Q: HOW DID THE HOLY BIBLE COME TO US? A: It was the Holy Catholic Church who decided which scriptures are inspired by the Holy Spirit and put them together into one book, called the Holy Bible. Timeline of the decisions on the books of the Bible (Canon) 51-125: The New Testament books are written. 140: Marcion, a businessman in Rome, taught that there were two Gods: Yahweh, the cruel God of the Old Testament, and Abba, the kind father of the New Testament. Marcion eliminated the Old Testament as scriptures and, since he was anti-Semitic, kept from the New Testament only 10 letters of Paul and 2/3 of Lukes gospel (he deleted references to Jesuss Jewishness). Marcions New Testament, the first to be compiled, forced the mainstream Church to decide on a core canon: the four Gospels and Letters of Paul. 200: The periphery of the canon is not yet determined. According to one list, compiled at Rome c. AD 200 (the Muratorian Canon), the NT consists of the 4 gospels; Acts; 13 letters of Paul (Hebrews is not included); 3 of the 7 General Epistles (1-2 John and Jude); and also the Apocalypse of Peter. 367: The earliest extant list of the books of the NT, in exactly the number and order in which we presently have them, is written by Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, in his Festal letter # 39 of 367 A.D. 382: Council of Rome (whereby Pope Damasus started the ball rolling for the defining of a universal canon for all city-churches) listed the New Testament books in their present number and order. 393: In the Council of Hippo began arguing it out the Canon proposed by Bishop Athanasius. 397: The Council of Carthage, which refined the canon for the Western Church, sent it back to Pope Innocent for ratification. In the East, the canonical process was hampered by a number of schisms (esp. within the Church of Antioch). 787: The Ecumenical Council of Nicaea II, which adopted the canon of Carthage. At this point, both the Latin West and the Greek / Byzantine East had the same canon. However, the non-Greek, Monophysite and Nestorian Churches of the East (the Copts, the Ethiopians, the Syrians, the Armenians, the Syro-Malankars, the Chaldeans, and the Malabars) were still left out. But these Churches came together in agreement, in 1442A.D., in Florence. 1227: Bible divided into chapters by Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury but not by verses, which were only introduced by Robert Estienne in 1545. 1442 : At the Council of Florence, the entire Church recognized the 27 books. This council confirmed the Roman Catholic Canon of the Bible which Pope Damasus I had published a thousand years earlier. So, by 1439, all orthodox branches of the Church were legally bound to the same canon. This is 100 years before the Reformation. 1536: In his translation of the Bible from Greek into German, Luther removed 4 N.T. books (Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation) and placed them in an appendix saying they were less than canonical. 1546 : At the Council of Trent, the Catholic Church reaffirmed once and for all the full list of 27 books. The council also confirmed the inclusion of the Deuterocanonical books which had been a part of the Bible canon since the early Church and was confirmed at the councils of 393 AD, 373, 787 and 1442 AD. At Trent Rome actually dogmatized the canon, making it more than a matter of canon law, which had been the case up to that point, closing it for good.
Posted on: Tue, 11 Nov 2014 11:53:11 +0000
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