'What were the factors that lead to the formation of the New Testament Canon? How valid are they today?'

After reading “Everyday Bible Study, chapters 6-9” I found that God wrote the Bible. The Bible is made up of 66 books and was written over a large time span and has many different Authors like Peter, Matthew, and Timothy to name a few, and all were from various parts of the world. Given that technology was nowhere near what it is today, communicating with each other or to conspire was not possible during their time; they all corroborate the same thing, that God wrote the Bible through Man. Man was inspired to create the Scriptures from God through the influence of the Holy Spirit; Scripture was not created by any human being, rather it was translated by God through the Holy Spirit to Man (2 Pet. 1:20-21 New International Version). “If Men Are Involved, How Are There No Errors?”

Unlike Mythology, narratives of the Bible are actual events that took place dating back to the beginning of time. The conception of The Holy Bible’s compilation started thousands of years ago in the land of Egypt. Initially, the Old Testament Scriptures were written in the Hebrew language, however, they were later translated to the Greek. At the onset of the New Testament writings, they were originally recorded in the Greek language. Forty men transcribed the voice of God, which resulted in sixty-six books of the Holy Bible. The Holy Scriptures explained the creations, formation of the world, God, God’s chosen people, sin, and the plan of salvation as well.

Bruce offers a solid explanation of the formation of the canon chronologically starting with the Hebrew scriptures (p. 21) until the 4th century where church councils started to present the first spoken finished canon (p. 97). Bruce shows the importance of the Old Testament scriptures, but writes most about the New Testament. He not only shows how the New Testament came to be a canon but offers a deep analysis of non-canonical scripture called the Apocrypha (pp. 48, 90-93).

[1] With all these various locations, facts, perspectives, identities, and languages that compile the Christian biblical text how can Christians know that the 27 books are the right 27 books? Again, the question of the canon, therefore, is at the very center of how biblical authority is established. [2] Even though the Bible has been established and authenticated for several centuries, the Christian community continues to circulate debate on the New Testament canon. In the introduction of the book (pp 15-24) Kruger states there are various reasons why this conversation is still happening. First, modern critical scholarship has continued to raise doubts about the authorship and date of numerous New Testament books, attributing them to later, pseudonymous authors. Throughout the text many of the models date the completed canon to the fourth century. Second, the later century and a half have been filled with sensational discoveries of apocryphal materials that have raised new questions about which books should be included in the canon. The discoveries of apocryphal gospels such as the Gospel of Peter, the Gospel of Thomas, the Secret gospel of Mark, and most recently, the Gospels of Judas have raised questions about the state of

Charles: Even though, much of what you said is true because many men were inspired by God and wrote down some of their thoughts that makes up Scripture. A good example is in John’s Gospel, who is one of the Twelve Apostles stated, “But there are also many other things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.”(John 22:25). This shows that not all Jesus taught is contained in Sacred Scripture, as well as acknowledging that all they wrote came from His inspiration and not His command for the apostles to write it down. Therefore, showing that would have been impossible to write everything in the Bible.

Canon originally meant a rod or ruler for measuring objects, now it means the application to the books of the Bible. Canon becomes more and more important is because of the church needed. For example: standards for worship and models for prayers, liturgies, and sermons, reading material, a theological standard and a set text to translate. Heresy also plays a decisive role in the necessity of a canon. Around the year 144 Marcion an author from Rome had teachings that appeared to be Christian, but were actually teachings of a violent opponent of the evil deity of law who dominated the Old

Bible as the Inspired Word of God The Bible is the work of various authors, who lived in different continents and wrote in different eras. Furthermore, much of the text does not claim to have been 'dictated' by God and is not always God speaking to people. In parts it consists of people speaking to God, as in the Psalms, and people speaking to people, as in the New Testament letters written by Paul. In light of this, some maintain that it is not possible to treat the Bible as a book of divine oracles, delivered once by God and recorded by its authors through divine inspiration, since biblical authors were products of their time and subsequently their understanding of divine truth was culturally

When we compare the Bible to other manuscripts from antiquity, we learn that the copies of the Bible were written close to the date of the original copy. New Testament writings were composed within a few decades of the events they describe. The earliest complete copy of the entire New Testament goes back to the 5th century. Partial copies of the New Testament go back even further to 71-100 AD. In addition, there are abundant amounts of little details in the New Testament that are hard to write about unless the writer was present in the time the event took place. For example, in Acts 28 Luke mentions a Roman official named Paul Publus, the chief official of the island. We know from the

The discovery of the books like the Gospel of Mary, the Coptic Gospel of Thomas, and the Secret Gospel of John makes the Bible look less like the sacred, holy texts of God the Father, and more like a film in the theaters. Chunks of the story that were shot but never put into the final edit sit on the cutting room floor. Some parts even change the whole story. All religions do this sort of editing, both consciously and unconsciously. Sometimes, holy books are just lost to time. Paper rots, stone erodes, and oral stories are forgotten, and that’s all there is to it. In some cases, however, the editing is done with knives, or with blood, or with political change. In the case of the parts of the Bible that didn’t quite make it

The history of how the Bible came into existence has been explored for centuries and is an active area of study today. There are many facets to the Bible and each has its own set of unique characteristics and teachings. The Old Testament is considered a contemporary guide for daily living, even though it was composed hundreds of years ago. Where did the Old Testament come from? What are some of the influences that shaped the Old Testament? What are the significant events of the Old Testament? In order to gain a better understanding of the Old Testament and its message to Christians, special consideration is given to its historical and cultural context, and to the major milestones in its development. Personal application of the teachings offered in this section of the Bible should be the aspiration of all Christians today.

According to our text, the New Testament is comprised of four primary literary forms: Gospels, History, Letters and Apocalyptic (Harris, 2014). The Gospels was made up of four books written by four separate authors who tell of Jesus from four individual viewpoints based upon their understanding of who Jesus was, yet it does not cover the lifespan of Jesus, only certain accounts. Therefore, it is not considered historical or a biography but is defined as ‘sui generis’. The historical counts of the life of Christ is noted in the book of Acts. This book tells of the history of the early church but by all accounts doesn’t use traditional criteria most often noted in historical writings. The Epistles are known as letters. These letters were thought to be written by Paul and his followers. The letters were often written to the various churches rather than people or individuals. They were also written to address issues, concerns or to offer praise for specific acts or behaviors. Thus, letters or epistles addressing sin were more of the rebuking nature to bring correction and accountability in the effort to restore the parishioners to appropriate, God-fearing behaviors. Whereas, other letters may be to praise churches for exemplifying model behaviors that could be used for strong witnessing. The latter form is known as the apocalyptic writings. This form tends to deal with the End Times and was suspected to have been written during the time of church persecution. The book of Revelation in particular, was written around the 1st century when Christians were said to have been killed for their faith. It is during this time that the question was raised regarding God’s role and whether or not he would win. It was stated emphatically that God would win and would redeem his people.ReferenceHarris, S. L., (2014). The New Testament: A Student’s Introduction (8th ed.). Dubuque:McGraw-Hill Education.

Before the gospels and Pauline epistles, early church Christians related to the Old Testament as Scripture and viewed their Christian walk as the fulfillment of the promises made to Israel from the Old Testament, which foretold of the coming age of the Messiah. The first New Testament Christians understood the importance of the Old Testament; it was their “Bible” they preached from. Just as in the early church, Christians today need the Old Testament for preaching and in which to reference and understand Christ’s purpose for why he came.

The New Testament was canonized over a period of approximately four hundred years (Stotesberg). From AD 50-125, the books which in the end constitute the New Testament were written. Simultaneously, other books, which did not end up being included in the final canon, were produced. These books are the Epistle of Barnabas, the Didache, I Clement, the seven letters of Ignatius of Antioch, etc. (“Development of the Difficult Canon”). As more and more books were written, Christians realized that it was imperative that they gather and consolidate this material before it became lost. Sometime before AD 100, ten of Paul’s letters were gathered and combined into their own canon. The Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) were combined to form another canon soon after the canonization of Paul’s letters. The Gospels and Paul’s letters became the main body of a new group of Scriptures that would soon become the New Testament. Soon Acts, I Peter, I John, and Revelation were inserted into this body of Scripture. Following this, the rest of the books were added to the New Testament (Barker).

The New Testament is a collection of books which contains the writings concerning the significant events in the life of Jesus of Nazareth. These books appeared after the physical death of Jesus Christ. In this regard, Jesus had left no records concerning him, and all that is written about him depends wholly on what other people have written about him. The first four books of the New Testament are part of the several biographies of Jesus which were written by the end of the first century of the era of Christianity. Then before any of these biographies have been drafted, there were Christian communities which were being instructed through epistles on how to live like Jesus and how to solve their problem like Christians. A good number of these letters were written by a man called Paul. After Paul death, some other new leaders of the Christian movement continued to write letters to the churches to encourage and strengthen them. As Christians grew in number persecution arose, and some letters have been drafted to support them and also to counter the false doctrines. These letters are part of the New Testament. The twenty-seven books of the New Testament were selected from the list of writings in that period (Bruce, 1988)

During the early history of the church, there was no such thing as a New Testament “canon.” The selection of books that were to be included or excluded from the texts used by the church was the responsibility of each individual church body, and thus varied greatly from location to location. Because there was no canon – (books considered