PsiCop

I don't know if I'm the guy you're talking about but I will take a stab at it nonetheless.

The reason people "waited" to write the New Testament books is because they hadn't yet developed their content, in the form we know them! That is, they were still in the process of coming up with doctrines, beliefs, rites and practices. The early decades of Christianity were dynamic and few things were settled. They were really not sitting around "waiting" to put their ideas down on parchment; rather, they were still working them out, going by earlier versions of those documents which no longer exist in tangible form.

The 7 "genuine" Pauline epistles were all written in the 50s CE, from about 52 to 58. (The other Pauline epistles in the New Testament were all later documents, retroactively attributed to him, but certainly not written by him.) If we take their author "Paul" at his word, he was writing after having converted some years before. All of these letters, moreover, address issues of doctrine or practice that had come up, after he'd been a convert and had been missionizing; they are all topical letters, then, dealing with matters that came up around the time he wrote them. So it's not really fair to say that he "waited" to write them. His letters are actually all very timely.

Around the 40s to 50s, another document was being sent around, now called "Q." This wound up being used as a source, later, for the synoptic gospels, and the Gospel of Thomas was a later version of it. Q grew from an existing oral tradition, one which goes back to the 30s, so again it's not fair, really, to say anyone "waited" to write it ... the content in it was, in fact, being transmitted (just not in writing until the early 40s).

Other source documents were also being sent around, again in oral form first, then written; these are the Passion Narrative and the Signs gospel, which were sources for Mark and John respectively. These are nearly as old as Q and probably were in written form by the 50s.

All of these documents had to have existed by the 50s, otherwise they could not later have been used as sources for the gospels, which were written from about 75 to 100 CE. One could ask, I suppose, why the Christians "waited" until then to write their gospels, but one must remember they already had these source documents to read, source documents which have subsequently been lost (because they were superseded by others, so that no one made the effort to preserve them).

Also, remember that the documents we have, are extant only because people preserved them. Scholars are very sure that many other documents existed by the 40s and 50s, they just didn't survive to modern times. Paul, for instance, almost certainly wrote more than just 7 epistles; but whatever those may have been, we have no idea, since they've been lost.

What survived, then, is merely a crude snapshot of what must have been a much larger production of proto- and early Christian documents. We know this, because the documents which survived, such as the canonical gospels, are dynamic and show the tracks of earlier documents from which they were composed. The problem is that ancient manuscripts are notoriously fragile, papyri were often re-used and re-re-used, and because copying them took a great deal of work, which was not undertaken unless a document was truly valued. This is why, for example, the Q document was lost; once its content ended up in Mark, Matthew, and Luke, no one bothered to copy it since it was already being copied as part of those larger works.

For information on all these documents, and to read them for yourself, go to Early Christian Writings.

AB517

They writing a lot down actually, too much in fact, that is why the church had to sit down and weed out certain things, like Paul flying around Rome. They had to Make a “backbone” so to speak. The Roman Catholic Church also saw the importance of not letting the bible become more than it was intended to be.

PsiCop

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.

Preacherman

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

PsiCop

Sure. That was one "case." Many different synods decided on a canon, at times when they felt it was necessary, for reasons of recent interest. Synods in Carthage, Hippo, Laodicea, etc. did not carry any compelling weight outside of their own districts. No general or ecumenical council addressed the matter, until Trent.

Besides, you're forgetting that there are actually a number of Biblical canons in Christianity, some of which were established rather early and have not changed since then.

And the canon continued to be discussed after his time, e.g. the synod of Trullo in 692. Augustine may have considered the matter "closed," but obviously the dignitaries at Trullo didn't! And again, the canons of (say) the Coptic, Armenian, Ethiopian, and Syriac churches were never affected by anything Augustine said (or that Trullo decided, for that matter).

Again, Damasus' and Innocent's ideas about canon did not necessarily carry any weight outside their realms of influence or after their time (again, as shown in the fact that synods like Trullo took up the matter). As for And Jerome did not agree with Damasus completely, either; he did not, for example, translate Revelation himself, he merely stitched together pieces of existing Latin translations and plopped it in.

As it turns out, we do NOT, in fact, have any "canon" from Damasus issued from his own pen. The only contemporary information we have on it, is from the pen of Jerome and from others who remarked on their differences. What most people call the "Damasine Canon" is actually a part of a more recent document, Decretum Gelasianum, is attributed to Pope Gelasius I (in the last years of the 5th century), but the document itself actually dates after him, sometime in the first half of the 6th century. It dates too long after Damasus to be of any value in telling us what Damasus actually thought.

I didn't come up with those dates so I'm not exactly in a position to defend them, except to say that it looks like they were culled from a "consensus" of many scholars. That a couple of scholars here or there disagree, is therefore to be expected, and is not inherently significant by itself.

I disagree with some of the dating myself; Didache, for instance, contains some content which appears to be late 2nd century, making the "50-120" date range unlikely. (Although the point may be that the Didache was originally composed then; the listed range is not intended to reflect redactions or interpolations.)

Not being able to read the mind of the page author, my guess is that late date is intended to reflect the later addition of portions of John, such as its last chapter, as well as story of the woman taken in adultery. (But other parts of John are dated long after this, as well ... the Johannine Comma, for instance, is unknown until the 4th century.)

I would suggest not taking the dates listed on the ECW page too seriously. They do serve, however, as a useful, general guideline, and from what I have seen, do reflect a "consensus" of scholarship.

The problem of reading these books in translation is a serious matter. It is FAR too easy for translators — whether intentionally or not — alter the originally-intended meaning of texts. Anachronistic revisionism is another problem, although it's possible even if one is reading in the original language; but it's especially notable in translation since the translator inevitably introduces his/her own anachronistic misconceptions during the process.

Preacherman

That is why the translations we have are performed by teams and not individuals. Certainly there are things they disagree on and at times the exact intent isn't preserved. So it isn't always accurate concerning the Greek or Hebrew, but what I'm trying to get at is the general public thinks that the translations don't go back to the greek and Hebrew they think things keep getting changed and altered and translated back and forth. and now we can really have no idea what was there originally, when in fact we have a very good idea.

The coptic, syriac etc Canons you mentioned still aren't affected by what the catholic church decreed at Trent...

I think the point still should accepted that these councils reinforced the "consensus of the early church" rather than a departure from it, even if the debate was brought up again. Even Luther questioned the validity of James, but not event the Lutheran church has departed from the (overwhelming, though not unanimous) mind of the church long before even the earliest councils

buzz2

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PsiCop

Unfortunately, that doesn't always help. Teams of people can be just as inept, incompetent, hyperindoctrinated, etc. The New World Translation, for example, was done by a "team" ... but only one of them had any competency in Biblical languages, and the whole bunch of them (including the lone competent) were drenched in Jehovah's Witness gobbledygook.

Correct ... we DO know this ... but only IF someone takes care to figure it out. Unfortunately most people who study the Bible at this level are already "believers" and have already made up their minds about a great many things; what they find tends (rather conveniently!) to match up with whatever those preconceptions are. Few are able to study the period and the languages and read the texts in truly detached, impartial, objective manner.

Learning a language, the history of the people who wrote it, and using all of that information together to discern exactly what they intended to write, takes an ENORMOUS amount of work. Few people are willing to expend the time and energy necessary to do so ... especially those who've already decided in advance that the have "the Truth."

True, however, they demonstrate that there is no single canon! People talk about "THE" Bible canon as if there is only one. There isn't! In fact, there never has been only "one" Bible canon!

It is true that, as time went on, "momentum" factored in. That is, people tended to lean on what already existed. But it is not true that there was no controversy. At the Lateran councils of the Middle Ages, for example, most of which dealt with how to react to various heresies (and ultimately resulted in creation of the Inquisitions and the launch of the Albigensian Crusade), some of the discussions dealt with how authoritative some of the texts (both canon and from the Church Fathers) were. The dignitaries by no means considered the existing, informally-determined canon as "absolutely authoritative."

As for Luther (and his smarter friend Philip Melanchthon, who in reality is probably the primary author of Luther's theology and reforms) ... he definitely parted company with prior canon tradition! For instance, he jettisoned the deuterocanonicals, which the scholastics had already established were suspect but which the Church had not dispensed with. He felt no compulsion to retain them even though centuries of tradition considered them important, if not sacred.