Where Did We Get The Bible?

By Eric Pisk
WHERE DID THE Bible come from? Was it delivered from heaven by Jesus and handed to the apostles? Did it arrive on stone tablets, as the Ten Commandments did to Moses?
Many have asked the same question throughout history. I asked that question many years ago, waited 20 years to search for the answer, and arrived at a very interesting discovery. This article is not meant to be an exhaustive explanation of how Scripture was discerned. Many scholarly writings and historical documents are available. But it will shed light on a subject to which, in my experiences, many Christians, including myself, either know little about or seem to misunderstand.

An accurate historical account is available to anyone who sincerely wishes to know how and why the Bible was promulgated. The final version of the divinely inspired writings we Christians know as The Holy Scriptures was given to us by the Catholic Church in 397 A.D. at the Council of Carthage and affirmed by Pope Innocent I in 405 AD. This council of Catholic bishops, which included some of the great Christian scholars, early Church Fathers, saints and holy men, confirmed and approved the decrees from a previous council (Hippo in 393 A.D.) as to which books were “God-breathed.” St. Augustine was present. The witness to the truths commonly held by faithful Christians for the first four centuries was present. The Holy Spirit, guiding the Catholic Church, was present. It declared, for all time, the exact collection of inspired writings.
This canon (measuring stick) of the books of scripture was subsequently confirmed during the Council of Florence (1439) and the Council of Trent (1563). There were four main reasons why, after almost 400 years after the life of Christ, the Catholic Church was divinely moved to discern which Christian writings were inspired and which to be set aside: 1) False teachings 2) False writings 3) Persecution of Christians and 4) the need to standardize readings at Mass across the Christian world.

Greek was the prevailing language of the region at the time of Jesus. The apostles spoke Greek and Aramaic, a “dialect” of Hebrew. Jesus spoke to the apostles in Aramaic. The Apostles and Jesus quoted from the Greek version of the Old Testament, called the Septuagint (46 books). This version was translated from the original Hebrew and Aramaic between 200-100 B.C.

The New Testament gospels and letters were written in Greek. The first translation of the Old and New Testament into a single volume was into Latin, the common language of the Roman Empire. St. Jerome completed this in the early 5th century.

Interestingly, many writings over the first 400 years of Christianity claimed to be “inspired.” Generally, early Christian writings fell into three categories. This first category was the books acknowledged as canonical (i.e. Four Gospels, 13 Epistles of Saint Paul). The second category was the disputed books (i.e. Epistle of St James, The Apocalypse of St John). The third category was the spurious books (i.e. The Gospel of Thomas, The Gospel of James). The Church sifted, weighed, discussed, debated, rejected and finally came to the 73 books of the Bible; 46 in the Old Testament and 27 in the New. For the next 1200 years, all Christians used the same Bible, containing the same 73 books which make up the Catholic Bibles of today.
So, how did the Catholic Church determine which writings were inspired? Remember, there was no inspired table of contents” that declared books to be inspired. We know that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, along with the letters and The Apocalypse, were inspired because of the living Tradition of the one, holy, catholic and apostolic church, founded by Christ, as its head (Matthew 16:18). 

'Parts of Bible may've been written by fake apostles'

DO YOU AGREE TO THIS? WELL, THIS RESEARCH SEEMS UNREAL

A US scholar has claimed that the Bible may have been forged as several New Testament books were actually written by people who lied about their identity , pretending to be the apostles Peter, Paul or James.

Bart D Ehrman, the bestselling author of 'Misquoting Jesus' and 'Jesus, Interrupted' , has said that many religious scholars were well aware of the "lies" of the Bible. While some were happy to acknowledge them, others refer to them as "pseudepigrapha " meaning a falsely attributed work, he wrote in 'The Huffington Post' . Even in his new book , 'Why the Bible's authors are not who we think they are' , Prof Ehrman claims 'The Second Epistle of Peter' was forged.

"... scholars everywhere – except for our friends among the fundamentalists – will tell you that there is no way on God's green earth that Peter wrote the book. Someone else wrote it claiming to be Peter," Prof Ehrman wrote.

He has also claimed that scholars who say it was acceptable in the ancient world for someone to write a book in the name of someone else are wrong. "If you look at what ancient people actually said about the practice, you'll see that they invariably called it lying and condemned it as a deceitful practice, even in Christian circles."

According to Prof Ehrman, many scholars think six of the 13 letters allegedly written by Paul were actually authored by somebody else claiming to be Paul. "In the ancient world, books like that were labelled as pseudoi — lies."

He has also claimed that the author of the book of 1 Timothy claimed to be Paul but in actual fact was someone living after Paul had died.

The author used the apostle's name to address a problem he saw in church, the scholar said. "Women were speaking out, exercising authority and teaching men. That had to stop. The author told women to be silent and submissive, and reminded his readers about what happened the first time a woman was allowed to exercise authority over a man, in that incident in the garden of Eden."