How Did We Get the Bible?

We know about the writers of the Bible but how did it get from them to the Bible we have today?  I will just be honest and say what I know most people are thinking.  It would be a lot easier for people to accept the Bible as the Word of God if it had just been dropped out of heaven to the Earth or written on tablets directly by the finger of God as He had the Ten Commandments.  It sure would make it a lot easier.  Unfortunately, that's not the way the Bible got to us.  

The recognition that God was the source of scripture became the most important criteria in accepting books into the Bible. At the Council of Hippo, held in north Africa in AD 393, a group of church leaders recognized a list of books that they believed to be scripture. Later, the Council of Carthage affirmed that decision in AD 397. But did these councils did not create the Bible. The Old Testament writings were fully accepted by the Jews and Jesus as God's authoritative and inspired Word. The Jews of Jesus's day identified the 39 books of the Old Testament in three categories; the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms.  

By the time Church councils got around to discussing texts for the New Testament, this was already recognized the four gospels and a large majority of the epistles as scripture. The Muratorian Canon, a document written in the second century AD, lists the books that were considered by most to be scripture at that time. The list suggests that most of the New Testament we have today was already regarded as scripture by Christians 100 years before Church councils took up the matter. In addition, the list mentions some books that were rejected by Christians, suggesting that very early on, before church councils got involved, Christians were in the habit of carefully discerning which writings should and should not be part of the Bible.

The Jewish historian Josephus, writing at the end of the first century AD, argued that Jewish communities recognized only a small set of books as scripture. His list includes the 39 books of what would become the Protestant Old Testament; it does not include the books of Tobit, 1-2 Maccabees, Sirach, or Judith to name a few. Some books considered for the New Testament canon, like the Shepherd of Hermas, or the Gospel of Thomas, were excluded because they included doctrine that was inconsistent with what was believed and taught by the apostles.

The writers passed down their writings and stories across the centuries.  the Bible was put together by a process called "canonization".  This is the process of identifying the writings that were for the church and inspired as God's Word.  

The first canon was the Moratorian Canon, was put together in AD 170.  This canon included all of the New Testament books except Hebrews, James, 1st and 2nd Peter and 3rd John.  In AD 363, the Council of Laodicea stated that only the Old Testament (along with one book of the Apocrypha) and 26 books of the New Testament (everything but Revelation) were accepted and read in the early churches.  The Council of Hippo (AD 393) and the Council of Carthage (AD 397) also affirmed the same 27 books as legitimate.

The standard that books of the Bible were required to meet were:

1. Was the author an apostle or have a close connection with an apostle?
2. Is the book accepted by the church?
3. Did the book contain consistency of doctrine and orthodox teaching?
4. Did the book bear evidence of high moral and spiritual values?

If you are thinking the same thing here, it would appear that the decision on what to include or exclude was a subjective process by men.  This is something that we will always have to debate about.  Did man influence his own feelings?  Yes, there were probably some who did.  We have to believe that whatever process was used that God put what needed to be in there.  Over the course of time, what needs to be there is there.  Should we read the other books which were not included?  We probably could do it to get more perspective on what had been included.  

Another important thing to remember about how the Bible was assembled is that they could have easily discarded those passages which made some of the heroes in the Bible look bad and only included the positive things.  In many instances, they included the good, bad and ugly without redacting the unpleasant parts.  

How the Bible was built timeline:

• c. 1400–400 B.C. Books of the Hebrew Old Testament written
• c. 250–200 B.C. The Septuagint, a popular Greek translation of the Old Testament, produced
• A.D. 45–85? Books of the Greek New Testament written
• 90 and 118 Councils of Jamnia give final affirmation to the Old Testament canon (39 books)
• 140–150 Marcion’s heretical “New Testament” incites orthodox Christians to establish a NT canon
• 303–306 Diocletian’s persecution includes confiscating and destroying New Testament Scriptures
• c. 305–310 Lucian of Antioch’s Greek New Testament text; becomes a foundation for later Bibles
• 367 Athanasius’s Festal Letter lists complete New Testament canon (27 books) for the first time
• 397 Council of Carthage establishes orthodox New Testament canon (27 books)

Another interesting discovery was the "Dead Sea Scrolls"....In the late 1940s, a Bedouin shepherd threw a stone into a cave at Wadi Qumran, near the Dead Sea. When he heard something crack he headed inside to investigate. What he found has been described by the Smithsonian Institute as “the most important religious texts in the Western world”.

What the shepherd had chanced upon were the Dead Sea Scrolls, more than 800 documents of animal skin and papyrus, stored in clay jars for safe keeping. Among the texts are fragments of every book of the Old Testament, except the Book of Esher, along with a collection of previously unknown hymns and a copy of the Ten Commandments.

But what really makes the scrolls special is their age. They were written between around 200 BC and the middle decades of the first century AD, which means they predate by at least eight centuries the oldest previously known Hebrew text of the Old Testament.

One thing is for certain, the Bible has survived for many centuries.  It will also continue to be debated until the end of time.