Authenticity of the Bible

[Zenith Darksea]

Edit - thread split from The Devil/Satan thread

Shyam Popat, you are giving quite a misconception of the Bible. You've been reading too much Da Vinci Code, it seems. You will find, if you were to do any research on the subject, that the books of the Bible were all written long before St Constantine the Great converted to Christianity. What the Ecumenical Councils did was to make the structure of the Bible official and universal (the four Gospels and the Saints' letters as we have them were already the most common combination of books by far, but there were still some others [such as the controversial Gospel of Judas] in use that were heretical), while weeding out the books that were heretical, unreliable and inauthentic. The concept that St Constantine 'wrote' the Bible as we have it today is wholly inaccurate - the Ecumenical councils didn't add anything at all to Holy Scripture. But it is true to say that the Ecumenical Councils had a significant effect on the overall structure of the Bible, and a lot of Protestants are naturally uneasy about admitting this (it would force them to agree to Orthodox - or Roman Catholic, perhaps - Holy Tradition). Anyway, a lot of historians have been writing about this topic lately (largely thanks to Mr Brown).

[removeduser_426582376423734]

Shyam Popat, you are giving quite a misconception of the Bible. You've been reading too much Da Vinci Code, it seems. You will find, if you were to do any research on the subject, that the books of the Bible were all written long before St Constantine the Great converted to Christianity. What the Ecumenical Councils did was to make the structure of the Bible official and universal (the four Gospels and the Saints' letters as we have them were already the most common combination of books by far, but there were still some others [such as the controversial Gospel of Judas] in use that were heretical), while weeding out the books that were heretical, unreliable and inauthentic. The concept that St Constantine 'wrote' the Bible as we have it today is wholly inaccurate - the Ecumenical councils didn't add anything at all to Holy Scripture. But it is true to say that the Ecumenical Councils had a significant effect on the overall structure of the Bible, and a lot of Protestants are naturally uneasy about admitting this (it would force them to agree to Orthodox - or Roman Catholic, perhaps - Holy Tradition). Anyway, a lot of historians have been writing about this topic lately (largely thanks to Mr Brown).

You're right, I may have been influenced by that horrid creature, but my point still stands. As you said yourself, the Ecumenical Council "weeded out the books that were heretical, unreliable and inauthentic". Is this not evidence enough that the Romans compiled their own version of the Bible, straightening out the edges for themselves, and disallowing all others as "heretical"?

NB. I didn't say "Sacred Feminine" in there whatsoever, Brown hasn't got me yet!

[Sétanta]

You're right, I may have been influenced by that horrid creature, but my point still stands. As you said yourself, the Ecumenical Council "weeded out the books that were heretical, unreliable and inauthentic". Is this not evidence enough that the Romans compiled their own version of the Bible, straightening out the edges for themselves, and disallowing all others as "heretical"?

There are many books still considered to be Canon but not a main part of the Church's beliefs. Those are the Apocrypha. These books were not included in the Bible because authorship or authenticity is unknown. Other books were tossed out because they were heretical, not because the Church didn't like what they were saying.

[Tom Paine]

Other books were tossed out because they were heretical, not because the Church didn't like what they were saying.

The difference between these being? Remember, at that time the Church was deciding what was heretical!

[Sétanta]

The difference between these being? Remember, at that time the Church was deciding what was heretical!

They were deciding what was Heretical based on what the Gospels said. If it contradicted the Gospel then it was heretical and thrown out, disregarding what it was said inside past that point.

[removeduser_426582376423734]

They were deciding what was Heretical based on what the Gospels said. If it contradicted the Gospel then it was heretical and thrown out, disregarding what it was said inside past that point.

Thats speculation. No-one can know if the church was randomly deciding, or if it was truly greedy for power, or whatever. The only thing we do know is that some books that were there, are not today. What is the conclusion?

[Mylae]

They were deciding what was Heretical based on what the Gospels said. If it contradicted the Gospel then it was heretical and thrown out, disregarding what it was said inside past that point.

interesting. so the four gospels are wrong, or at least one of them.

why?

try to get a list of the twelve apostles by the four gospels. surprise: each gospel report different peoples.

no, heresy were decided on other basis, like the divergence of the doctrinal basis and so, till to likelihood of the late emperors.

[rez]

"Right, so you're not going to accept His teaching on the Church because it was written by a man,"

I never said i didn't accept them i was asking you to look at it as the words of the followers of the man not the man himself. This gives it an inherent spin becauseit goes into specifics we can't be sure of.

"So why are you so happy to accept His other teachings, which, incidentally, were written by the same man and his self same companions?"

This is the tenet - whereas the above references were small specific sentences undoubtedly written by apostles rather than the true words of Jesus, the broad teachings of Jesus that reoccur throughout the gospels can be identified as the message of Jesus.

For instance, taking that one reference to church with Peter we can see that the author believed Jesus wanted Peter to found his Church. However comparing throughout all the gospels and canonical texts the most recurring teaching that you are to love God and love your neighbour tells me that this had most certainly been a key tenet of Jesus's teaching.

Do you see what i mean? I don't dismiss all the scripture - but i use it together to glean the base facts.

Jesus did not 'rip apart' the doctrine of Judaism. If you actually read any of the scriptures (though apparently you don't have to, as you don't accept them as His words anyway, you just somehow know what His teaching was), you will see that He often says that He is here to 'fulfil' what came before, and not to completely destroy it. While it is true that He turned the money lenders out of the temple, He was still quite happy to teach in the temple.

This was my fault, i used Rip apart as an expression too hap-hazardly. I have studied the scriptures, albeit probably far less than yourself as an actual Christian, and i do know all about the Fulfillment of Judaism. I use the phrase rip apart because i compare their Judaism to Christianity and there is barely any semblence at all (on a commandment/law basis). Consider how many hundreds of commandments the Jews were forced to abide by, the many ritual sacrifices, the exclusivity of Judaism, the strictness of the sabbath, the strictness of punishment and so forth. Compare this to how the teachings and practices of the Christians developed and it seems Judaism was turned on its head.

The fulfillment of Judaism is a tricky phrase, just because Jesus may have come to fulfill judaism does not in fact prove that the Judaism that preceded him was right. Fulfill COULD be seen by some as a nice phrase to win over the Jewish potential converts whilst at the same time proposing such radical changes to the Jewish system that eventually made Jesus a marked man.

While it is true that He turned the money lenders out of the temple, He was still quite happy to teach in the temple.

This is really indicative of my point. Again i should emphasise that teaching in the temple, preaching and helping people learn about God is NOT bad and i don't disagree with it. BUT the institutionalising of the system is where we get little additions that do not contribute to the message of Christ. - Liiiiike the money lenders? YES! the money lenders! jumping on the religious bandwagon and adding human fallibility to divine teaching. Whilst a far, FAR worse offence than the addition of procedures like the confession, the same principle applies. An addition was made to the system that was not called for in the original message.

Soooooo what do we see? Jesus throws out these anachronistic abominations and rebukes everyone for straying from the path! Removes the blighted institution and replaces with pure preaching.

God did not send Jesus to stop us worshipping liturgically (but wait, you probably still can't accept any lessons from scripture; in my view this makes your general argument rather untenable) - He sent His son to atone for man's sins. Nowhere does God or Jesus say that they want to destroy the liturgy, and all our evidence of the early Christian period shows that the liturgy certainly was not destroyed. Why should men 'bring themselves to abandon previous systems' that God had not told them to abandon? You don't change things unless there's a decent reason to change them.

You act as though Jesus made no attempts to change the Judaic systems - do we see jesus obeying the sabbath? or even preaching the continuation of ritual worship?

Just take the image of Jesus casually talking amongst the people about God and compare that to the temple - the streets running knee high with the blood of the sacrifices at passover. In my opinion the way Jesus taught was the right way and he felt no need to utilise pomp and ceremony to emphasise his message. Thats a human addition which does not contribute to the spiritual growth of loving your neighbour and loving God. Whilst we can say that going to mass and saying a hail-mary are in fact demonstrations of love (even if tedious and forced by some) for God, in my opinion i believe that coming together to learn as equals and purely just discussing the greatness of god is a far more truthful and poignant expression of love.

The road to Damascus converts Paul to a Christian - it does not give him a good solid basis of the teachings of Jesus and the experience of following him that would lead to understand in the way that John (gospel writer) MIGHT have. (I'm assuming you are familiar with the theory of John's priority over Mark). Even if incorrect the point remains that Paul was never taught by Jesus - only converted by him.

This is rather silly, really. Again, he was an Apostle, and though he may not have been one of the original twelve, Christ's own disciples were quite happy to accept him. If you can't trust Christ's apostles to create the Church the way Christ wanted them to (as Christ says that He gave them the power to... but wait, you don't accept arguments from scripture, do you?), then who can you trust?

See this is where the problem arises, i am not feeling religious at the moment so i find it very hard to believe that Christ could "give the disciples power" to create a perfect church. What i see is fallible humans working through a system they already knew because it was more stable rather than a looser form of preaching that would have been difficult to maintain.

Besides - the early church includes perhaps only the Eucharist and was probably in far better spiritual shape than the Catholic church of today. I highly doubt the early church could have imagined anything so horrible as Salem. (No i won't sink so low as to do the usual example - though Salem is rather cliche, well it serves the purpose).

Again, do please show me your evidence that Christ had no time for ceremonies. The fact that God in the Old Testament positively encouraged liturgies, the fact that Christ did nothing to discourage them, and the fact that the very first Apostolic Churches all had ceremony, this all tends to support our Orthodox side of the argument, really.

The fact that the old testament God encouraged Ceremony in no way reflects a wish of it in the new testament. Whilst Christ did nothing to directly discourage them he never utilised them as they were not needed to teach about or love God. The subtle break from ceremony can be seen in Jesus disregarding the sabbath (important EVENT, not saying) for one example but more generally the fact that instead of advocating the hundreds of Judaic Laws he merely taught us TWO things to do. And those two things will save you, nothing else was needed!

The reason, rez, why we trust the Apostles' judgments in the matter of Churches is that Christ gave them His authority in this regard

Again this is the problem where we differ. Its not one of those things that can just be argued either.

The fact that none of the early Churches employed the methodolody that only exists within a minority of our modern, Western Churches (you're quite right to point out that Christ was no modern or Western!) probably points to the fact that Christianity is a liturgical religion!

You are right, Christianity IS a Liturgical religion - thats my problem with it. What i'm saying is that Jesus's teachings weren't and he is the main man. Although we will be going around in circles concerning Jesus divinely inspiring the church fathers to do such and such.

And as for you somehow being able to accept some parts of the Holy Scriptures, but not others (the ones that prove you wrong), this is the most ridiculous thing of all!

I hope i explained this part right

[Tom Paine]

Based on a specific set of four gospels in fact... which they also finalised as the true ones, when they could have done otherwise.

[Sétanta]

Based on a specific set of four gospels in fact... which they also finalised as the true ones, when they could have done otherwise.

They could have, but then they would be taking false accounts of what happened. Remember that the Roman Accounts verified the Gospels?

[Sétanta]

They verified certain parts of the gospels, yes. But that assumes that it contradicted the texts that were not accepted... which in some cases it did not.

If it didn't contradict than it was part of the Apocrypha. Which can be true but the authorship or authenticity of the date is unknown.

[Tom Paine]

We aren't really sure of the authorship or dating of the four gospels in the Bible; the best we can say is that the earliest one was written about 30 years after Christ's death!

[Sétanta]

We aren't really sure of the authorship or dating of the four gospels in the Bible; the best we can say is that the earliest one was written about 30 years after Christ's death!

That to can be debated. Some say as early as two years after his death, some say up to a couple hundred. In any case, it was Matthew who wrote the Book of Matthew, and Mark who wrote Mark and so on. Plus, if you look through those books you can see them talking about how hundreds or thousands of people witnessed an event. Many of those would still be alive even if it was written 30 years later, so innacuracies would be found.

To an Orthodox, the Ecumenical Councils were Holy Tradition in action, with the Holy Spirit enlightening all of Christendom. To an outside observer, cynical motives will always seem likely, but there's not much I can do about that here!

Catholicism is the same. The Books selected were done so through Divine Intervention in a sense, so they can not be the "wrong" ones.

[Tom Paine]

That to can be debated. Some say as early as two years after his death, some say up to a couple hundred. In any case, it was Matthew who wrote the Book of Matthew, and Mark who wrote Mark and so on.

I'm not even sure we know that.... source?

Plus, if you look through those books you can see them talking about how hundreds or thousands of people witnessed an event. Many of those would still be alive even if it was written 30 years later, so innacuracies would be found.

Except that that presumes the events ever happened and that people have perfect memories; which they don't. if you put something to someone about an event of which they have a fuzzy memory they're more than likely to confirm it, rather than deny it.

[Sétanta]

Sorry but this is quite interesting. Who is Matthew? Why is his late gospel more important than the recordings of the Gospel of St Thomas? who apparently had some of Jesus' actual words as opposed to the guesses the gospel writers made.

Thomas didn't write a Gospel in the sense of the other ones. It is a group of sayings attributed to Jesus and stuff that Jesus said to Thomas. Matthew is one of the Apostles who wrote a Gospel within a maximum of 50 years after Jesus' death.

I'm not even sure we know that.... source?

William Albright, a John Hopkins proffesor says that the Gospels were writen within 50 years of his death. Most other Scholars approve of this estimate, guessing that the Gopels were writen 20-50 years after his death.

The two year or 100 year thing was a representation showing that although the guesses are widely varied, most learned people have a realistic estimate within all realms of possibility

Except that that presumes the events ever happened and that people have perfect memories; which they don't. if you put something to someone about an event of which they have a fuzzy memory they're more than likely to confirm it, rather than deny it.

If 29 out of 30 holocaust victims tell you the same basic thing happened at a Death Camp they were all interned in, wouldn't you suspect that to be the truth. Of course it isn't perfect, but people go to jail based on eyewitnesses so it is completely possible to base books on the words of hundreds of people.

[Tom Paine]

William Albright, a John Hopkins proffesor says that the Gospels were writen within 50 years of his death. Most other Scholars approve of this estimate, guessing that the Gopels were writen 20-50 years after his death.

The two year or 100 year thing was a representation showing that although the guesses are widely varied, most learned people have a realistic estimate within all realms of possibility

I was meaning more the matter of authorship... however I'll find some literature on the matter by him and read it.

If 29 out of 30 holocaust victims tell you the same basic thing happened at a Death Camp they were all interned in, wouldn't you suspect that to be the truth. Of course it isn't perfect, but people go to jail based on eyewitnesses so it is completely possible to base books on the words of hundreds of people.

They haven't been told its what happened however... they're also eyewitnesses asked to give accounts yet we have no records of any such occurences in the Gospels or of the gospels.

[Zenith Darksea]

Well, we Orthodox have the concept of Holy Tradition, and it comes in quite significantly on this point. To some extent, the Grim Squeaker has a point, but to our minds the emphasis is placed differently. The Holy Spirit was acting through the Ecumenical Councils (and bear in mind, it was a vote of Bishops, not of the Emperor, that decided the outcome of an Ecumenical Council) to show us what was and what wasn't heretical. However, I think that most historians of this period are generally agreed that an unofficial canon of Gospels and letters had already emerged by this point. Shyam Popat's statement that 'the Romans compiled their own version of the Bible' is not quite appropriate, because I would point out that while the majority of voting Bishops at the Council of Nicaea were citizens of the Roman Empire, they did not actually represent the Empire's official views, and very few of them had actually had significant encounters with anyone who could be described as an ethnic Roman or Italian (not all of them even lived within the Empire). Besides, from the evidence of pre-Nicaean Christian writers (from the age of Roman polytheism, men such as Justin the Apologist, St Ignatius of Antioch, and so on), there was no alteration of mainstream Christian doctrine. Things were added, it is true, but only by the common consent of the bishops.

To an Orthodox, the Ecumenical Councils were Holy Tradition in action, with the Holy Spirit enlightening all of Christendom. To an outside observer, cynical motives will always seem likely, but there's not much I can do about that here!

[rez]

"That to can be debated. Some say as early as two years after his death, some say up to a couple hundred. In any case, it was Matthew who wrote the Book of Matthew, and Mark who wrote Mark and so on. Plus, if you look through those books you can see them talking about how hundreds or thousands of people witnessed an event. Many of those would still be alive even if it was written 30 years later, so innacuracies would be found."

Sorry but this is quite interesting. Who is Matthew? What can you tell me about him and his authorship? Why is his late gospel more important than the recordings of the Gospel of St Thomas? who apparently had some of Jesus' actual words as opposed to the guesses the gospel writers made.

Furthermore the very idea of accepting gospels because the dates and authors are known is ridiculous when you look at the case of John. Some people say John was the "certain boy" left at the garden of gethsemane when he escaped naked. Others think John was the LAST of the gospel writers many years after Jesus.

Hence you have accepted a gospel that has no proven author or date. Well done

Regardless the church chose what THEY wanted to include in THEIR message. If we truly were on the course of Jesus's words we would not have organised religion and the unbelievably anachronistic ceremony and doctrine of people like the catholic Church.

[Zenith Darksea]

Just a quick point before I go to bed.

Regardless the church chose what THEY wanted to include in THEIR message. If we truly were on the course of Jesus's words we would not have organised religion and the unbelievably anachronistic ceremony and doctrine of people like the catholic Church.

Sorry, that's not acceptable. On the point of ceremony, I'd point out that the Jews already had a highly liturgical religion (apparently God had been ok with that so far) as you can see from most of the Old Testament, and so it's hardly likely that the Christians would entirely drop liturgy altogether. Anyway, that's not what I want to talk about here. I want to point out the flaws in your argument that Christianity should have no organised Church.

Christ said to Peter, "I will give you the keys of the kingdom of heaven; whatever you bind on earth will be bound in heaven, and whatever you loose on earth will be loosed in heaven." (Matt. 16:19)
He also said, "And I tell you that you are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church, and the gates of Hades will not overcome it." (Matt. 16.18)
St Paul said, "Just as each of us has one body with many members, and these members do not all have the same function, 5so in Christ we who are many form one body, and each member belongs to all the others." (Romans 12:4-5)

If you read any of St Paul's epistles, you will see that he constantly urges the various Churches to remain in unity with each other.

There is also the Apostolic Succession of Bishops - John the Evangelist for example (one of the Apostles) made St Ignatius Bishop of Antioch, and this position became the Patriarchate of Antioch, and so on. It's impossible to find evidence to show that even in its earliest days Christianity wasn't organised, because the fact remains that it always was a strongly organised religion. The phenomenon of having a myriad of Protestant splinter groups and non-denominational Churches and so forth is a purely modern and Western phenomenon. Certainly in the East Christianity has always been, and probably always will be, very, very highly organised.

[Sétanta]

They haven't been told its what happened however... they're also eyewitnesses asked to give accounts yet we have no records of any such occurences in the Gospels or of the gospels.

True, but speculation doesn't solve anything does it. It just raises more questions.