History of the Bible

I desperately need to rewrite the bottom of this page on the history of the Bible, but ...

I wrote a quick overview of the development of the Scriptures for Yahoo Answers. It will rapidly touch the highlights for you. It follows. Read that, and below that are a lot of important facts that aren't arranged very well but are very interesting.

That's the rewriting I have to do. This first brief history, however, will probably answer your overall questions in less than 2 minutes ...

Rapid Overview of the History of the Bible

The churches that the apostles started and those that branched off from them are responsible for developing—in general—the canon.

We have very little insight into Christian usage of Christian writings as Scripture before the mid-2nd century (about A.D. 150). Justin Martyr mentions around A.D. 150 that the "memoirs of the apostles" were read in Sunday church meetings (First Apology 67). He also specifically mentioned that these memoirs are called Gospels (ibid. 66).

In A.D. 185 (or so) Irenaeus says there are four Gospels and names them (Against Heresies III:11:8).

It's hard to tell how much earlier writers quoted the Gospels. They could have been quoting oral tradition, and there's no specific reference to any of the Gospels by name before Justin. Some NT letters are quoted by Ignatius and Polycarp, and most people believe Clement of Rome, writing around A.D. 96, was quoting Paul as well.

In the 2nd century comes the earliest list of accepted books in the history of the Bible, the Muratorian Canon. It is very similar to our New Testament, and it dates from around A.D. 160. It does leave out Hebrews and James and adds in the Wisdom of Solomon and the Shepherd of Hermas. It says the Revelation of Peter is questionable.

As the history of the Bible progresses, both the quotes of the early Christians and the lists they compiled get closer and closer to our 27 books. The first list exactly to match is by Athanasius in 361. However, even as late as A.D. 395 or so, Augustine says there are books accepted by all churches and books accepted by only some.

Right about that time, however, the matter began to be settled. Synods in Rome, Hippo, and Carthage all addressed the issue, but the fact that there were repeated synods shows that none of these carried universal authority (Catholic Encyclopedia).

Personally, I think the growing usage of Jerome's Latin translation settled the matter in the west. No council with universal authority set the canon until the Council of Trent in the 1500's. Of course, that's just the Roman Catholic Church. As far as I know, the Orthodox Churches never officially settled the canon. The 27 books various synods decided on in the 5th century simply stood the test of time.

Nonetheless the Assyrian Orthodox Church ends their NT at 1 John. The Ethiopian Orthodox Church has a Bible that still includes the Book of Enoch to this day.

The history of the Bible discussion concerning the Apocrypha was never really settled until the 1500's. The Apocrypha had had a secondary status throughout the history of the Bible ever since Jerome's Vulgate, but it wasn't rejected, either. The RCC decided on keeping the Apocrypha, but many Protestants used it as well. It's only after the Reformation that Protestants began to quit using the 7 books of the RCC apocrypha.

The Orthodox churches still use even more apocryphal books than the RCC, including books like 2 Esdras and 3 and 4 Maccabbees.

Interesting Facts About the History of the Bible

This history of the Bible has an abundance of information, most of it in bullet points. Reading this page straight through could be overwhelming!

I recommend bookmarking this page, then coming back to it and leafing through the bullet points. They're very interesting, and repeated visits will give you time to consider what they mean.

Before you go on. Today we use "The Word of God" interchangeably with the Bible. In other words, you can simply say you "follow the Word," and everyone assumes you mean the Bible. That is not how the apostles and their churches used the term!

History of the Bible: The New Testament

Obviously, the first churches started by the apostles did not have a New Testament like ours. Not only was there no printing press, but the New Testament writings weren't completed until at least close to A.D. 90, some 60 years after Jesus' death.

The last New Testament writings would be those from John. It is Christian testimony—especially Irenaeus, who says he got it from a man named Papias who knew John—that says John wrote his Gospel and letters in the A.D. 90's.

The rest of the NT writings are very difficult to date, except a few of Paul's letters. There's just not much evidence with which to work.

Gospels

The Gospels in the history of the Bible are dated anywhere from A.D. 60 to 120. There are scholars who date them later, but mostly those are jealous modern Gnostics, who wish that gnosticism was actually real Christianity. There really isn't any doubt that the accepted history of mainline Christianity and gnosticism is accurate.

Around A.D. 150 Justin Martyr makes reference to "the memoirs of the apostles," and he quotes all four Gospels. Earlier writers show a knowledge of Gospel stories and sayings, but there's no way to prove they're quoting any of the Gospels directly. They don't say "it is written," when they use terminology that's in the Gospels.

By A.D. 185, Irenaeus says that there can only be 4 Gospels, just as their are only four cardinal directions. His reasons are somewhat exotic—and unbelievable to me—but the point is that the 4 Gospels were definitely the only accepted Gospels by A.D. 185.

Irenaeus, Clement of Alexandria, and others reference other Gospels, such as an unknown Gospel of the Egyptians, which may have been the Gospel of Thomas. It is clear, though, that they no longer considered any but the four we know to be Scripture.

Paul's Letters

The history of the Bible gives strong testimony to Paul's letters, but there are some that are doubted even by Christian scholars.

Those that demand conclusive evidence limit Paul's true letters to just a few. For the most part, though, scholars accept 10 of Paul's letters, the exceptions being the pastoral letters: 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus (and Hebrews, which almost no one thinks was written by Paul).

The arguments are difficult to follow unless you devote a lot of time to studying the history of the Bible. Some argue that the pastoral letters don't have Paul's type of reasoning or wording. Personally, I think that if Paul really went to prison, was released, then went to Spain and Great Britain, as the early Christians said he did, then when he returned, he may have been a much different person and used different wording.

I'm a believer in God. 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus have been greatly used by God for 2,000 years now. I don't believe they are forgeries.

There is evidence that is the case. Polycarp quotes both 1 and 2 Timothy in his early 2nd century letter to the Philippians. Since he received a letter from Ignatius in A.D. 107 or 116, his testimony to the history of the Bible is significant.

It's important to point out that skeptics of the New Testament are arguing from what they DON'T know, not from what they do know. We cannot know that Paul wrote the pastoral epistles because evidence concerning their authorship is almost non-existent. However, there's no strong evidence he did not write it.

There's some other things we know about the history of the Bible:

The History of the Bible: General Epistles

The general epistles are those that are not addressed to a specific person or church. Those include Hebrews, James, 1 and 2 Peter, and 1, 2, and 3 John.

No one knows who wrote Hebrews. This was argued about even in the early church.

History of the Bible:
Did the Early Christianity Have a Set Canon?

Now we come to the topic that I most want to cover in the history of the Bible: the "canon."

Simply put, the churches before Nicaea did not have a canon. They had books they called Scripture and which they believed were inspired, but it was not a set list of books.

They quoted from more books than we do, commonly referencing books like Ecclesiasticus and Tobit (which are included in the Roman Catholic Bible), the Wisdom of Solomon, and the Book of Enoch (which is only in the Ethiopian Orthodox Bible).

There are some books, however, that were rarely quoted or only quoted in the East or West, which are Hebrews, James, 2 John, 3 John, Jude, and Revelation. In fact, to this day the "Assyrian Orthodox Church of the East" Bible ends at 1 John.

I promised to tell you when I'm telling you something that is controversial among scholars. The history of the Bible is one of them, but it shouldn't be.

There are scholars who wish that the early church had a set canon. There's no evidence for it and lots of real obvious evidence against it.

History of the Bible:
Surprises from the "Bible" used by the Apostles' Churches

I already told you that there was no set "Bible" in the apostles' churches. There were no printing shops to bind scrolls or papyrii together for them.

There are a lot of books quoted by the early churches that we don't use much anymore. Some of them are very interesting; here's why:

• The Book of Enoch: This book's pretty bizarre, but interesting to read. It was well-known to the early Christians. It's quoted in the New Testament (Jude 14-15). It has the first description of Hades, a description which matches the story of the rich man and Lazarus in Luke 16:22ff. It also describes the giants of Genesis 6 and a lot of other interesting things. It's one of the more important books in the history of the Bible.
• The Martyrdom of Isaiah: Ever wondered who was sawn in half, as mentioned in Hebrews 11? It was Isaiah, and this book tells the story.
• The Book of Jannes and Jambres: Paul mentions Jannes and Jambres in 2 Timothy 3:8. This book is no longer extant, so we don't know what it says (very sad).
• The early churches used the Septuagint (LXX) for their Old Testament. It's likely the apostles did, too, which explains the difference between NT quotes of the OT and the actual verses we have in the OT of our modern Bibles.

A good example is Matthew 4:10, where Jesus quotes Deuteronomy 6:13, but he adds, " … and him only shall you serve." That last phrase is found only in the LXX.

The LXX, despite all the minor differences, is very similar to our modern Bibles, which are based on the Hebrew Masoretic text. There are two notable exceptions. Jeremiah and Job in the LXX are each about 1/6 shorter than the Masoretic text!

The LXX is the Old Testament of choice for the Orthodox churches. Their "Apocrypha" is larger even than the Roman Catholics "Apocrypha." From experience, I can tell you it's hard to get an Orthodox believer to give you a good list of what books are in their Old Testament. The most notable extra books are 3 and 4 Maccabees and 2 Esdras (which is a very interesting read).



• One not true part of the history of the Bible is the story that the Dead Sea Scrolls backed up the Masoretic text of Isaiah. That story came out in 1947. In 1948, however, it was retracted. The retraction didn't get as much Christian press as the original story, and so the 1947 story has been repeated—falsely—among Christians for over 60 years now.
• More interestingly, the Dead Sea scroll of Jeremiah backs up the LXX text, which, as mentioned, is seven chapters shorter than our Masoretic Jeremiah.

There's a lot more that could be said about the history of the Bible, but it's more than what one web page can handle.

This page is already pretty intense. If you want to know more, take a deep breath and plunge into A High View of Scripture?.