Canonical Books of the Bible

  • Thread starter Thread starter Barbara_Ann_Bau
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
Barbara_Ann_Bau said:
How were the Canonical Books of the Bible chosen?
Click to expand...
The short answer is: there was a series of Church Councils in the late 300s that prayed to the Holy Spirit, examined the evidence concerning the various books, and made a decision. Catholic Tradition has followed that decision ever since, and there is evidence that Catholic Tradition is protected from error.

The longer answer is: the development of the Canon began before Christianity existed. The Jews were the first people to start developing the Canon of Scripture, and it seems that the first books they recognized as canonical were the five Books of Moses. The rest of the books were accepted more gradually, and the Canon was still being debated by them (and there were different parties claiming different Canons) in the lifetime of Jesus. However, a major step in the development of the Old Testament Canon happened three centuries before Christianity came on the scene, and that was the translation of the Old Testament books into a Greek version of the Bible called the Septuagint. (Google it – it has a fascinating history.) The Septuagint was widely used by the Jews up until the coming of Christ and was beginning to gain acceptance as the official Bible of the Jews. In the Catholic Church, the Canon of the Old Testament that we still use today is identical to the Canon of the Septuagint which was (mostly) translated three centuries before Christ.

After the coming of Christ, when the Books of the New Testament were still being written, the Gospels and the Letters of St. Paul became the first Christian books to be recognized as equal in status to the Books of the Old Testament. The Jewish leaders rejected the Books of the New Testament. Also, they decided to reject the Septuagint Bible that they had used for hundreds of years, because Christians used it heavily to evangelize the Jews. To counter this, the Jewish leaders declared that the Septuagint was mistranslated, and commissioned a new Greek Bible to be made by a scholar named Aquila of Sinope. His Bible excluded the New Testament (obviously) along with seven Old Testament books called the Deuterocanonical Books which Christians often used to prove the divinity of Christ. Thus, in large part because of him, Christians and Jews have slightly different Canons to this day. (Excepting modern Protestants – early on, the Reformation leaders adopted the Jewish Canon, which is a novelty in Christian history.)

From then on, Christians and Jews debated each other over whose Canon was correct, and the two groups made final decisions in different ways. For Christians, a variety of Canons were proposed during the 200s and early 300s, but in the late 300s, as I said earlier, several Church Councils met to decide the issue. Their decisions were confirmed by the Pope in 397 A.D. and spread to the rest of the Church shortly after. With the publication of the Latin Vulgate in 405 A.D., the Church got a Bible which included the Canon that we still use today, and it was copied throughout the Middle Ages and spread to every church in Europe. When Protestants dug up the old controversy between Christians and Jews in the 1500s, the Council of Trent declared that the Vulgate had the correct Canon, and that is what Catholics believe today.

And that is the long answer to how we got our present Canon of Scripture. 🙂 I hope that helps. God bless!
 
Thank you so much. Now I must research those councils and of course the Septuagint. I am currently reading the two Maccabees books I find them so facinating and uplifting that I feel sorry that my Protestant friends do not have these books 👍
 
Can’t recommend enough the book Why Catholic Bibles Are Bigger by Gary Michuta, which has source material of Early Church Fathers, quotes, etc… on how the identity of the canon was discerned in the early Church. Still the best apologetics book of the century so far, IMHO. :o
 
There are no books that were in the Bible that are no longer there. Shepherd of Hermes was never part of the Bible.
 
Demar198,
you mentioned, “… Church Councils met to decide the issue. Their decisions were confirmed by the Pope in 397 A.D…”.

There have been some interesting and warm discussions about that. And it seems from what has been said that the info was sent to the Pope in 397 but he did not get back to them with his approval.

I would tell you where to look if I knew but I don’t know. But you may want to do more research on this, unless someone reading this can help out.

May God our Father give you grace and peace.
 
This is so interesting. My friend from Bible study and I were up past midnight discussing it. I did do a Bible Study on Church History (Epic by Ascension Press) but I remember little of it because when I took the course I had not fully recovered from Chemo Brain.
 
Barbara_Ann_Bau said:
Thank you so much. Now I must research those councils and of course the Septuagint. I am currently reading the two Maccabees books I find them so facinating and uplifting that I feel sorry that my Protestant friends do not have these books 👍
Click to expand...
And, what is worse is that 2 Maccabees documents the prohibition of and the death penalty for the practice of Judaism, the Maccabean revolt against the oppressive Selucid king, the restoration of Judaism in time for Christ to be born under the law so as to fulfill the law, the cleansing and re-dedication of theTemple, references to the resurrection and eternal life and the holiness of prayers for the dead - all within 100-125 years before the Incarnation. Examined on a time line, it was just in time for Christ.

That Maccabean re-dedication of the temple is celebrated to this day with a festival of lights - Hanukkah - but the Jewish faith has no scriptural record of this momentous event, since the Pharisees rejected the books of Maccabees as, essentially, too Christian. And, it is that same canon of the Pharisees that was adopted 1,500 years later by a certain rebellious 30-something Augustinian priest. That, combined with a few other factors, explains the lack of the Deuterocanon in protestant bibles.
 
Barbara_Ann_Bau said:
How were the Canonical Books of the Bible chosen?
Click to expand...
I think that Jaroslav Pelikan’s Whose Bible Is It? is an interesting discussion about the history of the Bible.

the late Prof. Pelikan was awarded many honorary doctoral degrees in recognition of his outstanding contribution to the history of doctrine, related as it is to the teaching of the Bible itself.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top