Building the Bible

Surprisingly, there is little in the way of either mainstream or evangelical literature widely available on the topic of the historical origins of the modern Bible. Divine inspiration may be claimed. However, the canon we know today is a collection of disparate manuscripts composed, edited, copied and translated by human hands.

Errors of omission and commission could be and were made. Deciding what authors and books would be in or out of the holy scriptures was no simple matter.

Traditional Christian scholarship of the last two millenia has started with the Bible and then interpreted history from a biblical foundation. The traditionalist starts with Adam and ends with the apocalypse of John.

Our approach turns this scheme of traditional Christian scholarship on its head. We start with the historical setting, then interpret development of a Holy Bible within the imperatives of the early Christian culture. We look at the historical context in which the New Testament was created, then at the New Testament itself, then finally work our way back to the Old.

• Just how varied and diverse were the expressions of faith and experience for the early Church? Why the diversity?
  
• How intense was Roman persecution of the church? And how did persecution solidify versus strain interpersonal relations between Christians?
  
• Was early Christianity a primarily rural or urban phenomenom? How does this contrast with the experience of the 21st century?
  
• How much time elapsed before Christians emerged from minority to majority status? What did new this new status bring to the movement?
  

By the time of St. Augustine in the early fourth century, Rome had crumbled but Christianity emerged triumphant. This newly found imperial religion survived even as the empire itself collapsed. And with the closing of Christian ranks, a more uniform canon of the Holy Bible emerges.

Read more about the Nicene Creed and its effects by clicking here.

• How did the 27 books today recognized as the New Testament come to be? Did acceptance of a canon happen as the result of a single event, or did acceptance emerge gradually over time?
• Did the impetus for a New Testament come from orthodox or heretical Christians?
  
• While the current list of 27 books has been essentially in place since the 4th century, should the canon be viewed as closed?
  

Since the days of the apostolic church, it has been important for the mainstream church to aggressively protect the purity of the gospel by excluding writings that clearly appeared to be in conflict with what was perceived as orthodoxy. However, has this exclusionary process shortanged Christianity of diversity in understanding and expression?

Origins of the Old Testament
We now reach back a step earlier in time – to the formation of that portion of the Bible commonly known as the Old Testament (OT). The term "Old Testament" is actually a bit of a misnomer. For Judaism, there is neither "Old" nor "New" Testament. There are simply the Hebrew Scriptures:

• Over what time period was the Old Testament written and then compiled into a form that represented an official canon?
  
• What stimulated preservation and eventual clarification of an accepted set of Hebrew scriptures? To what extent and in what ways was the early Christian church important to Old Testament (OT) canonization?
  
• To what degree has has there been consistency or conflict in the categorization of OT writings regarded as canonical? What role do the Apocrypha play?
  
• How have variations in OT translation affected Christian understanding of both Old and New Testaments?
  

Christianity has often muddied the waters of the Hebrew scriptures. However, Christians have also (perhaps inadvertently) found themselves in league with their Jewish brethren by adopting a remarkably similar OT canon. Interestingly, Judaism and Christianity share similar views as to OT books of primary versus secondary importance – including OT references most often cited by Jesus (notably the Pentateuch, Psalms and Isaiah).

• Should the books that have been received be regarded as scripture?
  
• Are there other writings not included within the canon that could also be regarded as inspired scripture?
  
• In short, should the canon remain closed?
  

A case can be made that the canon remains open – for new information, for further argumentation, and quite possibly for multiple interpretations. For both the Old and New Testaments, there is no black box. Scripture did not materialize as deux ex machina (God out of a machine).

Rather, we know that writings viewed as scriptural were prepared over time by multiple authors. Decisions about which writings should be in or out of a canon were made by humans – and vigorously debated.

The process of deciding which writings are inspired – whether historical or contemporary – is not necessarily over. Is now the time to reinvigorate the discussion?