Canonization of the New Testament - It took over 200 years...so....?

Question

The process of NT canonization took place between the 2nd and 4th centuries. The early church used the 4 principles of; authorship, nature of text, universality and inspirational character to decide what went in and what was left out to finally produce 27 "books" that somewhat loosely fit together to create a big story.

So why is such emphasis placed by some on the final products Inerrability when it was compiled by a committee?

Chris..I'm sorry to say you are utterly and copletely mistaken. The process is well understood and you appear to live in a world of uneducated "darkness" in order to preserve your belief structure.

LC...Of course some of the elements were used in the early church prior to canonization....Paul wrote his letters TO the churches!!!!!

Job...Thank you for your thoughtful and educated response as well as your concise summary of other arguments presented. Pleasure to receive your input.

Answer 1

You failed to mention the fact that during this lengthy process, therre were out right "wars" between the varying sides of the arguments as to which should and should not be accepted.

The letters of some later named as "saints" to other "saints" are as incredible as to their hostility and anger as they are their revelatory nature of the process.

In this process, many persons literally lost their lives, were banned a heretics, demonized and worse.

It proves to be a fasinating history of how a "faith" so as to gain acceptance and security abandonned the teachings of its supposed founder and the practices he followed throughout his life (such as circumcision, dietary practices and restrictions, communal living that supports the poorest of the community, etc.), edited (or one migfht say corrupted) the teachings and writing of his original followers, denying many more than they excepted and excepting only those that fit neatly into their political purpose, etc. so as to remake themselves in the "image and likeness" of the prevailing government of Rome.

One might liken this to how modern "Christianity" has also twisted the teachings so as to attract a larger crowd, to gain greater acceptance and so as to fit neatly into the popular culture of the prevailing societies in which the saem is being practiced.

The majority of person who accept the "New Testament" as a self arising edition of the "Word of God" have little if any knowledge of its histroical development, nor can they read the same in the original Greek, they do not know the differences in the Torah and other Judaic writings as compared to the "Christian" Old Testament, etc.

Keeping the masses ignorant has long been an acceptable manner by which to keep the sheep nicely in the fold.

Good question that I hope will lead at least a few to thoguht!

Ma'a salaam

Addition:

I just read the post by another respondent who said she has access to "original" copies and that the Christian Old Testament is a fasithful reproductiong of the Torah and other Hebraic writings.
She must possess the key so the Vatican Vaults, must be a high creditted academic and soci-historian otherwise she is using copies of copies of copies.

Another respondent failed to mention one of the most important Councils, that of Nicea (circa 345 C.E.) when not only the New testament was codiefied and compiled but also teh doctrines of the trinity and the divinty of Jesus were first declared as dogmatic truths, in her "cut and paste".

Why both of these two persons see a need to present a false image of themselves as experts when, indeed they are not, is beyond me. Wouldn't God/YHWH/Allah, Subhanna wa Ta'ala, know the truth regardless of how they present the same?

Answer 2

The process of canonization was complex and lengthy. It was characterized by a compilation of books that Christians found inspiring in worship and teaching, relevant to the historical situations in which they lived, and consonant with the Old Testament.

Contrary to popular misconception, the New Testament canon was not summarily decided in large, bureaucratic Church council meetings, but rather developed very slowly over many centuries. This is not to say that formal councils and declarations were not involved, however. Some of these include the Council of Trent of 1546 for Roman Catholicism (by vote: 24 yea, 15 nay, 16 abstain),[3] the Thirty-Nine Articles of 1563 for the Church of England, the Westminster Confession of Faith of 1647 for Calvinism, and the Synod of Jerusalem of 1672 for Greek Orthodoxy.

The early New Testament manuscripts can be classified into certain major families or types of text. A "text-type" is the name given to a family of texts with a common ancestor. It must be noted that many early manuscripts can be composed of several different text-types. For example, Codex Washingtonianus consists of only the four gospels, and yet, different parts are written in different text-types. Four distinctive New Testament text-types have been defined:

The Alexandrian text-type is usually considered the best and most faithful at preserving the original; it is usually brief and austere. The main examples are the Codex Vaticanus, Codex Sinaiticus and Bodmer Papyri.

The Western text-type has a fondness for paraphrase and is generally the longest. Most significant is the Western version of Acts, which is 10% longer. The main examples are the Codex Bezae, Codex Claromontanus, Codex Washingtonianus, Old Latin versions (prior to the Vulgate), and quotes by Marcion, Tatian, Irenaeus, Tertullian and Cyprian.

The Caesarean text-type is a mixture of Western and Alexandrian types and is found in the Chester Beatty Papyri and is quoted by Eusebius, Cyril of Jerusalem and Armenians.

The Byzantine text-type is the textform that is contained in a majority of the extant manuscripts and thus is often called the "Majority Text." The origin of this text is debated among scholars. Some scholars, observing that few Byzantine readings exist among early uncial manuscript witnesses, contend that the text formed late and contains conflated readings. Other scholars look to the shear number of consistent witnesses to the Byzantine textform, and the existence of readings which parallel the Byzantine textform in very early translations, as evidence that the Byzantine textform is probably the closest text to that originally penned by the New Testament authors. The Byzantine textform can be found in the Gospels of Codex Alexandrinus, later uncial texts and most minuscule texts. A variant of the Byzantine text, called the Textus Receptus, is the basis of Erasmus's printed Greek New Testament of 1516, which became the basis of the 1611 King James Version of the English New Testament.

Most modern English versions of the New Testament are based on critical reconstructions of the Greek text, such as the United Bible Societies' Greek New Testament or Nestle-Alands' Novum Testamentum Graece, which have a pronounced Alexandrian character.

You are correct in saying that the New Testament isn't infalliable. There have been many changes and some Christians choose to believe that the end product of the New Testament is divinely inspired. There is enough information for the jest of the message that Christ brought to us to be known. However, those who think it's all there the way God wants it to be are fooling themselves. Study to show thyself approved!

Answer 3

Compartmentalizing revelation is always a mistake.

Remember that Jesus promised His followers that His Church would be inerrant, that is, "the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." He also promised that the Holy Spirit would guide them and that He Himself would be with them 'til the end of time.

Given those promises it is not infeasible to imagine that the Lord God Himself guided those men to choose ONLY those writings which fulfilled their guidelines and to accept no others and that in so doing they merely followed the promptings of the Spirit.

After that it simply became a matter of being very, very careful whenever new copies were made.
Since I have access to the oldest of these books and can read them in their original languages, I can personally assure you that they were indeed very, very careful.

As with the New, so with the Old Testament. The books chosen by the Council's members were taken in whole from the Jewish copy known as the Septuagint, or the Seventy. So named for the 70 Jewish scholars who had compiled it in Alexandria, which was where the intellectual scholars of Judaism had fled after Alexander the Great and his generals had decimated the Jews of Israel.

This copy of Jewish holy books was compiled well before Herod sat upon David's throne at the behest of Rome, but AFTER the second temple had been profaned by the Greek overlord in the latter part of the second century BCE.

It was that lateness of date which caused Martin Luther to dump those books which had been written after the profanation of the Temple. And that, kiddies is why the Protestant Bible differs from the Catholic/Orthodox rendition. NOT because people got careless with transcribing, but because Martin Luther decided that he knew God's mind better than the leaders of the early Church.

Answer 4

Christianity was a broadly spread community of mixed doctrinal views. Homogeneous, early Christian beliefs is a fallacy. Main divisions occurred between the Historical/Literalist camp and the Allegorical/Mystical camp.

Different communities throughout the Empire had their own compilations of sacred writings with varying levels of acceptance. So initially there was no set approved list of writings also available to all communities to read and follow.

Eventually the Literalists had sufficient votes to enforce their own selection and treated other writings as erroneous or heretical. By this time the Literalists had civic and military 'back-up' (under Mithra-worshipping Constantine) to force this selection on the masses.

Answer 5

Wow. I'm going to answer this sincerely, but its going to be lengthy.
The Bible is special because it is a compilation of books considered by scholars to be Canon.
Canonicity is determined by God. A book is not inspired because men made it canonical; it is canonical because God inspired it. It is not the antiquity, authenticity or even religious value that makes a book canonical or authoritative. On the contrary, a book is valuable because it is canonical, and not canonical because it is or was considered valuable. Inspiration determines canonization, and confusion at this point not only dulls the edge of authority but it mistakes the effect (a cannonical book) with the cause (inspiration of God). Canonicity is DETERMINED or estsblished authoritatively by God; it is merely DISCOVERED by man.

HOW did man discover or become aware of what God had done? How did the church fathers know when they had come upon a canonical book? There were 5 basic principles that were used in order to DISCOVER the books which God had DETERMINED to be canonical. It is instructive to look at these principles individually in their actual historical operation.

1) IS IT AUTHORITATIVE? This is perhaps the first and most important question that was asked by the fathers. Does this or that book speak with authority? Can it be said of this book as it was of Jesus, "And they were astonished at his teaching, for the taught them as one that had authority" (Mark 1:22)? Does this book come with a divine "Thus saith the Lord"? Does it have a self-vindicating authority that commands attention as it communicates?

2) IS IT PROPHETIC? The next question to be asked was: Was this book written by a man of God? It seemed reasonable that THE WORD OF GOD INSPIRED BY THE SPIRIT OF GOD FOR THE PEOPLE OF GOD would not be given through anyone other than a MAN OF GOD (II Peter 1:20; Hebrews 1:1). Thus, a book was judged as to whether or not it was genuinely written by the stated author who was a spokesman in the mainstream of redemptive revelation, either a prophet (whether in the Old or New Testament times) or an apostle.

3) IS IT AUTHENTIC? This question of the Fathers asked, "Does the book tell the TRUTH about God, man, etc., as it is already known by previous revelation?" And is it a record of facts as they actually occurred? Obviously, a book cannot contradict known truth and still be truly God's.

4) IS IT DYNAMIC? Another question was asked by the fathers, although sometimes only implicitly: Does the book come with the POWER of God? They believed the Word of God was "living and active" (Hebrews 4:12), and consequently ought to have a transforming force for edification (II Timothy 3:16) and evangelization (I Peter 1:23). If the obeyed message of a book did not effect its stated goal, if it did not have the power to change a life, then God was apparently not behind its message. A MESSAGE of God would certainly be backed by the MIGHT of God.

5) WAS IT RECEIVED? The capstone of the questions was: Has this book been ACCEPTED generally by the PEOPLE of God? Compared to modern standards, transportation was slow and communication was poor during the first centuries of the Christian era. Thus, the full canonical lists were not universally agreed upon in any official way for a few centuries. This meant that when final decision was made and, in many cases even long before that, the collection and listing of books was being done by people to whom the book was not originally directed. So they necesssarily had to depend upon testimony, circulation, and usage, and the above mentioned four principles in order to make a final decision about the acceptance of the given books.
In a sense, then, the acceptance of a book by the church councils of later centuries is not a srong indepent witness to the canonicity of that book. It is rather a confirmation, and does serve the obvious purpose of MAKING FINAL the decision and availability of the books. After all, if the latter Fathers had not collected and DISSEMINATED the books, what good would be accomplished by the fact that the earlier Fathers had ACCEPTED them? The continuation of the canonical books necessitated not only their COLLECTION and RECOGNITION, but also their TRANSMISSION to subsequent generations.

Source(s):
A General Introduction to the Bible, by Norman L. Geisler and William E. Nix, Moody Bible Institute Press copyright 1968
For the sake of brevity, I have only included the FIRST paragraph after each question. The book goes into MUCH further detail.

Answer 6

Understanding scripture to be the "Word" of the Almighty, we accept that He had a hand in the choice. For instance, the book of Revelation only made it by one vote. You might consider that that meant it wasn't very inspired. You might understand it to mean that many people didn't understand/appreciate it, but that YHVH decided it should be included.

Answer 7

When the first Scriptures were written they were recognized as inspired and truth. there are records of the New Testament scriptures being used in churches long before any "official" canonization process.

You assume we are fools, and that we have not researched the early church? You assume you are smarter than we are? Good luck with that.

Answer 8

Lol, Chris must also think that the whole Bible was originally written in English and the original manuscripts are in the KJV.

L.C. is another fundie who thinks like Chris. No we do not think you are fools...just ignorant.

Answer 9

You are incorrect. It didn't take 200 years to canonize. Canonization was immediate.

God's Word is eternal. Don't buy the revisionist "history" of certain groups. What was and wasn't God's Word was clear then as it is today.

The Bible is God's Word and is 100% true.