History of the Bible

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The Bible is a collection of some 66 to 86 different books (depending on the religious creeds and on the way to count). Every sentence, every clause in the Bible is numbered for ease of reference.

A vast majority of Christian believers think the Bible is the words of God which was recorded a few thousand years ago and has been kept unchanged ever since.

The truth is entirely different.

The contents of the New Testament, just like of the Old Testament, has been changed and debated non stop by many different Christian creeds for many centuries. The New Testament that Christian believers use today is a product quite new. The structure of the New Testament changed almost non stop between the first century and up to the 16th century. Even in the 19th and early 20th centuries, some minor changes (but not insignificant) was inserted in the Catholic Bible.

Both the Old Testament and the New Testament have the same origin: the Hebrew Bible.

The Hebrew Bible is a collection of numerous myths passed on verbally over thousands of years from one generation to another before they were written down. Some sources say the Hebrew Bible was writen between the 10th to the 7th centuries BC, other sources say it was between the 5th and the 3rd centuries BC. The Hebrew Bible consists of 24 different books written in Hebrew.

The Old Testament is a collection of a number of books taken directly from the Hebrew Bible plus a number of other documents outside the Hebrew Bible. Some sources say the Old Testament was compiled between the 12th and the 2nd centuries BC. The original books of the Old Testament were writen in Hebrew and Greek.

Catholic scholars themselves admit that they do not know who compiled these documents together and who used what authority to canonize the Old Testament. "Canonization" is a process to formally recognise that their Bible has a sacred value (that is it came from God).

The Old Testament of each of the Christian creed in Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant is slightly different from one another. Each creed recognises and/or rejects a number of different books that should be part of their Old Testament. The number of books included in each of their Old Testament is therefore also different from one another (Catholic: 46 books, Orthodox: 53-56 books, Protestant and Church of England: 39 books).

When Jesus was alive, he and his disciples used the Old Testament to spread their belief.

After Jesus had died, his disciples continued to use the Old Testament. Until approx 45 years after Jesus' death, his disciple started to write documents recording his life and teaching. Many priests in the generation after these disciples also wrote many similar documents based on their own knowledge and views. A number of these documents were refered to as "scriptures" and used in conjunction with the Old Testament in their worship ceremonies at the time.

Some sources say these original documents were writen in Greek and then were translated into other languages such as Latin, Egyptian, etc. Some other sources say these documents were writen mostly in Hebrew.

In the first 3 centuries, there were many fierce disagreements and debates among the Christian leaders about the value and accuracy of these documents. Especially about the what are called the apocrypha (which are the documents even though had existed since the beginning and believed to have been written by the disciples but have never been recognised by a number of Christian creeds).

There were a few Christian priests attempted to compile a number of those documents together to form a universally accepted Bible. However because of the above mentioned fierce disagreements and debates, these attempts were not successful. In all of the documents (or "scriptures") in existence, only the 4 Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John) were recognised by everybody at the time. This is one of the main reasons why Christianity has been divided into so many different creeds.

Among the Christian creeds in the 3rd century there were in total more than 40 different Gospels (in addition to the 4 Gospels by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John), about 40 books of Acts, more than 10 books of Revelation and hundreds of Epistles (which are letters written by the Saints). Each Christian creed used different books in conjunction with the Old Testament for their worship purposes. At the time, none of those books were regarded as "God's word".

It is believed that in the 4th century, the concept "canonization" was for the first time raised by Anathasius of Alexandria when he proposed the 27 books that should be compiled together to form a Bible universally accepted by everyone.

From around the 4th century onwards, in general all Christian believers agreed on the majority of these books. However in reality there are still many different Bibles accepted and used by different creeds, each Bible is a different collection of different scriptures. In other words, these different Christian churches could not (and still can not) agree universally on which scriptures could be accepted as Word of God.

This disagreement caused a serious division among different churches who held different fundamental beliefs. During those times, Christianity played a crucial role in the government structures of many European countries. The more Christianity expanded and embedded itself strongly in these ruling structures, the more serious the impacts of these religious differences have on the political and military stability among the European powerful countries of the time.

Many church committees (called Councils) were established and convened off and on from the 4th centuries in an attempt to resolve these differences. These Councils investigated in detail each and every of these books before voting on their value and accuracy. After many centuries, through many different Councils, a common ground still could not be achieved. The decisions made by these Councils often were not consistent nor appropriate. Some books were accepted and some decisions were made by some Councils would later be rejected by other Councils, and vice versa.

In the 16th century, the division among Christianity reached its ugliest peak when a war broke out between the Catholic and the Protestant. Also, around this time there were other bloody and widespread wars taking placing among countries like England, France, Germany and Turkey. Emperors and Christian leaders all saw that it was utmost important to resolve these religious difference as quickly and peaceful as possible. This fact had huge influences on the Council at the time when they discussed and voted for the "sacred value" of each of those scriptures to be compiled into the Bible.

At last, in late 16th century, the canonisation process of these scriptures took place formally for all the churches. The Council of Catholic (Trent) voted and officially announced the contents of their Bible in 1546; the Council of Church of England (Thirty Nine Scriptures) in 1563; the Council of the Protestant (Westminster) in 1647; the Council of Orthodox (Jerusalem) in 1672.

During the above selection process, some scriptures were accepted even though they had been rejected previously; some scriptures were rejected even though they had been accepted previously; some other scriptures were accepted by this church however rejected by other churches, and vice versa.

The scriptures voted and accepted by these Councils in general have remained the same ever since.

There were however a few minor (but significant) changes taking place in the Catholic Bible lately. In 1870 some small additions were made into the Gospels of Mark, Luke and John). Also on 2nd June 1926, Pope Pius XI decreed that the Comma Johanneum was officially "open to dispute." ("Comma " are small segments of comments deliberately added to the Bible by some compilers since as early as the 3rd century to mainly in 16th century. "Comma Johanneum" are such comments made by Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam in 16th century).

Discussion:

1. It should be known that until the Gutenberg printer was invented in the 15th century, all Bibles were written by hand. During those times, the number of people who could read or write was very small, most of them were priests. These priests worked for various Churches who held different views about what should be in the Bible. This means that the contents of the Bible during those times could be modified very easily when mistakes were made by these scribes. These mistakes could be either unintentional or deliberate to suit the current views of some Church leaders.

2. It should be noted that the list of scriptures that were accepted and included into the Bible was decided by the Council at the time by the method of voting. The members of these Councils used their own judgments to decide and vote for which scriptures they believed to have sacred value. In other words, those scriptures scored most votes would be considered as God's Word. This "selection by voting" clearly shows that it was human who decided the "sacred value" of these scriptures.

3. The issue "How do we know for sure the contents of the Bible were God's Word and not entirely a product of man's imagination?" has always been hotly debated in the last 2000 years. Some religious researchers insist that both cases could be right: "The Bible was inspired by God word by word through the writers at the time, however the writers could also use their own views and temperaments to express these words". Other people think this is nothing but a statement trying to cover both ways: allowing the Bible to have a sacred value but at the same time using the fallible human nature to absorb any mistakes when necessary.

4. The existence of thousands of different versions of the Bible by different Christian creeds throughout history shows that the Bible is highly unlikely a product of an omnipotent God. The non-stop changes in the contents of the Bible generated from and depended directly on outcomes of the disagreements and conflicts among opposing Christian churches in the last 16 centuries support this view.

5. All historical details about the Bible presented here are clearly documented in all major libraries of the Christian creeds. All the priests during their study to become official clergies would have learned about these details. If a "normal" believer announces that the Bible has not been changed for a few thousand years then he or she could only be seen as ill-informed in this regard. However, if a Christian priest or a Christian organisation makes any such announcement, they could only be seen as dishonest and deliberately deceiving.

(based on various sources)

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