Who Decided On The Canon Of The Bible?

This is a question that I've been pondering for quite some time. The only thing I've come across is a group of men going book by book deciding on whether or not they should be part of the Bible...not really much to go on.
 
This is a question that I've been pondering for quite some time. The only thing I've come across is a group of men going book by book deciding on whether or not they should be part of the Bible...not really much to go on.
the question is .. which cannon ???
the Jews have made different cannons ..
the Greek Orthodox have made different cannons ..
the RCC have made different cannons ..
and also the Protestants have made different cannons ..
I would have to check, but I think the Syrian Orthodox may have as well ..

I think Wiki is a terrible source for religious data ..
but they do make a good springboard ..

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_biblical_canons
 
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some rare known data ..

the original King James Bible ..
That translation, completed in 1611, and the Bibles published for the use of the clergy and the church members until late in the 19th Century, contained 80 books. Although attempts to remove the 14 books known as the Apocrypha from the Bible began immediately after the King James translation was completed they remained in the Bible until the end of the 19th Century.

In the year 1615 Archbishop Gorge Abbott, a High Commission Court member and one of the original translators of the 1611 translation, "forbade anyone to issue a Bible without the Apocrypha on pain of one year's imprisonment"

Most early Bibles contained the Apocrypha; here are just a few:

·1534 Luther's German translation of the Bible
·1534 The Coverdale Bible
·1537 Thomas Matthew Bible
·1539 The Taverner Bible
·1541 The "Great" or "Cromwell's" Bible
·1551 The "Tyndale/ Matthews" Bible
·1560 The Geneva Bible·1568 The Bishops' Bible
·1610 Catholic Old Testament
·1611 King James Bible
·1615 King James Version Robert Barker at London, England
·1625 A King James Version
·1717 King George 1st, AKA, The "Vinegar Bible"
·1782 The Aitken Bible ·1791 The Family Bible ·1846 The Illuminated Bible

The Apocrypha are also contained in the following:

·The Septuagint (LXX) - Except II Esdras.
·Codex Alexandrinus (A) - Also contains III & IV Maccabees
·Codex Vaticanus - Except I & II Maccabees and The defaulter of Manassah
·Codex Sinaiticus (Aleph)
·Codex Ephraemi Rescriptus - Includes Wisdom of Solomon and Ecclesiasticus
·Chester Beatty Papyri - Fragments of Ecclesiasticus
·The Dead Sea Scrolls - Some apocryphal writing was found among the Dead Sea Scrolls

·"APOCRYPHA, that is, Books which are not to be esteemed like the Holy Scriptures, and yet which are useful and good to read." (Luther Bible, 1534)
·The Synod of the Reformed Church held at Dordrecht in 1618 condemned the Apocrypha. ·"The books commonly called Apocrypha, not being of divine inspiration, are no part of the Canon of Scripture; and therefore are of no authority in the Church of God, nor to be any otherwise approved, or made use of, than other human writings." (Westminster Confession, 1647)
·In 1880 the American Bible Society voted remove the "Apocrypha" Books from the King James Version. These 14 Books [There are 155,683 words in over 5,700 verses in 168 Chapters] of the Apocrypha had been part of the King’s bible since 1611. ·The "Apocrypha" was officially removed from the English printings of the KJV by the Archbishop of Canterbury in 1885 leaving only 66 books.
 
personally, I tend to agree with Luther on this ..
he put them in his bible, but separated them from the rest of the cannon ..
and basically said "they are useful, but their inspiration is questionable" ..
for instance, Maccabees I believe is 100% accurate, but are only uninspired history books

interesting enough, many think Jerome was against them, but when you examine his letters he wrote, he used Apocrypha to substantiate biblical points ..
 
What I can contribute as to the New Testament is that by the 2nd generation after the Apostles, those the Apostles taught and appointed passed the following books on as the word of God...(you find these quoted as authoritative in the early church fathers before 300 A.D.)

The four gospels are Matthew, Mark, Luke and John and only these four and in this order...then Acts, Romans, 1 and 2 Corinth, Gal., Col., Eph., Phil., 1 and 2 Thess, Titus, 1 and 2 Tim, 1 Peter, 1 John, (Heb and Rev quoted by many especially Isenaeus)...

(2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Jude, and James were questioned by many all the way up to Eusibius History of the Church in 325 A.D...Eusibius implies many considered them spurious)

brother Paul
 
I thought I'd copy something written in a previous thread...


Looking back right after Christ ascended into heaven and the Holy Spirit came upon on the disciples, and the Christian Church was born. Many Jews and Gentiles were converting to Christianity. In their church services, they were using the Jewish scriptures. This didn't sit well with the Jews, so they held a council. They met to go through their scriptures and determine which ones were authentically inspired by God.

In Palestine, the scriptures were recorded in Hebrew. In the Alexandrian territory, they were recorded in Greek, the common language of the time -- that was also the dominantly used version. The Jews in their pursuit to find true, authentic books, they only looked at the scriptures recorded in Hebrew. Any books that were not in the Hebrew were thrown out (First and Second Maccabees, Wisdom, etc.).

Throughout the early Church, these books continued to be used from the Greek. When they started to write their own letters and gospels, they were referring to this Greek text -- the Greek version of what we call the Old Testament. In 393 and again in 397, the Catholic bishops gathered and held a council to figure out which writings were truly inspired by the Holy Spirit -- especially what we now call the New Testament. Up until that time, they didn't have a cannon that included the NT. As they went through the readings, they got rid of the ones that were not inspired by the Holy Spirit and kept the ones that were. So every Bible today, NT cannon, was given to us by the Catholic bishops. Anyone who puts their faith in the Bible, especially the NT, puts their faith in the ability of the Holy Spirit to direct the Catholic bishops to lead us to the truth -- in this case, on the cannon of scripture.

That cannon was held to be the true cannon of scripture all the way up to the Protestant reformation in the 1500s -- so we had over 1000 years where we operated on that cannon of scripture. At the time of the reformation, Martin Luther broke away and began to change dogmatic and doctrinal teachings, and also wanted to change the cannon of scripture. At this time, the Catholic Church definitively stated that this was the true authentic cannon of scripture given to us by God. However, because some of the books didn't support Martin Luther's theology, he wanted to change the cannon.
 
Since the Word is Spirit and Life and God warned about adding or taking away the Word then God was more than able to give us the books that are cannon and the Word of God. There are 66 books.

Any books that were added or removed, God was more than able to fix and keep only what we should believe.

Blessings.
 
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