Battle For The Bible: The War Over The New Testament Canon

[MandM]

Battle For The Bible: The War Over The New Testament Canon

youtube.com/watch?v=yQuINgvI68Y

I have noticed that there is serious confusion on this forum regarding the development of the New Testament.

Dan Brown, the author of the Davinci Code, and others have attempted to promote the claim that that New Testament books were not decided upon until the 4th century under the Roman councils.

Does this claim have any merit at all?

Well, for starters, Dan Brown is not a religious expert at all. In fact, Dan Brown admitted on the stand that his wife did most of the research for the Davinci Code:

guardian.co.uk/uk/2006/mar/12/books.danbrown

The reality is that the Davinci Code is interesting fiction, but the facts about the New Testament tell an entirely different story:

Fact #1) Paul’s letters were already considered scripture in the mid 1st century. Take a look at how the apostle Peter himself called them Scripture:

2 Peter 3:14-16

14So then, dear friends, since you are looking forward to this, make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him. 15Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. 16He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.

Fact #2) The apostle Paul, writing between A.D. 62 and A.D. 65, quoted Luke 10:7 and called it Scripture:

Luke 10:7

7Stay in that house, eating and drinking whatever they give you, for the worker deserves his wages.

Now look at how Paul quoted Luke 10:7 as Scripture in 1 Timothy 5:18…

18For the Scripture says, “Do not muzzle the ox while it is treading out the grain,” and “The worker deserves his wages.”

So we can clearly see that the apostle Paul himself considered the gospel of Luke to be Holy Scripture in the middle of the 1st century.

Fact #3) Irenaeus, writing about 170, tells us that the 4 fold gospel was already a rock solid fact by then:

But it is not possible that the Gospels can be either more or fewer in number than they are. For since there are four zones of the world in which we live, and four principal winds, while the church has been scattered throughout the world, and since the “pillar and ground” of the church is the Gospel and the spirit of life, it is fitting that she should have four pillars, breathing incorruption on every side, and vivifying human afresh. From this fact, it is evident that the Logos, the fashioner [demiourgos] of all, he that sits on the cherubim and holds all things together, when he was manifested to humanity, gave us the gospel under four forms but bound together by one spirit. (Against Heresies 3.11.8)

Fact #4) The fact of the four-fold gospel is also stated in the “Muratorian Fragment” which was written about the same time (around 170 A.D.) that Irenaeus was writing. The Muratorian Fragment lists for us basically the whole New Testament canon and it shows us once again that the four-fold gospel was an established fact by then.

Fact #5) We have approximately 50 manuscripts of the New Testament that PRE-DATE the Roman takeover of the established church in the 4th century.

Fact #6) We have more than 32 THOUSAND New Testament quotations from the early church writers of the 2nd and 3rd centuries. In fact, we could recreate virtually the entire New Testament just from the quotes of the early church writers of the 2nd and 3rd centuries. We can be QUITE certain that the New Testament we have today has come down to us just as it was from the earliest days, and we can be QUITE certain what they considered to be Scripture.

Yes, the Romans came in to the church in the 4th century and corrupted it and paganized the institutional church. There were many Christians who resisted this, and they were persecuted brutally. However, Christianity and the Bible were doing JUST FINE before Rome ever came on the scene.

After viewing this shocking YouTube clip you will never look at the New Testament the same way again:

youtube.com/watch?v=yQuINgvI68Y

 

[Harmony1988]

There is no ‘war’, whatever ‘war’ there was over this was finished a logn time ago, to be precise, around 1600 years ago.

This new ‘war’ is just media hype and an attempt to incite something, greedy little people trying to cause trouble. I

 

[Mick7]

Dan Brown’s claims are horse manure. Whatever research he and his wife did, they seem to have missed out the writings of the early Fathers of the Church. These clearly spell out the reasons why they considered the Gnostic Gospels heresy. They still are – nothing has changed. The early Fathers also listed Mathew, Mark, Luke and John as inspired Gospels and noted what they considered Scripture.

 

[SpiritMeadow]

Battle For The Bible: The War Over The New Testament Canon

youtube.com/watch?v=yQuINgvI68Y

I have noticed that there is serious confusion on this forum regarding the development of the New Testament.

Dan Brown, the author of the Davinci Code, and others have attempted to promote the claim that that New Testament books were not decided upon until the 4th century under the Roman councils.

Does this claim have any merit at all?

Well, for starters, Dan Brown is not a religious expert at all. In fact, Dan Brown admitted on the stand that his wife did most of the research for the Davinci Code:

guardian.co.uk/uk/2006/mar/12/books.danbrown

The reality is that the Davinci Code is interesting fiction, but the facts about the New Testament tell an entirely different story:

Fact #1) Paul’s letters were already considered scripture in the mid 1st century. Take a look at how the apostle Peter himself called them Scripture:

2 Peter 3:14-16

14So then, dear friends, since you are looking forward to this, make every effort to be found spotless, blameless and at peace with him. 15Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. 16He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.

Fact #2) The apostle Paul, writing between A.D. 62 and A.D. 65, quoted Luke 10:7 and called it Scripture:

Luke 10:7

7Stay in that house, eating and drinking whatever they give you, for the worker deserves his wages.

Now look at how Paul quoted Luke 10:7 as Scripture in 1 Timothy 5:18…

18For the Scripture says, “Do not muzzle the ox while it is treading out the grain,” and “The worker deserves his wages.”

So we can clearly see that the apostle Paul himself considered the gospel of Luke to be Holy Scripture in the middle of the 1st century.

Fact #3) Irenaeus, writing about 170, tells us that the 4 fold gospel was already a rock solid fact by then:

But it is not possible that the Gospels can be either more or fewer in number than they are. For since there are four zones of the world in which we live, and four principal winds, while the church has been scattered throughout the world, and since the “pillar and ground” of the church is the Gospel and the spirit of life, it is fitting that she should have four pillars, breathing incorruption on every side, and vivifying human afresh. From this fact, it is evident that the Logos, the fashioner [demiourgos] of all, he that sits on the cherubim and holds all things together, when he was manifested to humanity, gave us the gospel under four forms but bound together by one spirit. (Against Heresies 3.11.8)

Fact #4) The fact of the four-fold gospel is also stated in the “Muratorian Fragment” which was written about the same time (around 170 A.D.) that Irenaeus was writing. The Muratorian Fragment lists for us basically the whole New Testament canon and it shows us once again that the four-fold gospel was an established fact by then.

Fact #5) We have approximately 50 manuscripts of the New Testament that PRE-DATE the Roman takeover of the established church in the 4th century.

Fact #6) We have more than 32 THOUSAND New Testament quotations from the early church writers of the 2nd and 3rd centuries. In fact, we could recreate virtually the entire New Testament just from the quotes of the early church writers of the 2nd and 3rd centuries. We can be QUITE certain that the New Testament we have today has come down to us just as it was from the earliest days, and we can be QUITE certain what they considered to be Scripture.

Yes, the Romans came in to the church in the 4th century and corrupted it and paganized the institutional church. There were many Christians who resisted this, and they were persecuted brutally. However, Christianity and the Bible were doing JUST FINE before Rome ever came on the scene.

After viewing this shocking YouTube clip you will never look at the New Testament the same way again:

youtube.com/watch?v=yQuINgvI68Y

If you use Dan Brown as an example, then I would contend that the only one who may be confused in the first place about the NT perhaps may be you. Why on earth would you even bring up the name of a fiction writer when discussing the issue? He is no authority, or didn’t you know that?

 

[JMBNH]

The Four Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, the Thirteen Epistles of St Paul (excluding Hebrews), the First Epistle of St Peter and the First Epistle of St John were universally accepted by all in the mainstream Church from the beginning as far as we know.

However,

The Epistle to the Hebrews
The Epistle of St James
The Second Epistle of St Peter
The Second and Third Epistles of St John
The Epistle of St Jude
and especially the Apocalypse of St John

were far from universally accepted, though the first two named were by the 4th century as far as we can tell, the last named wasn’t accepted in the East til about the 6th century.

The books that just missed the cut:
The Epistle of Pope St Clement to the Corinthians
The Shepherd of Hermas
The Didache
The Epistle of Barnabas
The Apocalypse of St Peter

The only two of these that are controversial are the Epistle of Barnabas which states that the Jewish Food Laws was never supposed to be literal and were just symbolic of certain sins to be avoided and the Apocalypse of St Peter which teaches universal salvation eventually

 

[rpp]

More of the same self-promoting anti-Catholic pseudo-history. The OP and the “production company” of this PowerPoint clip have the same name. This is at least the second thread this OP started introducing what appears to be his own work without stating whether or not she (he?) was involved in the production.

A few facts mixed in with a lot of nonsense. We see very poor research and and absence of scholarship. It is nothing but unsubstantiated assertions and dubious conclusions.

 

[vern_humphrey]

I have noticed that there is serious confusion on this forum regarding the development of the New Testament.

Dan Brown, the author of the Davinci Code, and others have attempted to promote the claim that that New Testament books were not decided upon until the 4th century under the Roman councils.

Does this claim have any merit at all?

It’s essentially correct. But before I go on, History is not about competing sets of facts, but about competing interpretations of the same set of facts.

The early Christians had no concept of a New Testament, as we know it. Read the Epistles of Paul – Paul obviously had no idea he was writing the bible. He was writing ordinary business letters (albeit in the extraordinary business of the Church.) It was only afterwards that his letters were considered canonical.

In addition, the modern concept of the Bible was unknown to early Christians and contemporary Jews. What we call the Bible was a collection of scrolls, usually referred to as scripture – writings. As long as scripture remained in the form of separate scrolls, arguments about which scrolls were scriptural were common.

A complete collection of the Scriptures would fill a tub or chest – and anyone could add a scroll, or take one out – and people just looking at the tub or chest would be none the wiser. But when bookbinding developed in the late 4th Century, things began to look different. If you cut out a book, or slipped one between the pages of abound volume, that would be immediately obvious.

We need to keep this in mind when we talk about “the Bible.”

The New Testament arose from the practice of reading “the memoirs of the Apostles” (cf Justin’s First Apology, about 150 AD) at Mass. Precisely what these memoirs were, and what was proper to read at Mass was not defined.

The Muratorian Canon (or fragment) found in northern Italy contains a list of books suitable (and some unsuitable) to be read at Mass. The list doesn not quite jibe with the modern New Testament. The fact that whoever compiled the list saw fit to brand some books unsuitable (and explain why) indicates that there were Catholics who did use those books at Mass. There is also evidence of continuing debate – the Muratorian Canon lists two books of Peter – but written in the margin, by a different hand are the words “una sola” – “one only.”

A series of non-ecumenical councils developed the present canon in the late 4th and early 5th Century, and the canon was proclaimed by Pope Damasus I and reaffirmed by the Council of Trent during the Counter-Reformation.