Canon.

Who or what authority decided what books would be included in the bible?

Rome

At Nicaea, present day Turkey around 360-ish

[Social Junker]

Yes, this is what always bothered me about the Bible. There are thousands of Christian texts left out of the Bible. How did the Council know what was the "Word of God" and what was not?

quote:Originally posted by aTribeCalledSean:

Who or what authority decided what books would be included in the bible?

One would hope, God. All powerfull, yet can't get his dogma straight, where do I sign-up?

[This message has been edited by WolfinSheepsClothing (edited 09-21-2004).]

quote:Originally posted by aTribeCalledSean:

Who or what authority decided what books would be included in the bible?

Various churches have picked out diferent sets of books to include in the Bible.

http:../../www.bessel.org/bibles.htm

That is a list of many of the diferent tranlations and versions of the Bible avalible in english.

EDIT: As you can see any "Christian" who says that Catholic's leave out more books than everyone else is full of it. It is the Protestants that leave out the most and the Ethiopic that use the most.

[This message has been edited by MasterPython (edited 09-21-2004).]

My point was basically that the ROMAN CATHOLIC CHURCH was the primary basis on what the bible would contain. Yet a overwhelming amount of christians are constantly talking shit about the RCC and there attitude towards the scripture. And how the bible is the literal word of God, yet the RCC is what defined their "literal word".

Just to clarify a few points... Nicea was more or less when the canon was "set in stone". Many of the Early christians writers had already been suggesting what texts were of value for a while. The OT was already well established by this stage, so all they really had to do was decide on NT texts.

Remember that in 360 A.D. that the RCC was a very different institution to what we see now. I'm not entirely sure if the Western/ Eastern schism had occured at this stage though.

Another important point is that the idea that the bible is the "literal Word (with a big w) of God" is only a relativley recent articulation. In fact the whole concept of the bible being the Word of God can be seen as blashemey (sp?...read John 1). Also seeing the bible as "literal" is a clumsy concept to play with, questions about as factuality(sp?) and meaning are far more pertinent.

[Digital_Savior]

quote:Originally posted by WolfinSheepsClothing:

One would hope, God. All powerfull, yet can't get his dogma straight, where do I sign-up?

[This message has been edited by WolfinSheepsClothing (edited 09-21-2004).]

He got it exactly right, just the way it was intended to be presented to modern-day Rome.