Why was the Bible created?

Question

300 years after Christ the early church scourred the middle east, Europe and Africa looking for ancient documents, which they gathered up, authenticated, sorted out, debated what should and should not be included to create this Book we call the Bible and then copied it all painstakingly by hand. All a monumental and time consuming task, not the easiest thing to do. At the time most people couldn't read or write, very few Bibles would have been in existance and the church was not to know that so many of us would become literate. Christianity had followed an oral tradition and continued even after the Bibles creation. So why did they decide to create a Bible?

Answer 1

Control.

Answer 2

The idea that all revealed truth is to be found in "66 books" is not only not in Scripture, it is contradicted by Scripture (1 Corinthians 11:2, 2 Thessalonians 2:15, 2 Thessalonians 3:6, 1 Timothy 3:15, 2 Peter 1:20-21, 2 Peter 3:16). It is a concept unheard of in the Old Testament, where the authority of those who sat on the Chair of Moses (Matthew 23:2-3) existed. In addition to this, for 400 years, there was no defined canon of "Sacred Scripture" aside from the Old Testament; there was no "New Testament"; there was only Tradition and non-canonical books and letters.




Protestants claim the Bible is the only rule of faith, meaning that it contains all of the material one needs for theology and that this material is sufficiently clear that one does not need apostolic tradition or the Church’s magisterium (teaching authority) to help one understand it. In the Protestant view, the whole of Christian truth is found within the Bible’s pages. Anything extraneous to the Bible is simply non-authoritative, unnecessary, or wrong—and may well hinder one in coming to God.

Catholics, on the other hand, recognize that the Bible does not endorse this view and that, in fact, it is repudiated in Scripture. The true "rule of faith"—as expressed in the Bible itself—is Scripture plus apostolic tradition, as manifested in the living teaching authority of the Catholic Church, to which were entrusted the oral teachings of Jesus and the apostles, along with the authority to interpret Scripture correctly.

Answer 3

The Bible is made up of 2 parts, the Old Testament and the New Testament. The Old Testament which was complete around 325 B.C. and was written over about 1200 years. The New Testament complete around 95 A.D. and was written over about 55 years.
This " 300 years after Christ and scouring Europe and Africa for documents" is someone's imagination.
The debate at Nicea around 312 A.D. was about spurious (fraudulent) documents that "some" wanted included, and it was not over the 66 books we have today. The 66 books in use today are the 66 in use in the early church at the turn of the 1st century. The catholics officially added books that they regularly used to their Bible at Trent around 1650 (?) A.D. This did not affect anyone else.

Answer 4

The whole oral thing wasn't working out too well, so....

They thought they could use an "owners manual" for the believing masses to follow.

Part history lesson: ... Jobe beget a bunch of people and they beget some others...etc. This one got smited and that one got stoned or should I say "rocked" and it goes on and on... Oh yea, that flood thingie happened in there somewhere too.

And part rules to live by: ...Thou shalt not marry a whole bunch of women and move to Idaho, thou shalt not open email from unknown evildoers, have a firm handshake and don't smoke... oh wait a minute, that last one isn't true... it clearly says in the bible that "Jesus lit up on a camel" sooooo I suppose smoking is okay.

Anyway I digress, they collected the "Best of the Written Word, Volume I" and decided to give it to the Catholic Church as the One and Only True Religion of Christianity, or so they are proclaiming so that man could be held in check and prevented from doing anything remotely enjoyable in life as it is surely included in the list of "Don't's"

Thus endeth the lesson......





g-day!

Answer 5

The individual writers were inspired to record the teaching of Jesus and the practices of the early Church during its formation. It was the practice to spread the faith through letter and the spoken word.

Primarily these books were collected and canonized to suppress false teaching that was threatening the Church. They were decided at the three African Synods in the late fourth and early fifth century adding the New Testament to the already selected Canon of the Essene/Diaspora Canon known as the Septuagint.

In Christ
Fr. Joseph

johnnywalker,

Your Biblical history is very flawed. I know that you did not intentionally bear false witness against the Church claiming that it added Scriptures to the Old Testament but the facts are very different. The reason that the Protestant Bible is missing some of the books of the Bible is a very recent occurrence as even the first Protestant Bibles contained the same books as originally canonized by the Christian Church. Jesus quoted from and the first Christians used the Greek Septuagint and that is the Bible canonized by the Christian Church. Recently Protestant Christians have adopted the Pharisaical Canon of the Old Testament decided after the death of our Lord at the Jewish Council of Jamnia that is missing some of the books of the Christian Canon originally used by the Church.

Answer 6

The Bible was written and tampered with by humans The Bible has created the definition of God many people have, which is not the one I share.

Answer 7

Humanity needs religion. If we do not have hope in something better than this life, or that all we do in this life has to be for something, some purpose. So religions are created. Humans evolved from animals and now we think we are above all other forms of life, so we need a guide, a master, so we create one to guide us.
If humanity saw it self as it truly is, as a very social animal, with basic needs, we would not need religion. As it is we need it to keep us in check, so to answer your question, control, without a doubt, but we need it.

Answer 8

Without getting into sticky details,it was INSPIRED by God,as our Guide,Manuel of directions to cope with life etc. Remember the Bible says (and man has proven it in the last 6 thou. years) that is not in man to direct his own steps.And we could say he may have overseen the exposing of these books against all odds seeing that Satin had rullership over the earth.Good question Purple peace 59

Answer 9

Think of the bible as a study guige. You can use it but you still need to study your text book. Life and God are way too complicated to be fit in one book.

Answer 10

The early church leaders had a table with a wobbly leg. The Yellow Pages hadn't been invented yet so they invented the bible to prop it up.