Too many times our religious knowledge today, take the New Testament for example, concerning spiritual matters is limited to our generation and our generation only. We seem to forget that the "top ten" at your corner Christian Book store pails in comparison to a scholarly book. To much denominational bias and "party line" occupy the bookshelves today. Most Christians I know have never read a scholarly Biblical book in their life, but yet to listen to them, they have all truth because the Holy Spirit led them to it. This always amuses me when the same Holy Spirit has evidently led almost 1 billion people to the worship of Mary as well.
Over the years of intense study I have seem first-hand how that we have lost more knowledge than we currently possess. Even in Seminary I was beginning to get the "drift" that all is not what it is made out to be thanks to credible and honest professors who walked a thin line between their "paychecks" and truth.
Those who consider themselves "knowledgeable" today concerning the Christian religion seldom seem to know more than rhetoric or their "denominational company line." Antiquity possesses the truths we look for if we would only look; for much it has to say is a blatant contradiction to what we have been taught today. Our complacency and our laziness to search out these matters to see if we have been taught the truth has robbed us of this precious commodity.
The idea of a complete and clear-cut canon of the New Testament existing from the beginning, that is from Apostolic times, has no foundation in history. The Canon of the New Testament, like that of the Old, is the result of a development, of a process at once stimulated by disputes with doubters, both within and without the Church, and retarded by certain obscurities and natural hesitations, and which did not reach its final term until the dogmatic definition of the Tridentine Council. New Testament
The following I provide to provoke your thinking. These men saw severe problems with the Canon and New Testament which most likely you, the reader, has not seen yet. Again, your inability to see these problems does not negate their existence. It is our hope at Bet Emet that once reading these quotes you will awaken to the personal need of serious study into the document you have accepted "by faith" without verification.
"In the Twentieth Century it is astounding to hear Christian people declare that the Bible and particularly the New Testament , says so-and-so, and that therefore it must be true. Do they not understand that the New Testament is a collection of books of varying credibility only in the Fourth Century A.D., by clergy having the limited mentality of that very uncritical age?" (Authur Weigall, The Paganism in Our Christianity, G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1928, p. 34).
"The Scriptures were in the hands of the clergy only, and they had every opportunity to insert whatsoever they pleased; thus we find them (New Testament) full of interpolations. Johann Solomo Semler, one of the most influential theologians of the eighteenth century, speaking of this, says: " The Christian doctors never brought their sacred books before the common people; although people in general have been wont to think otherwise; during the first ages, they were in the hands of the clergy only" (Robert Taylor, Diegesis, p. 48).
"All the earliest external evidences points to the conclusion that thy synoptic gospels are non-apostolic digesis of spoken and written apostolic tradition, and that the arrangement of the earlier material in orderly form took place only gradually and by many essays..." (T. W. Doane, Bible Myth And Their Parallels In Other Religions, The Truth Seeker Co., New York, 1882, p. 463.).
"Dr. Hooykaas, speaking of the four 'Gospels,' and 'Acts,' says of them: 'Not one of these five books was written by the person whose name it bears, and they are all of more recent date than the heading would lead us to suppose'" (T. W. Doane, Bible Myth And Their Parallels In Other Religions, The Truth Seeker Co., New York, 1882, p. 463.).
"We cannot say that the 'Gospels' and the book of 'Acts' are unauthentic, for not one of them professes to give the name of its author. They appeared anonymously. The titles placed above them in our Bibles owe their origin to an ecclesiastical tradition which deserves no confidence whatever" (Bible for Learners, vol. iii. pp. 24-25).
"These Gospels 'can hardly be said to have had authors at all. They had only editors or compilers. What I mean is, that those who enriched the old Christian literature with these Gospels did not go to work as independent writers and compose their own narratives out of the accounts they had collected, but simply took up the different stories or sets of stories which they found current in the oral tradition or already reduced to writing, adding here and expanding there, and so sent out into the world a very artless kind of composition. These works were then, from time to time, somewhat enriched by introductory material or interpolations from the hands of later Christians, and perhaps were modified a little here and there. Our first two Gospels appear to have passed through more than one such revision. The third, whose writer says in his preface, that 'many had undertaken to put together a narrative (Gospel),' before him, appears to proceed from a single collecting, arranging, and modifying hand" (Ibid., p. 29).
Concerning the time when the canon of the New Testament was settled, Mosheim says: "The opinions, or rather the conjectures, of the learned concerning the time when the books of the New Testament were collected into one volume; as also about the authors of that collection, are extremely different. This important question is attended with great and almost insuperable difficulties to us in these later times" (Mosheim, Vol. i. pt. 2, ch. ii).
"Dr. Lardner says: 'Even so late as the middle of the sixth century, the canon of the New Testament had not been settled by any authority that was decisive and universally acknowledged, but Christian people were at liberty to judge for themselves concerning the genuineness of writings proposed to them as apostolical, and to determine according to evidences'" (Credibility of the Gospels, T. W. Doane, Bible Myth And Their Parallels In Other Religions, The Truth Seeker Co., New York, 1882, p. 464.).
The learned Michaelis says: "No manuscript of the New Testament now extant is prior to the sixth century, and what is to be lamented, various readings which, as appears from the quotations of the Fathers, were in the text of the Greek Testament, are to be found in none of the manuscripts which are at present remaining" (Marsh's Michaelis, Vol. ii. p. 160).
Bishop Marsh says: "It is a certain fact, that several readings in our common printed text are nothing more than alterations made by Origen, whose authority was so great in the Christian Church (A.D. 230) that emendations which he proposed, though, as he himself (acknowledged, they were supported by evidence of no manuscript, were very generally received" (Ibid., p. 368)
"Though Irenaeus, in the second century, is the first who mentions the evangelists, and Origen, in the third century, is the first who gives us a catalogue of the books contained in the New Testament, Mosheim's admission still stands before us. We have no grounds of assurance that the mere mention of the names of the evangelists by Irenaeus, or the arbitrary drawing up of a particular catalogue by Origen, were of any authority. It is still unknown by whom, or where, or when, the canon of the New Testament was settled. But in this absence of positive evidence we have abundance of negative proof. We know when it was not settled. We know it was not settled in the time of Emperor Justinian, nor in the time of Cassiodorus; that is, not at any time before the middle of the sixth century, "by any authority that was decisive and universally acknowledged; but Christian people were at liberty to judge for themselves concerning the genuineness of writings proposed to them as apostolical" (T. W. Doane, Bible Myth And Their Parallels In Other Religions, The Truth Seeker Co., New York, 1882, p. 464.).
"The Bible (New Testament) has been received by the Protestants on the authority of the church of Rome, and on no other authority. It is she that has said it is the word of God." Ingersoll's Works, Vol 5, Ibid., p. 364.
"None of those books have the appearance of being written by the persons whose names they bear, neither do we know who the authors were. They come to us on no other authority than the church of Rome, which the Protestant Priests...call the Whore of Babylon." Ingersoll's Works, Vol 5, Ibid., p. 365.
"...the bishop who has answered me has been obliged to acknowledge the fact, that the Books that compose the NT, were voted by yeas and nays to be the word of God, as you now vote a law, by the Popish councils of Nicea and Laodicea, about 1,450 years ago." Interviews, Ingersoll's Works, Vol 5, Ibid. p. 325.
"I admit that books were voted in and out, and that the Bible was finally formed in accordance with a vote...." Interviews, Ingersoll's Works, Vol 5, p. 300.
"Nothing can exceed the credulity of the early fathers, unless it may be their ignorance. They believed everything that was miraculous. They believed everything except the truth.... They revelled in the mishapen and the repulsive. They did not think it wrong to swear falsely in a good cause. They interpolated, forged, and changed the records to suit themselves, for the sake of Christ. They quoted from persons who never wrote. They misrepresented those who had written, and their evidence is absolutely worthless. They were ignorant, credulous, mendacious, fanatical, pious, unreasonable, bigoted, hypocritical, and for the most part insane." Interviews, Ingersoll's Works, Vol. 5, p. 273
"The great religious historian, Eusebius, ingenuously remarks that in his history he carefully omitted whatever tended to discredit the church, and that he piously magnified all that conduced to her glory." Interviews, Ingersoll's Works, Vol. 5, Ibid., Vol. 1, p. 293
"Now, Sir, it is impossible for serious men, to whom God has given the divine gift of reason, and who employs that reason to reverence and adore the God that gave it, it is I say, impossible for such a man to put confidence in a book that abounds with fable and falsehood as the New Testament does." The Life and Works of Thomas Paine, Vol. 9, p. 128
"Taylor's [Reverend Robert Taylor 1784 - 1844], conclusion is: 'As we see Protestantism to be a mere modification or reform of Popery, so Popery was nothing more than a similar modification or reform of Paganism. It is absolutely certain that the pagans were in possession of the whole Gospel story many ages before its JEWISH ORIGIN WAS PRETENDED; and it was not until the first error had been committed of suffering the people to become acquainted too intimately with the contents of the sacred books that it became necessary to invent a chronology, and to 'give to airy nothing a local habitation and a name.'" H. Cutner [1881-1969], The Devil's Chaplain Robert Taylor (1784-1844), The Pioneer Press, c. 1950, 41.
"The gradual development of the canon, in our view, was primarily the achievement of gentile Christianity, although of course THERE WOULD HAVE BEEN NO NEW TESTAMENT IF AN OLD TESTAMENT HAD NOT ALREADY EXISTED. Among the earliest Christians there was no New Testament; their Bible consisted of the Old Testament alone." The Formation of the New Testament, Robert M. Grant, Harper & Row, 1965.
"Ironically, the more fully the individual documents of the NT have been understood, the LESS INTELLIGIBLE the NT as a whole has become, both historically and theologically." [13]. · · · from: The New Testament Canon, Harry Y. Gamble, Fortress, 1985. The New Testament Canon, Harry Y. Gamble, Fortress, 1985).
As von Harnack [Adolph von Harnack 1851 - 1930] has pointed out (The Origin of the New Testament [New York, 1925], p. 5), there were four possibilities open to the Church: [1] the Old Testament alone, [2] an enlarged Old Testament, [3] no Old Testament, and [4] a second authoritative collection." The Canon of the New Testament, Bruce M. Metzger, Oxford, 1987.
"...originally NONE OF THE DOCUMENTS NOW INCLUDED IN THE NEW TESTAMENT HAD THE TITLES TO WHICH WE HAVE BECOME ACCUSTOMED in the headings of the different books in traditional English versions....Only after several Gospels or several Epistles had been collected together was there need for separate designations in order to distinguish one from another." The Canon of the New Testament, Bruce M. Metzger, Oxford, 1987, p.302).
'With respect to attribution, the [apocryphal] books resemble Jewish midrashim and the Old Testament apocrypha. TO SECURE AUTHORITY OR CREDIBILITY, THEY ARE WRITTEN UNDER THE HONORARY NAME OF AN APOSTLE OR SOME OTHER PROMINENT FIGURE. Put flatly, THEY ARE FORGED, but then SO ARE MANY [ALL!] OF THE CANONICAL NEW TESTAMENT BOOKS..." The Secret Gospels A Harmony of Apocryphal Jesus Traditions, Edited and Translated by R. Joseph Hoffmann, Westminster College-Oxford, Prometheus, 1996.
The Catholic Encyclopedia is quoted saying: "Until the Council of Trent, in 1546, there was no infallibly defined sanction of inspiration of these Jewish "apocrypha"; like the "canon" sacred Books of the Hebrew Bible, all alike were more or less eclectically accepted and used in the True Church; but, as said: "The Tridentine decree from which the above list is extracted was the first infallible and effectually promulgated pronouncement on the Canon, addressed to the Church universal. Being dogmatic in its purport, it implies that the Apostles bequeathed the same Canon to the Church as a part of the depositum fidei.... We should search the pages of the New Testament in vain for any trace of such action.... We affirm that such a status points to Apostolic sanction, which in turn must have rested on revelation either by Christ or the Holy Spirit" (Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. iii, 270.). This is luminous clerical reasoning: a lot of anonymous Jewish fables, derided by Jews and all the rest of the world for want of even common plausibility of fact or truth, and as to which the "inspired" Christian Books said to emanate from Apostles, are silent as the grave, are declared after 1500 years to have the ear-marks of Apostolic sanction, which "must have" been founded on divine revelation to them "either by Christ or the Holy Spirit,"—which the Church claims are one and the same Person; and it is curious that the "infallible" Council couldn't say which was which, but vaguely and uncertainly opined it must hate been one or the other. So much for infallible cock-suredness as to "inspiration" of Holy Scriptures. (Joseph Wheless, Forgery In Christianity, Alfred Knoph, New York, 1930, p. 54).
"The New Testament and the inspired Apostles are silent on the subject (inspiration) and left the matter to serious doubts and disputations for many centuries :''There are no indications in the New Testament . . . Of a definite new Canon bequeathed by the Apostles to the Church, or of a strong self-witness to Divine inspiration," admits the CE. (iii, 274); that is, there is nothing in the 27 booklets which would lead to the suspicion of their "inspiration" or truth. There was then no Church for them to bequeath to, nor was the Canon settled, as we shall see: "It was not until about the middle of the second century— [when we shall see the books were really written]—that under the rubric of Scripture the New Testament writings were assimilated to the Old.... But it should be remembered that the inspired character of the New Testament is a Catholic dogma, and must therefore in some way have been revealed to, and taught by, Apostles"! (Ibid., p.275.) This is a strikingly queer bit of clerical dialectic, and leaves the question of the "some way" of revelation to the Apostles and of their transmission of the "dogma" to posterity, in a nebulously unsatisfying state." (Joseph Wheless,Forgery In Christianity, Alfred Knoph, New York, 1930, p. 97-98).
"Further, the dubious and disputed status of the sacred writings through centuries, and the ultimate settlement of the controversies by the "ipse dixit" of a numerical majority of the Council of Trent, in 1546,—after the Reformation had forced the issue, is thus admitted: "The idea of a complete and clear-cut canon of the New Testament existing from the beginning, that is, from Apostolic times, has no foundation in history. The canon of the New Testament, like that of the Old, is the result of a development, of a process at once stimulated by disputes with doubters, both within and without the Church, and retarded by certain obscurities and natural hesitations, and which did not reach its final term until the dogmatic definition of the Tridentine Council.... And this want of an organized distribution, secondarily to the absence of an early fixation of the Canon, left room for variations and doubts which lasted far into the centuries." (CE. iii, 274.) The modus operandi of the Holy Council in ultimately "canonizing" Jerome's old Vulgate Version, and its motive for doing so, are thus exposed by the keen pen of the author ofThe Rise and Fall: "When the Council of Trent resolved to pronounce sentence on the Canon of Scripture, the opinion which prevailed, after some debate, was to declare the Latin Vulgate authentic and almost infallible; and this sentence, which was guarded by formidable anathemas, se-cured all the books of the Old and New Testament which composed that ancient version.... When the merit of that version was discussed, the majority of the theologians urged, with confidence and success, that it was absolutely necessary to receive the Vulgate as authentic and inspired, unless they wished to abandon the victory to the Lutherans, and the honors of the Church to the Grammarians." (Gibbon, A Vindication, v, 2; Istoria del Consiglio Tridentino, L. ii, p. 147.) A number of these books were bitterly disputed and their authenticity and inspiration denied by the leading Reformers, Luther, Grotius, Calvin, etc., and excluded from their official lists, until finally the Reformed Church followed the example of the Church hopeless of reform and swallowed the canon whole, as we have it today,—minus, of course, the Tobit, Judith, and like inspired buffooneries of the True Bible" (Joseph Wheless, Forgery In Christianity, Alfred Knoph, New York, 1930, p. 97-98).
"And no other Pope, Bishop or Father (except Papias and until Irenaeus), for nearly a century after "Pope Clement," ever mentions or quotes a Gospel, or names Matthew, Mark, Luke or John. So for a century and a half—until the books bobbed up in the hands of Bishop St. Irenaeus and were tagged as "Gospels according to" this or that Apostle, there exists not a word of them in all the tiresome tomes of the Fathers. It is humanly and divinely impossible that the "Apostolic authorship" and hence "canonicity" or divine inspiration of these Sacred Four should have remained, for a century and a half, unknown and unsuspected by every Church, Father, Pope and Bishop of Christendom—if existent. Even had they been somewhat earlier in existence, never an inspired hint or human suspicion was there, that they were "Divine" or "Apostolic," or any different from the scores of "apocryphal or pseudo-Biblical writings with which the East especially had been flooded,"—that they were indeed "Holy Scripture." Hear this notable admission: "It was not until about the middle of the second century that under the rubric of Scripture the New Testament writings were assimilated to the Old"! (CE. iii, 275),—that is, be-came regarded as apostolic, sacred, inspired and canonical,—or "Scriptures" (Joseph Wheless, Forgery In Christianity, Alfred Knoph, New York, 1930, p. 182-183).
"To argue and prove that the Four (Gospels) were regarded as "Apostolic" and hence "canonical" after the middle of the second century, argues and proves that until that late date they were not so regarded,— which we have seen is impossible if they had been written by Apostles a hundred years and more previously and authorized by them "for the purpose of being read in the Churches," as the very ground and pillar of their foundation and faith....Follow the proofs and argument of the Church to its own undoing: ‘From the testimony of St. Irenaeus (A.D. 185) alone there can be no reasonable doubt that the Canon of the Gospel was inalterably fixed in the Catholic Church by the last quarter of the second century to the exclusion of any pretended Evangels. [Sundry writings mentioned] presuppose the authority enjoyed by the Fourfold Gospel towards the middle of tile second century.... Even Rationalistic scholars like Harnack admit the canonicity of the quadriform Gospel between the years 140-175.’ (CE. iii, 275.) Even CE. does not prove or claim that it was any earlier; so here the Church and the Rationalists are in accord on this fatal fact! Certainly Popes Peter and Clement I, not to review the silent others, would have "inalterably fixed" the Divine Canonicity of the Four a century before, if they had known about these precious productions of the Apostles;—if, in fact, they had existed, the known works of Holy Apostles and apostolic men! But until "towards the middle of the second century" there was no "canon" or notion of divinely inspired Apostolic Gospels—simply for the reason that until just about that period they were not in existence....The sudden appearance at a certain late date, of a previously unknown document, which is then attributed to an earlier age and long since dead writers, is one of the surest earmarks of forgery" (Joseph Wheless, Forgery In Christianity, Alfred Knoph, New York, 1930, p. 184-185).
Surely after these few quotes you should be moved to want to know more about the document you have accepted "by faith" only and without personal investigation as to its claims and authority for your life.
I think it appropriate that we begin our investigation of this issue concerning the canonization of the New Testament by turning to The Light of Reason, volume one, a writing that appeared several years ago by Schmuel Golding, the editor of the Biblical Polemics newsletter. Golding's synopsis of the process by which the Bible was formed is not only accurate but succinct. On page 23 he says,
"First the NT was not written by any of the disciples of Jesus nor by persons who even lived in that era . . . When the church fathers compiled the NT in the year 397, they collected all the writings they could find and managed them as they pleased. They decided by vote which of the books out of the collection they had made should be the word of God and which should not. They rejected several, they voted others to be doubtful, and those books which had a majority of votes were voted to be the word of God. Had they voted otherwise, all the people since calling themselves Christians would have believed otherwise. For the belief of the one comes from the vote of the other."
It is important to note the key concept here is that the Bible was put together by a group of men who met, went through a collection of writings, and chose through voting those that are to be deemed divinely inspired. Many of them wound up on the cutting room floor. Golding continues,
Who the people were that did all of this we know little of. They called themselves by the general name of church fathers and this is all the average Christian knows of the matter.... Disputes, however, ran high among the people calling themselves Christians not only as to points of doctrine but as to the authenticity of the books.
Although not stated verbatim, the essence of Golding's next paragraph is that when disputes broke out the opposition was often either eliminated or ostracized. Then, he continues by saying,
Constantine, an unbaptized pagan, convened the Council of Nicea in the year 325 in order to settle these disputes. A major issue was the nature of the deity they worshipped. Based upon their decisions Jesus was changed from man to God in the flesh, the sabbath was changed from Saturday to Sunday, the Passover was changed to Easter . . . and the NT was canonized as a holy book.
Answer for yourself: Knowing the events just described, can you explain to yourself how the Holy Spirit could be leading the changing of the Eternal Sabbath to Sunday, or changing the Passover to the pagan holiday of Isthar (Easter), or making a human messiah a G-d, which is admitted by most to be scandalous; yet we are to believe that in spite of such blunders by the Holy Spirit He got right the selection of a New Bible? Did the Holy Spirit have a bad day or something? Surely you can see that such events were not led by the Holy Spirit at all...for G-d cannot and will not contradict His Word...man may change it....as you saw...but the jots and titles are forever!
In other words, men, rather than G-d, composed the New Testament. And for that reason it is suspect in many regards whether you knew it or not. Many Christians, especially Protestants, have great difficulty with any assertion to the effect that men and not G-d is responsible for the New Testament coming into existence. On page 6 in Answering Christianity's Most Puzzling Questions, volume one, apologist Richard Sisson states.
"In fact, after the death of Jesus a whole flood of books that claimed to be inspired appeared.... [D]isputes over which ones were true were so intense that the debate continued for centuries. Finally in the fourth century a group of church leaders called a council and took a vote. The 66 books that comprised our cherished Bible were declared to be Scripture by a vote of 568 to 563."
Although this happens to be basically what occurred, Sisson then proceeds to allege that this is not what happened. He states on page 7 that what really occurred is that, "Actually when the council of Hippo in A.D. 393 and the Council of Carthage in A.D. 397, named the 27 books of our NT as authentic, they were simply recognizing the inspiration of those books."
Sisson has managed to highlight the key difference between the Protestant and Catholic positions. The Catholic position is historically more accurate and simply states that the church fathers assembled in a council, went through all the writings that were circulating at that time and chose the ones that were to be deemed divinely inspired. In other words, the church fathers, men, put the book together by a vote. The Protestant position, on the other hand, is that men went through the writings and chose those that were divinely inspired through mere recognition. They had already been made divinely inspired by God prior to their analysis. The difference between the positions is essentially one of recognition versus determination. Catholics say their leaders determined which books were divinely inspired; Protestants say they were divinely inspired by God and later recognized as such. In one case men did it; in the other God supposedly did it.
Theologically speaking, by simply stating that God created the book and men only discovered that fact, the Protestant position is stronger. Historically speaking, however, the Catholic position is much stronger and clearly more accurate. Men merely convened and determined which books were divinely inspired. Their choices were motivated by their current "religious beliefs;" many of which can be shown to be in conflict with the Old Testament and the Bible Jesus used. In Today's Handbook for Solving Bible Difficulties apologist David O'Brien on page 41 upholds the Protestant position by contending that although church councils put their stamps of approval on the canon of Scripture, "that canon was in place before they ever thought of meeting to approve it."
Ryrie makes the same point on page 108 in Basic Theology: "Remember that the books were inspired when they were written and thus canonical. The church only attested to what was inherently true."
And in Evidence that Demands a Verdict apologist Josh McDowell states the same position on page 33: "But the upshot of the Jamnia debates [Jamnia was another council in which the books of the Bible were being determined] was the firm acknowledgment that all these books were holy Scripture."
In other words, the church fathers simply acknowledged, they did not determine the books to be holy Scripture. But McDowell makes the following statement on page 29,
The word "canon" as applied to Scripture means an officially accepted list of books. One thing to keep in mind is that the church did not create the canon or the books included in what we call Scripture. Instead the church recognized that the books were inspired from their inception.... We don't know exactly what criteria the early church used to choose the canonical books.
McDowell had just stated that God inspired the canonical books. So how can he say that he does not know the criteria by which they were chosen? The criterion must be that they are God-inspired. An inadvertent contradiction is in evidence.
In essence, although possessed of a more impressive stance theologically, the Protestant position is historically indemonstrable. Historical evidence strongly implies that the books were not canonical but simply deemed as such by a group of influential religious and political figures. The book was put together by a vote; it was not compiled by God and subsequently discovered to be God's work.