (in a vague, generic sense) determined and compiled the books of the Bible. I was not satisfied with this type of evasive reply. But some authority should have decided which books are authoritative, and they should have had agreement how to interpret the Bible. In fact, there should have been some authority which sanctioned the doctrines of the Trinity, the Virgin Birth, the human and divine natures of Jesus Christ, etc. Otherwise, early Christians would have been free individually to interpret the scriptures as they saw fit. Obviously, this was not intended, which is why as early as the 2nd century AD, those who disagreed with the authority were expelled, anathematized and banished. There was therefore only one sole authority. If the Catholic Church compiled the Bible, then its interpretations thereof must be deemed authoritative. Please resolve.

Answer 1

I think you are mostly correct about the New Testament. The Old Testament has a slightly different story.

The New Testament canon of the Catholic Bible and the Protestant Bible are the same with 27 Books.

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 of 46 books, 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 books removed were Tobit, Judith, 1 Maccabees, 2 Maccabees, Wisdom (of Solomon), Sirach, and Baruch. Parts of existing books were also removed including Psalm 151 (from Psalms), parts of the Book of Esther, Susanna (from Daniel as chapter 13), and Bel and the Dragon (from Daniel as chapter 14).

The Christian Church did not follow suit but kept all the books in the Septuagint. 46 + 27 = 73 Books total.

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

Here is a Catholic Bible website: http://www.nccbuscc.org/nab/bible/

With love in Christ.

Answer 2

yes, simply put the very early church put together what they considered to be the most compelling biographies and teachings of jesus christ. the problem most people have with this explanation is that this is misinterpreted as several priests on a council determining what the rest of civilization should be reading about jesus. lee strobel's case for christ points out that this would be like a board of scholars assigned the task to see if beethoven was a great composer and musician. thats ignorant, and a waste of time, we already know that. beauty is in the eye of the beholder, the reason these books were contained in the new testament is because the masses had already popularized and circulated the books of the bible. the purpose the early church's compilation of the books was merely to consolidate and centralize, not to grant authority. Authority was indirectly granted by early christians as the better books were more widespread, thus the books more known and widespread vindicated themselves to the catholic church through circulation and popularity. the people spoke, and the church listened.

Answer 3

Hi Rommel, yes the scriptures that we know today have been carefully and painstakenly put together by the Catholic church,but this has not been a quick fix,many learned men have spent lifetimes pouring over the early writings and through much prayer and guidance from the Holy spirit have weeded out that which is of little truth or use.
Saint Jerome for example spent many years translating the orginal greek scriptures into latin and his transaltion is probably one of the most accurate ever,also the various councils of the church containing the great scholars of Catholic doctrine have carefully chosen the texts that are authentic.
There have been many false gospels back in the 2nd and 3rd centuries and other writings that were not of the Apostles that sects and various groups touted as real but thanks to the church these have been rooted out and shown to be fales.

Answer 4

Since the church still has the scrolls and many more recent discoveries of scripture the task of checking and double checking the accuracy and validity of every word of the Bible has been ongoing for almost 2000 years now.

It is not a light undertaking and is still ongoing. All of the so-called Gnotstic Gospels have been proven and proven agiain to be inaccurate or in some cases hostile to the cause of Christ and were written to confuse and mislead people on purpose.

Answer 5

The first respondent is correct in that church scholars picked the chapters which would go into the new testament after much research. However, I would point out that they used research methods and practices of the 3rd century - I don't know how valid thier methods would be considered, today.

Also, the respondent refered to prayer and spiritual guidance used in the selection process. Right there, that would seem to invalidate any objective scholarly efforts to separate wheat from chaff and to instead result in the selection of passages which most closely support the scholars spiritual beliefs.

Therefore, I don't think there is much evidence to conclude that the "correct" decisions were made according to truth, or accuracy. Other criteria certainly played a role.

Answer 6

There are two issues here. First, that of the nature of the Canon now known as the Bible. Second, that of authority over interpretation.

The first Christians relied upon the Jewish Canon, which is mainly what we call the Old Testament or Hebrew Scriptures, although there were some exceptions. These also relied upon the Four Gospels (written mostly between 50 A.D. and 100 A.D.) and the epistles that collectively comprise what we today consider the New Testament or Christian Scriptures.

The problem is that other books and epistles were also in circulation. There were heretical "gospels" (that of Thomas and that of Judas, for instance), as well as other correspondence between the apostles and the early churches. Paul wrote more than two letters to the Corinthians, for instance.

Among the first challenges faced by the early Church (whether you wish to define it as Catholic in character or reserve that nomenclature for after the split with the Byzantine Church) were heresies and heretical doctrines, many of which were supported by heretical writings. These were faced very early on, hence the warnings in 2 Cor 11:4 and Gal 1:6. The response then was to bring all preachers together and define the doctrine of the faith - to assert through reason and study the things we modern Christians take for granted - the divinity of Jesus, for instance. This required that an official Canon (set of books) be assembled to refute the apocryphal works. Not all the books were decided at one time - hence the difference between Catholic and Protestant Bibles is not so much that "Catholics added" or "Protestants took away," but that scholarship concluded only after the split that these certain books were authentic and divinely inspired.

Hence the Canon, now called the Bible, did not fall from the sky, intact in King James English, but is the result of literally thousands of years of transcription, re-transcription, translation, scholarship and debate. This does not refute the belief that Scripture, as it stands today, is divinely inspired and inerrant. Indeed, the process was intended to ensure that only those divinely-inspired documents were presented as Canon.

Which brings us to the second question, that of authority. If two parties hold to differing interpretations of Scripture, there must be an authority to resolve the difference. It is difficult to hold up Scripture as its own authority. One can attempt exegesis in the spirit and letter of Scripture, but ultimately differences will arise. An authority is therefore necessary not to trump Scripture, but to correct those who misread Scripture. This was an important part of the role of the early Church, and it was the subsequent rejection of one authority for another that has driven the multiplicity of denominations. The schism between East and West was primarily driven by politics, and Luther initially wanted to reform the Catholic Church from within, but the advent of American Evangelicalism and Fundamentalism have brought wave upon wave of separations. One of our deacons grew up Pentecostal and it drove him nuts to see an associate pastor disagree with a head pastor over something in Scripture, only to take a portion of the community and form a new church altogether.

The problem with subjecting Scripture to its own authority is that, in our imperfect wisdom, it's too easy to subject Scripture to our own authority, and hence we ourselves, individual readers, become the highest authority for ourselves on interpretation.

That's one argument behind the Catholic Church being the central authority established by Christ for the interpretation and promulgation of Scripture. Not all Christians adhere to it (if they did, they'd all follow the Catholic tradition of Christianity, rather than their own denominations or non-denominations), but there is compelling logic within the evidence of history to support it.

Answer 7

Yes that happened at the council of Nicea. Over 20 scriptures were boted out of the accepted cannon of the scriptures,

Then the protestants removed seven other scriptures after they left the Catholic church.

Answer 8

Here is information about how it was decided which books would be included in & taken out of the Bible and the Council of Nicea, where the church decided what the official Christian beliefs would be. The third and fourth links contain information about the books that were removed from the Bible.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bible
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Council_of_Nicaea
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-canonical_books_referenced_in_the_Bible
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gospel

Answer 9

The Catholic church stores the original manuscripts. And it is difficult for scholars to get access.