Misconceptions about the Bible

I wanted to comment on something that I have been hearing lately, actually with increasing regularity. It is the idea that the Bible as we known it was given to us by a group of white, Roman Catholic men. I am not considering here the authorship of the Bible; that is a completely different and in-depth topic all-together. But as far as what we call the canon of scripture this idea that a group of biased men put in and kept out the books they wanted has become increasingly popular.

The first problem is that many of the books in the Bible were already accepted hundreds of years before Emperor Constantine gathered church leaders from across the Roman Empire to "determine" the canon. Many churches in the first three centuries flat out accepted certain "books" (really letters) to be authoritative and felt little, if any, need to have a list of accepted scripture. The main criteria for the authority came from the author and his relationship to Jesus or to someone close to Jesus. For example Matthew was a disciple of Jesus and Mark was a companion of Peter, so directly connected to an eywitness. In the case of Paul not only did he have direct connection to many of the disciples of Jesus the Christian belief accepts that he had a vision from Jesus directly giving him the Gospel account. This vision might be hard to accept for many modern people, but in Acts we find that the first thing Paul did was ask the disciples if his vision was correct. So many of the letters and writings were already accepted as having divine authority because of the authors' conections with Jesus. But by the end of the 2nd century lists were being developed, though some disagreed on what to include.

This inclusion disagreement was only a minor dispute. All of the current books of the Bible were accepted by the first generations of Christians, but there were minor issues with books like Hebrews, James, and Revelation. The concerns were small and some churches just chose not to use them. In fact, Martin Luther did not like the book of James and wanted to cut it out of the Bible, but not liking what something says does not mean cutting it out. Again, the vast majority of Christians in the 2nd and 3rd centuries AD before the canon was developed already accepted the books of the Bible that we have today.

So what of exclusion? If the books we have were accepted from the word "go" then were any left out? Yes. There were letters and writings left out. This is evident in the talk over recent years of books like the Gospel of Thomas. But there is a huge problem with the writings that were left out, especially the Gospel of Thomas. I will use the Gospel of Thomas as an example because many of the books excluded were of the same vein. The Gospel of Thomas was not written by the disciple Thomas, this is a big point. It was written by a group that denied the supremacy of God along with many other major Christian beliefs, so if the Gospel of Thomas is put into the Bible it would not have any coherence along with the fact that is not written by Thomas or by a contemporary of Thomas or another disciple. Another Gnostic writing talks about a giant Jesus coming out of the tomb and a talking cross. Obviously these do not fit into the Biblical accounts.

Now with the misconception about the "Roman Catholic" part. The problem of looking back on history with modern eyes is that we bring to history our own experiences. Many people see the church, whether Roman or not, as the medieval Roman Catholic Church with the big cathedrals and the Pope. The first few centuries did not have these. In fact the first few centuries of Christianity Roman emperors killed and persecuted Christians. Christianity did not become the state religion until 380 AD. This is almost 60 years after the Nicene Creed was put together to codify the core Christian beliefs in response to the heresy of Arianism (that Jesus was created and not eternally God). The main reason for codifying the Bible was because of heresies like this. The leaders, and the lay-people, wanted to finally make a concrete list of what they can recommend to people to read and accept. The things that were left out were left out for very good reasons.

So if you have heard or believe that a bunch of white, Roman Catholic men manipulated the Bible to give us what they wanted to give us then at least this will give you some context and more understanding of the process. It is true that white men dominated the writing of western history, but that does not make it unreliable. As for the canon of the Bible it was accepted well before those old white guys put it into a list.