Quote:
It's true they wrote a lot. But much of that content was redundant, or inspired by prior documents, or dealt with topical matters that became obsolete.
As for the Church "not letting the Bible become more than it was intended to be," to be perfectly honest, they did NOT really make a strong effort to codify the Bible, until the Reformation was underway, and the issue of what was "canon" scripture was forced upon the Church by reformers such as Martin Luther. Thus, the Church never made a conciliar declaration of canon until the Council of Trent in the 16th century. Until then, the choice of canon had been merely one of acclamation, not decision, and selection of texts to use as inspiration for doctrine, was made on a case-by-case basis.
|
I wouldn't say it was a case by case basis up until that point...The African Synod of Hippo, in 393, approved the New Testament, as it stands today, together with the Septuagint books, a decision that was repeated by Councils of Carthage in 397 and 419. These councils were under the authority of St. Augustine, who regarded the canon as already closed.[20] Pope Damasus I's Council of Rome in 382, if the Decretum Gelasianum is correctly associated with it, issued a biblical canon identical to that mentioned above,[21] or if not the list is at least a sixth century compilation.[22] Likewise, Damasus's commissioning of the Latin Vulgate edition of the Bible, c. 383, was instrumental in the fixation of the canon in the West.[23] In 405, Pope Innocent I sent a list of the sacred books to a Gallic bishop, Exsuperius of Toulouse. When these bishops and councils spoke on the matter, however, they were not defining something new, but instead "were ratifying what had already become the mind of the Church." says wikipedia...
Mary this is what you were talking about...so no the books weren't revised or written for 400 years, it just wasn't
formally decided which books belonged until then
The council of trent was a Catholic council that established the apocrophal writings into the canon. Basically that's where they got the theology of purgatory and wanted to keep it, so they needed to put those books on par with the ones recognized as inspired so long ago. The Jews never recognized these books as scripture, and neither did Jerome who did include them in the vulgate because they were profitable reading. but because the vulgate became the standard scriptures they came to be a part of catholic tradition. And in Catholic theology the tradition and the primacy of the papacy are central (Protestant theology emphasizes Scripture) because these had become part of the chuches teaching they were justified in continuing the traditions that Peter, and the what is bound on earth, had already established.
I'd disagree with some dates in the Early Christian Writings page, for example, the dating of Luke and Acts, a number of scholars argue for an earlier dating than 80 based on the fact that Acts doesn't mention the death of Paul in early-mid 60's One would think that had it not been completed Luke would want to include this suffering as well and relate the Paulto Jesus even in his martyrdom. Interestingly this perspective is not included.
There is also a remarkably late dating for the gospel of John (120!?) when we have a fragment dated at 125-150 CE found in Egypt...
Translations shouldn't be an issue for anyone...its like if I said the original manuscripts could be, but for some reason people think that we keep building on translations like a big game of telephone. Translators don't. Too much to say and I already said to much already...bye for now