In my last blog, I covered the development of the Old Testament. A Brief History of how the Bible came to be: Old Testament. Today I am going to cover what we know of the development of the Bible after the time of Christ.

Languages of New Testament Times

By New Testament times, Palestine was a very cosmopolitan place with most citizens being multilingual. If you read my previous blog, you can imagine, Jews would have spoken Hebrew, Aramaic, Egyptian and Greek; and with the expansion of Rome, yet another foreign empire to oppress the children of Israel, they would have learned Latin as well. When you consider Jesus communicated with a Roman centurion (Matt 8:5-13), Pontius Pilate (John 18:28-38), discussed the Torah with religious leaders at age 12 (luke 2:28-52), and spoke with a Samaritan women ( John 4:4-26), it seems Jesus was likely conversant in at least the four languages of Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek and Latin.

Languages of the New Testament Jews

Hebrew
Aramaic
Greek
Eqyptian
Latin

In terms of holy texts, most Jews were using the Aramaic translation and this is what Jesus quoted, but Greek was the language of scholarship which is why the New Testament was written in Greek. Nevertheless, there was still no official canon, and scripture was simply inspired writing and not necessarily the divine written word of God. As such, we should not read too much into Peter referring to the writings of Paul as scripture (2 Peter 3:14-16), at least indirectly. We need to be careful about conflating the old world understanding of scripture with the modern definition. We distinguish between scripture and canon. The bible today is canon, but many of the writings of the early apostles were not included in the bible despite their being considered inspired scripture. All canon is scripture, but not all scripture is canon. When the bible was still being written, there was no canon. This is why in the LDS faith we consider the teachings of living prophets to be scripture, but not canonical. This is also why we consider our personal journals scripture for our own families.

Jesus was critical of the priests for not knowing the scriptures (Matt 23:2-3) which is because the Jewish leaders of the time often did not read the scriptures nor teach them in their synagogue. Christ and his followers actively used the Septuagint and this disturbed rabbinic Jews who set about to gather Greek translations of the old testament, but making subtle changes removing anthropomorphic references to God in an effort to challenge the Christians who were reinterpreting the old testament: ‘for he mightily convinced the Jews, and that publicly, shewing by the scriptures (the old testament) that Jesus was the Christ (Acts 18;28)

Emergence of Christianity

From the perspective of the Jews, they faced the rise of Christianity and their subsequent hijacking of the scriptures, the fall of Jerusalem, and the second destruction of the temple. As a result, the Jews were compelled to re-examine their own holy records. With the loss of the temple as a central place of worship, they began to be more focused on the book which was the only physical symbol they had left of their religion. At the Council of Janmia in AD 90, it is believed that the Jews made a final determination of what constituted scripture. As H. G. G. Herklots explains in his book  How Our Bible Came to Us(New York: Oxford University Press, 1954), Hebrew manuscripts had to follow certain criteria and all other texts were destroyed.

(1) A synagogue roll had to be written on skins of clean animals prepared specifically by a synagogue Jew.

(2) Only authentic copies were to be recopied, and scribes were not to deviate in the least.

(3) Nothing must be written from memory.

As new copies were made, old ones were burned or buried, as a result nothing older than the 9^th century survived until the discovery of the dead sea scrolls. Consequently, many books and copies of books were lost.

Who Wrote the New Testament

As for the New Testament, there is no evidence that Jesus wrote any of his teachings down, and there are quotes attributed to him by Paul that do not show up in the gospels (Acts 20:35; 1 Cor 7: 10-11), so many believe there was a book referred to as the The Words of Jesus that subsequent writers referred to but this has long been lost. In fact, the Savior spend several months with his disciples after his resurrection and taught many wonderful doctrines, but there is no record of what he taught; this has all been lost. The earliest writings of the bible were the epistles of Paul who was not even a disciple of Jesus. If you recall, his job was to arrest Christians and put them to death until God stepped in and gave him some proper direction in life. The four gospels, or four testimonies, were written much later, perhaps after AD 70. The authorship is in dispute, and many suspect they were not written by those to whom they are attributed.

Dr. Michael Licona of the Huston Baptist University explains that books were either attributed to an authoritative figure to give the writing a sense of credibility, or were anonymous. Books written anonymously were written for the benefit of the reader with no claims of authorship. The earliest scrolls of the gospels do not have any names on them so it is suspected that they were written anonymously and latter attributed to the actual author. It is the position of the LDS church that the authors presently names are the actual authors, and that the four gospels were written by eye witnesses.

The epistles were likely written as generic copies and sent to a printing house staffed by slaves who would make copies of the letters and retain the original in case more were requested. These copies would then be distributed by courier. It appears that, to save costs, each branch of the church was sent a letter and instructed to forward this copy on to the next branch once they were finished reading it. Unfortunately, the original authors had no control over the content of the letter once it left their writing table and it was the practice of the time to make changes to sacred writings to suite the doctrinal slant of the sender. This is why we have the stern warning at the end of the Book of Revelation not to take away from the writing of the book (Rev 22:19). We also know that some letters, such as the letter to the Ephesians, did not have the actual destination but rather the original had a blank space at the beginning; this would allow for several copies to be made and each one could be personalized to the recipient. The only version that has survived is the one addressed to the Ephesians. For example, the original may have said “Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ by the will of God, to the saints which are at ____, and the faithful in Christ Jesus.” The copyist would then have been given a list of cities to put in the blank of each copy.

The Formation of the Book of Books

It is also important to be aware that there is no evidence that any of the books currently found in the New Testament were ever intended by the authors to be canonized dogma. They were scripture in the sense that they were inspired writings, but as I mentioned earlier this is different from being canon. Today many religions use the two terms interchangeably. There were many books that the early Christians considered scripture but did not include in their bible. The list we have today became as such over centuries of debate and consensus. Furthermore, the councils that formulated the book of books did not have ‘inspired’ as a criteria for considering them in the canon.

The four criteria were

1) could be linked to an apostle or one of their disciples;

2) were widely read and accepted by most Christians

3) contained doctrines that were consistent with the orthodoxy of the day

4) relevant to the church of that day – some written by an apostle not included because it was not considered relevant.

Thus, many books were dismissed because they were not popular or if they contained teachings that did not sit well with the theology of committee members. There is no discussion of prayerful consideration. Books that were attributed to the apostles and that contained agreeable doctrines were dismissed if it was felt that the vast majority of Christians were not familiar with it and would therefore not readily accept it. It was a process of selecting the most popular rather than the most poignant. This approach is in sharp contrast to the Saviors and Old Testament prophets method of stirring the pot.

When viewing the history of the bible, we also become glaringly aware of man’s propensity to create religious relics. We tend to put historical documents and people up on a pedestal and disdain the modern. The music of Mozart was rejected in his day as being too complicated and busy; today it is revered as the most classical of classical music. Bach’s music was long forgotten until Mendelssohn resurrected it. People in their 50’s readily dismiss the so-called garbage that is on the radio today, forgetting that the music of the 70’s and 80’s was the same old drivel, just in a different style. The adored music of the Beatles contains such literary genius as ‘I Love you yayaya’ and ‘come on come on baby now, twist and shout’. And these have become our musical gods.

Scripture become a Relic

Such is the case with the bible. The older the book, the more sacred it became. The original Hebrew was revered and translating it into Aramaic was resisted for hundreds of years; as a result neither the people nor the priests of the Olt Testament times were able to actual read the scriptures. The New Testament was translated in to Latin since at the time this was the language of Christians;  in time it became the official sacred language of the scriptures for no other reason than only the elite could read it. Translating the scriptures into the language of the laity became a heretical act punishable by death which is rather ironic since when it was translated into Latin, this was the language of the laity. For hundreds of years nobody could read the bible so it became a religious relic rather than a source of truth.

To say the bible and the resulting religion of Christianity produced the dark ages and the barbarity it entailed is not a very valid argument. I would argue that the barbarity of the middle ages was not a result of Christianity, but rather because of a lack of access to the teachings of Christianity. The western world was Christian in name, but not in doctrine or precept. The brutal and violent campaigns to spread Christianity were misguided and without doctrinal foundation but since nobody was reading the bible, they just acted of their own accord and justified their behavior by doing it in the name of God. The problem is they failed to inquire if God wanted them to do it in the first place. Christianity evolved without a text and by the time it was finally translated into more readable languages, the teachings that evolved had to be imposed on the book rather than the other way around.

The Invention of the Book

A common question is, why was the bible, or the book of books, created in the first place. Since historically, records were kept on scrolls and were taken or left at the whim of the preacher, why was there suddenly an impetus to create an official list of accepted books? We have good old fashion scripture bashing to thank. Christians had access to books the Jews did not and read them often. It was a bit difficult to challenge the Jewish interpretations of scriptures, however, if you had to pull out the huge scroll of Isaiah and find chapter 63 verse 9 so someone came up with a brilliant plan that would help the proselyte to find references quickly in order to stump their Jewish opponents. They cut the scrolls into section and tied or glued them together, like putting sheets into a binder. They could flip through the pages with greater ease and thus the modern book was born. As you can imagine, these early books were enormous.

With the invention of these early books came a dilemma. No longer could you pick and choose which scrolls you would consider sacrosanct. If the church was going to start producing these bound scrolls, they would be seen to giving official acceptance to some books over others. Thus came the movement to narrow down what was allowable. It was never a case of including a whole bunch and slowly dwindling down the pile, rather from the very beginning very few were accepted and it was a matter of deciding what to add. Debate raged for hundreds of years.

The books that were universally accepted were the following:

Eusebius (AD 320-330) All the books we have today but he questioned James, 2 Peter, 2 John, 3 John and Jude

Cyril of Jerusalem (AD350) All the books we have today but he added Gospel of James and excluded Revelation

Laodidea Synod (AD 363) All the books we have today but excluded Revelation

Athanasius (AD367) ) All the books we have today

Gregory of Nazianus (AD390) ) All the books we have today

Jerome (AD394) ) All the books we have today

Why does the catholic church contain books not included in the protestant bible or Jewish Torah? As I mentioned previously in my discussion of the old testament, there were a number of old testament books that were written in Aramaic and these were all included in the Latin translation. When reformers were fighting against the Catholic church they found the most authentic copies of the scriptures to translate into English and other western languages. When they started to study the earliest Hebrew texts, the decision was made to only include books that were in Hebrew. The books known as the apocrypha were only available in Aramaic and were written after the diaspora. As a result, these books were removed from the protestant canon; and the Jews did the same in an effort to reclaim their Hebrew heritage. The Jews produced a book of books in reaction to the growing threat of Christianity.

Of course the story does not end there but the heroic efforts of Wycliffe and others to bring the bible to the masses will have to be covered another time.