How'd they decide what books made it in?

March 3, 2008 1:55 PM

Can you recommend some books about the Bible's collation?

Specifically, I'm interested in recommendations for well-researched book(s) that explore why some books were included and not others - and the reasoning for each. I'm also interested in what those excluded books had to say about the early church, etc.

I've seen this post, but it seems to be asking for recommendations on different translations of the Bible.

I'd love to read about the juicy politicking that probably went on behind closed doors regarding the shaping of Christianity as we know it today. I went to church religiously (pardon the pun) as a younger man, went astray and am now easing myself back into church, but I tend to view the Bible as taking great liberties with factual truth and believe it to be merely a guide to lead a "good" life. (My favorite version of the Bible is Jefferson's Bible.)

Thanks in advance for all your help!

posted by po822000 to religion & philosophy (15 comments total)

God's Secretaries is all about the KJV.
posted by box at 1:59 PM on March 3, 2008

Bart Ehrman is a scholar who writes extensively on this, in books aimed at non-academic and not necessarily religious readers. You might like Lost Christianities to start
posted by hydropsyche at 2:00 PM on March 3, 2008

I haven't read it, but Karen Armstrong's The Bible has gotten some good reviews.
posted by box at 2:05 PM on March 3, 2008

For the New Testament, a very short book by Harry Gamble is the most useful thing I know of: The New Testament Canon. Gamble does a very good job of laying out the thinking that went iinto the canonization process. (Short version: books that had a clear connection to the apostles, had been found to be useful over time, lined up with the oral traditions that had been handed down, and were widely-known across Christendom were the ones that were included. Not every book hit every criterion, but those are the things the ancient councils looked at.) I'll check my library and see what's as useful for the OT.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 2:36 PM on March 3, 2008

"I'd love to read about the juicy politicking that probably went on behind closed doors regarding the shaping of Christianity as we know it today."

Tangential perhaps, but may be of interest: The Jesus Mystery, by Lena Einhorn.
posted by londongeezer at 2:38 PM on March 3, 2008

Oh, this one by F.F. Bruce is good, too, but harder to find.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 2:40 PM on March 3, 2008

I'd love to read about the juicy politicking that probably went on behind closed doors regarding the shaping of Christianity as we know it today.

You may be in for a disappointment. By the time the church councils were finalizing these decisions in the fourth century, it was pretty clear which books had risen to the top. There was some controversy about Revelation, because its genre was unfamiliar to many readers, and because it wasn't known across the whole empire. Hebrews was iffy because it's anonymous. Some of the smaller letters (2nd and 3rd John, for example) weren't widely distributed. And some of Paul's letters were iffy because they so clearly addressed specific congregational situations that there was a lot of conversation about whether they were valuable for the church as a whole. But it was a foregone conclusion that Matthew, Mark, Luke and John (and no other gospels) were in. Acts were in, too, because of its attribution to Luke. And a lot of Paul was going to make it, regardless.

I think what you'll find is that no books were seriously considered that would have had any significant change in Christian doctrine, and it wasn't a really political process. Of course, there were a bunch of alternation gospels, letters, apocalypses, and so forth, but the vast majority of those had never gained much of an audience, and no one considered them legit. There were some documents (notably The Shepherd of Hermas that was popular and orthodox doctrinally, but missed the cut on other grounds.) At any rate, the idea (popularized by The Da Vinci Code) that there was a lot of shady back room wheeling and dealing, or that the canonization process was some kind of political power play, just doesn't match the evidence we have. For the most part, it was a rubber-stamping process to endorse that the grass-roots had already done.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 2:51 PM on March 3, 2008 [2 favorites has favorites]

See also Bruce Metzger.
posted by thomas j wise at 2:58 PM on March 3, 2008

Richard Elliott Friedman's Who Wrote The Bible? was used as an introductory text in my undergraduate comparative religion class. It was entertaining, if not ultra in-depth.
posted by rooftop secrets at 3:14 PM on March 3, 2008

Here's an interview with Elaine Pagels from a few years ago about her book The Gnostic Gospels.

Her work, which I think suggests a suppression of once-accepted gospels, is controversial; I don't know enough about the scholarship to know how sound her argument is. I'm inclined to take Pater Altheias's word for it that the selection of the books of the NT wasn't fraught with controversy at the time, based on his track record here at MeFi.
posted by ibmcginty at 3:21 PM on March 3, 2008

Bart Ehrman's Misquoting Jesus is a pretty excellent guide to this. Interview here *from my old show on NPR.
posted by parmanparman at 4:54 PM on March 3, 2008

You may also be interested in Bob Price's Pre-Nicene New Testament, a compilation of other texts that were considered sacred before the Nicean council made the cuts.
posted by eafarris at 5:24 PM on March 3, 2008

For the Hebrew Bible, I'd recommend The BBible with Sources Revealed by Richard Friedman. If you want to get real in-depth, look up Gary Rendsburg's The Redaction of Genesis.
posted by j1950 at 8:10 PM on March 3, 2008

I don't know how easy it would be to get hold of a copy but Robert Beckford made a interesting Channel 4 documentary on the subject.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 3:18 AM on March 4, 2008

The Friedman book j1950 mentioned might be of interest to you, but he'll be looking at a different question, which is how the Biblical books were formed. (He's answering "Where did Genesis come from? What previous materials were used in it?" rather than "Why is Genesis in my Bible?) Friedman's a good writer, and what you'll get from him is an easy-to-understand version of the scholarly consensus from 1970. He's good, but the field has moved away from him, and in some regards he's simplistic. Still, he'll get you reasonably up to date regarding textual criticism.

More on topic for your question is Introduction to the Old Testament by Soggin. It's going to be a lot harder to wade through, but it addresses your exact question.

(By the way, just to make it clear, the process was different for the OT and the NT, thus different book recommendations.)

Re: eafarris. The Nicean council had little or nothing to do with the canon. They were working largely on the question of the nature of Christ (how is he both God and man?). It was the 397 Council of Carthage that worked on the canon. I'm not sure why Price would name his book Pre-Nicene, except that Nicea was the big council that everyone has heard of.

Here's the thing. There were a lot of texts floating around about Jesus. Some of them seem to have arisen out of communities that were a blend of gnostic ideas and the Christians narrative. Some are just fanciful accounts of what Jesus did as a kid. Some are stories about Paul or Peter that don't threaten Christian orthodoxy at all, but were never considered credible. You have everything from the ancient equivilent of supermarket tabloids "Human-God Baby raised dead birds back to life!" to syncretistic blends to devotional lit and teaching manuals. After a while it became clear that there was a need to reach consensus on which books were authoritative and binding for the church. In my judgment, this restrained the bishops more than it empowered them--there would always be a text to hold them accountable to. That's how we got the Reformation 1200 years after the canon was formed.

It's misleading to speak of "cuts" because there was no compilation from which to cut anything. From the diversity of available books of various theological perspectives and vastly divergent literary quality, the councils formally endorsed the ones deemed authoritative. (Using the general criteria I mentioned above.) The Old Testament served as a precedent for compiling a sacred anthology.

Pagels and Ehrman (both of whom I've read and enjoy) overstate the extent to which gnostic forms of Christianity were suppressed. (IMHO) They are widely popular among the general populace, but a minority view in the academy. It looks to me a lot more likely that gnostic Christianity never gained a foothold. It lacked credibility and it's just weird stuff. Yes, even in comparison to the Bible as it stands. And that's saying a lot.
posted by Pater Aletheias at 11:16 AM on March 4, 2008