Please Explain the Biblical Canon

[Justin A]

I just read through a good portion of this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_canon) wikipedia article. As far as the history of the Biblical Canon goes I basically got from it that there were many competing canons that included or excluded some of the books in the modern Bible. Eventually the current set of books became the standard.

My question is how can you know that you're currently using the correct set of books?

[PairTheBoard]

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I just read through a good portion of this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_canon) wikipedia article. As far as the history of the Biblical Canon goes I basically got from it that there were many competing canons that included or excluded some of the books in the modern Bible. Eventually the current set of books became the standard.

My question is how can you know that you're currently using the correct set of books?

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Your use of the word "correct" Loads the question in my opinion. I would want to use some common sense when approaching the books. Where do they come from? What is their context historically and culturally? What do respected scholars say about them? What does the Church say about them. What do secular and spiritual critics of the Church say about them? What do the spiritual proponents of the noncannonical texts say about them?

Taking everything into consideration I would read them and use my best judgement to decide what to think. If I'm looking for a Spiritual Solution to my life I would see for myself if I could find one there. I'd see if anything I found there Moved Me Spiritually.

I wouldn't worry too much about what's "correct".

PairTheBoard

[Justin A]

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I just read through a good portion of this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_canon) wikipedia article. As far as the history of the Biblical Canon goes I basically got from it that there were many competing canons that included or excluded some of the books in the modern Bible. Eventually the current set of books became the standard.

My question is how can you know that you're currently using the correct set of books?

[/ QUOTE ]

Your use of the word "correct" Loads the question in my opinion. I would want to use some common sense when approaching the books. Where do they come from? What is their context historically and culturally? What do respected scholars say about them? What does the Church say about them. What do secular and spiritual critics of the Church say about them? What do the spiritual proponents of the noncannonical texts say about them?

Taking everything into consideration I would read them and use my best judgement to decide what to think. If I'm looking for a Spiritual Solution to my life I would see for myself if I could find one there. I'd see if anything I found there Moved Me Spiritually.

I wouldn't worry too much about what's "correct".

PairTheBoard

[/ QUOTE ]

I meant correct in the sense of which books are the word of God and which aren't. This is more a question towards those who believe the Bible is inerrant. Maybe I have it wrong, but growing up I was taught that a writing was either divinely inspired or it wasn't. I'm trying to figure out the mechanism by which this was supposedly determined.

[Taraz]

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I just read through a good portion of this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_canon) wikipedia article. As far as the history of the Biblical Canon goes I basically got from it that there were many competing canons that included or excluded some of the books in the modern Bible. Eventually the current set of books became the standard.

My question is how can you know that you're currently using the correct set of books?

[/ QUOTE ]

Your use of the word "correct" Loads the question in my opinion. I would want to use some common sense when approaching the books. Where do they come from? What is their context historically and culturally? What do respected scholars say about them? What does the Church say about them. What do secular and spiritual critics of the Church say about them? What do the spiritual proponents of the noncannonical texts say about them?

Taking everything into consideration I would read them and use my best judgement to decide what to think. If I'm looking for a Spiritual Solution to my life I would see for myself if I could find one there. I'd see if anything I found there Moved Me Spiritually.

I wouldn't worry too much about what's "correct".

PairTheBoard

[/ QUOTE ]

I meant correct in the sense of which books are the word of God and which aren't. This is more a question towards those who believe the Bible is inerrant. Maybe I have it wrong, but growing up I was taught that a writing was either divinely inspired or it wasn't. I'm trying to figure out the mechanism by which this was supposedly determined.

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I would say that if you're looking for an answer along those lines you should prepare to be disappointed. PTB's answer is about as good as it gets.

[PairTheBoard]

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I just read through a good portion of this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_canon) wikipedia article. As far as the history of the Biblical Canon goes I basically got from it that there were many competing canons that included or excluded some of the books in the modern Bible. Eventually the current set of books became the standard.

My question is how can you know that you're currently using the correct set of books?

[/ QUOTE ]

Your use of the word "correct" Loads the question in my opinion. I would want to use some common sense when approaching the books. Where do they come from? What is their context historically and culturally? What do respected scholars say about them? What does the Church say about them. What do secular and spiritual critics of the Church say about them? What do the spiritual proponents of the noncannonical texts say about them?

Taking everything into consideration I would read them and use my best judgement to decide what to think. If I'm looking for a Spiritual Solution to my life I would see for myself if I could find one there. I'd see if anything I found there Moved Me Spiritually.

I wouldn't worry too much about what's "correct".

PairTheBoard

[/ QUOTE ]

I meant correct in the sense of which books are the word of God and which aren't. This is more a question towards those who believe the Bible is inerrant. Maybe I have it wrong, but growing up I was taught that a writing was either divinely inspired or it wasn't. I'm trying to figure out the mechanism by which this was supposedly determined.

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When I read the books I'm getting it from the mouth of the horses who ran the race. I'll use my own best judgement as to what kind of inspiration they enjoyed.

PairTheBoard

[Justin A]

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When I read the books I'm getting it from the mouth of the horses who ran the race. I'll use my own best judgement as to what kind of inspiration they enjoyed.

PairTheBoard

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I don't think I understand your metaphor.

[PairTheBoard]

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When I read the books I'm getting it from the mouth of the horses who ran the race. I'll use my own best judgement as to what kind of inspiration they enjoyed.

PairTheBoard

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I don't think I understand your metaphor.

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I can only go so far listening to what others say about the books. When I read the books I'm hearing from the people who actually wrote the books.

PairTheBoard

[the_scalp]

I'm not an inerrantist, but I am a pastor. I believe that the books of the Bible are "correct" (if by "correct" you mean the books God meant to be there). That is, I believe that the canon is the canon for a reason.

My beleif in the completeness of the canon is based on my faith that God became human in Christ and fulfilled his promise to the people of Israel by bringing salvation to the Jews and, through them, to all nations. Part of God's saving work is that he established a particular people to live and share God's good news in the world (the Church). Those people (the early Church) believed and taught in accordance with those who actually knew and witnessed Jesus' teaching and life (the apostles). Over time, the writings of some of these apostles, together with the writings of followers and imitators of the apostles, began to be collected in book forms (the letters of Paul, the letters of James, etc.). Some of these were accepted substantially in universally by the early church as normative and authoritative. Others were rejected for being non-normative or non-authoritative.

What critics of Christianity would have you believe is that the canon was "voted on" from a herd of books that had found equal acceptance throughout the early Church. That's simply not true. The canon was in wide use for decades before the official Church Council meeting that named it in entirity.

As early as 200 A.D. (really early), there was a mostly complete list called the Canon Muratori. The fragment misses some New Testament texts, but is remarkably inclusive for the early date. The final list first appears together in some bishop's festal letter around 370, and teh final list is voted on "as closed" by the Council fo Carthage in 370.

It's so important that I'll say it again -- the canon wasn't picked out because it accorded with the agendas of the controlling faction at Carthage. It was received more than it was selected. It was agreed upon, not decided upon. Other books were acknowledged to be substantially true and even helpful to the faith (the Shepherd of Hermes, the Song of Solomon), but were rejected for lacking explicit apostolic influence (authored by someone who knew Jesus or someone who knew an apostle), or for contradicting the accepted teachings of the Church.

[godBoy]

It makes sense to me that at the time when they created the canon, they were far better suited to understanding the truth of what actually happened at the time.

Think about it for a second, if joe blow writes a book about Jesus Christ saying he was a ham sandwich... If any book that was written about Jesus Christ was considered correct then you would have more reason to be skeptical. But at a time relatively close to his death they decided which books were accurate and which books were not. I'm willing to trust that the consistency found in the gospels is correct above the other lone books that suggest things that contradict these.

[PairTheBoard]

That's the kind of background information about the books I was talking about wanting to know. Thanks the_scalp.

PairTheBoard

[ChrisV]

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It makes sense to me that at the time when they created the canon, they were far better suited to understanding the truth of what actually happened at the time.

Think about it for a second, if joe blow writes a book about Jesus Christ saying he was a ham sandwich... If any book that was written about Jesus Christ was considered correct then you would have more reason to be skeptical. But at a time relatively close to his death they decided which books were accurate and which books were not. I'm willing to trust that the consistency found in the gospels is correct above the other lone books that suggest things that contradict these.

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The first Gospel (Mark) wasn't written until around 70 AD, with the others later. If, in modern times, anonymous biographies of a person first appeared 40 years after their deaths, and which biographies were accurate was judged on the basis of hearsay and oral tradition 130 years later, how confident would you be that what you had represented an accurate history? And that's modern times. We're talking about ancient Judea, where generations were a lot shorter, hardly anyone could read and write, and extremely low standards of evidence were the norm.

Also, the consistency of the Gospels (Mark, Matthew and Luke), such as it is, comes from the fact that Matthew and Luke plagiarised a lot of their text straight out of Mark and perhaps a second source. There are only 51 verses in Mark out of 600-odd which don't appear (sometimes paraphrased a little) in Matthew or Luke or both.

[PairTheBoard]

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It makes sense to me that at the time when they created the canon, they were far better suited to understanding the truth of what actually happened at the time.

Think about it for a second, if joe blow writes a book about Jesus Christ saying he was a ham sandwich... If any book that was written about Jesus Christ was considered correct then you would have more reason to be skeptical. But at a time relatively close to his death they decided which books were accurate and which books were not. I'm willing to trust that the consistency found in the gospels is correct above the other lone books that suggest things that contradict these.

[/ QUOTE ]

The first Gospel (Mark) wasn't written until around 70 AD, with the others later. If, in modern times, anonymous biographies of a person first appeared 40 years after their deaths, and which biographies were accurate was judged on the basis of hearsay and oral tradition 130 years later, how confident would you be that what you had represented an accurate history? And that's modern times. We're talking about ancient Judea, where generations were a lot shorter, hardly anyone could read and write, and extremely low standards of evidence were the norm.

Also, the consistency of the Gospels (Mark, Matthew and Luke), such as it is, comes from the fact that Matthew and Luke plagiarised a lot of their text straight out of Mark and perhaps a second source. There are only 51 verses in Mark out of 600-odd which don't appear (sometimes paraphrased a little) in Matthew or Luke or both.

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I think the writings closest to contemporary with the events were the Letters of Paul. He didn't know Jesus himself but he knew people who did.

You can definitely see some bells and whistles getting added when you campare accounts of the resurrection. There was probably some Oral Drift over 40 years and some theological infusion. But you take what you can get and read it with those things in mind.

PairTheBoard

[the_scalp]

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The first Gospel (Mark) wasn't written until around 70 AD, with the others later. If, in modern times, anonymous biographies of a person first appeared 40 years after their deaths, and which biographies were accurate was judged on the basis of hearsay and oral tradition 130 years later, how confident would you be that what you had represented an accurate history? And that's modern times. We're talking about ancient Judea, where generations were a lot shorter, hardly anyone could read and write, and extremely low standards of evidence were the norm.

Also, the consistency of the Gospels (Mark, Matthew and Luke), such as it is, comes from the fact that Matthew and Luke plagiarised a lot of their text straight out of Mark and perhaps a second source. There are only 51 verses in Mark out of 600-odd which don't appear (sometimes paraphrased a little) in Matthew or Luke or both.

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First: "plagurized" is incorrect terminiology. "Adapted" is fairer. Early writers didn't have the taboos around borrowing (even word-for-word) the work of others that modern writers do.

Second: I would be far more willing to trust ancient 30-years-after-the-fact biographies than I would modern ones. Becasue of the anomolies of early-Christian culture (low literacy, poo education) it was an extremely oral society. That is -- it would not at all be strange for oral texts to be preserved in complete entirety for years and years with very little drift. The Iliad was an oral tale for generations (hundreds of years) before it was ever recorded -- but the historical event to which it refers was (relatively recently) discovered to have actually happened.

Also, your date for Mark (70 C.E.) is based entirely on a passage where Jesus predicts the fall of Jerusalem (which didn't happen, historically, until 70. Skeptics would, of course, accept this as proof that the words weren't recorded until after the "predicted" event. Believers do not accept this as conclusive proof of a late date (DUCY).

Furthermore, textual embellishment happens. It could be that Mark was written much earlier and the line about the fall of Jerusalem was added later. The Gospel story's substance (as found in Mark and adopeted by Matthew and Luke) is far earlier than the earliest publication of the book of Mark.

[vhawk01]

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The first Gospel (Mark) wasn't written until around 70 AD, with the others later. If, in modern times, anonymous biographies of a person first appeared 40 years after their deaths, and which biographies were accurate was judged on the basis of hearsay and oral tradition 130 years later, how confident would you be that what you had represented an accurate history? And that's modern times. We're talking about ancient Judea, where generations were a lot shorter, hardly anyone could read and write, and extremely low standards of evidence were the norm.

Also, the consistency of the Gospels (Mark, Matthew and Luke), such as it is, comes from the fact that Matthew and Luke plagiarised a lot of their text straight out of Mark and perhaps a second source. There are only 51 verses in Mark out of 600-odd which don't appear (sometimes paraphrased a little) in Matthew or Luke or both.

[/ QUOTE ]

First: "plagurized" is incorrect terminiology. "Adapted" is fairer. Early writers didn't have the taboos around borrowing (even word-for-word) the work of others that modern writers do.

Second: I would be far more willing to trust ancient 30-years-after-the-fact biographies than I would modern ones. Becasue of the anomolies of early-Christian culture (low literacy, poo education) it was an extremely oral society. That is -- it would not at all be strange for oral texts to be preserved in complete entirety for years and years with very little drift. The Iliad was an oral tale for generations (hundreds of years) before it was ever recorded -- but the historical event to which it refers was (relatively recently) discovered to have actually happened.

Also, your date for Mark (70 C.E.) is based entirely on a passage where Jesus predicts the fall of Jerusalem (which didn't happen, historically, until 70. Skeptics would, of course, accept this as proof that the words weren't recorded until after the "predicted" event. Believers do not accept this as conclusive proof of a late date (DUCY).

Furthermore, textual embellishment happens. It could be that Mark was written much earlier and the line about the fall of Jerusalem was added later. The Gospel story's substance (as found in Mark and adopeted by Matthew and Luke) is far earlier than the earliest publication of the book of Mark.

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I have no idea why you think that the fact that these people were illiterate means they had super amazing powers of oral replication, and that they could keep these stories accurate in any meaningful way over generations. Yes, the Iliad happened...they managed to get it right that there was a big war. Thats about it. Lets not go crazy here, these people were probably just as terrible at Chinese Whispers as we are.

[the_scalp]

"Chinese whispers"? . . . wow.

Societies with oral traditions instead of written traditions just ARE better at orally remembering long narratives with very little drift.

I don't have the facts around me right now, but sociologists and historians a few decades ago found some oral tribe in Eastern Europe somewhere that had uncanny word-for-word accuracy of some long saga over generations and generations (the tribe had no recording, but one was unearthed and checked against the tribe's current work). Don't underestimate the power of learning and repeating by rote. Just because those in our culture don't do it anymore, doesn't mean that humanity isn' capable. Many prisoners memorize the ENTIRE BIBLE word for word -- these are not geniuses, just regular people. Imagine a society where your best and brightest were your oral historians, where your recitations were scutinized for word-slippage and transmission inaccuracies by those from whom you were learning the story. That's the society in which the ancients moved and lived. This isn't one of those 'up-for-debate' things. Ancient societies could remember whole stories with surprising accuracy. Maybe even better accuracy than manually written/rerecorded stuff.

[PairTheBoard]

Good points the_scalp. Although I wonder if the practice of keeping oral records was still as prevalent around the time of Jesus. The technology of writing was developed by then and the jewish scriptures were all written down. I really don't know. Probably some kind of mixed bag. Regardless, 30 or 40 years is just not that long a time. There were almost certainly people who had known Jesus, still living and active in the Central Church at Jerusalem up until its destruction in the 60's. Those who had been in their 20's when they knew Jesus would not be that old in 65 AD. People still lived to old age in those days if they were given a chance to.

PairTheBoard