(May 24, 2013 at 12:23 pm)gitonga Wrote:Festive Wrote:It's called the Council of Nicea. Let's assume the books of the Bible were devinely inspired by god. The Council of Nicea decided which books would be included in the bible. This happened in the 7th century. There were many books that didn't make the cut. How do we know the entire Council was devinely inspired? What if they chose the wrong books? Were the books they left out devinely inspired? If so, isn't that bad? If not, how did they differentiate between which books were Devine and which were not? Then the Church decided to destroy all the other books that didn't make the cut... Why? If they weren't Devine, how would they pose a threat. This is, in part, why the discovery of the Dead Sea scrolls was so important, they are parts of one of these books that didn't make the cut. Furthermore, this was for the original Church, which split into Catholic and Orthodox, many Protestant sects deny the "Christian-ness" of these churches, yet they are the ones who chose which books all those Protestant sects were eventually based on. That's just problematic.
Makes alot of sense but i've been told they had a process to determining the books that got in called canonization. It's something i was told about a while ago but one of the rules i remember was that for the new testament a book had to be written by someone who had seen jesus = the disciples + paul for the new testament.. this is with the exception of mark and luke who never saw jesus at all however that pointed to the second rule which was correspondance that it would agree with the other books however im not to familiar with the process so i'll have to recheck it but i think the first point makes sense cause imagine some guy who was'nt even there to see jesus writes an alterrnate story to talk about his life yet it totally contradicts what the people who were actually there saw.. i think those would be fair grounds for removal...But one thing i'm extremely curious about is that everyone iv'e met complaining about the "missing" books havent even read all the ones that are there.So why does it bug them soo much? infact most christians i know rarely if never mention
Hosea
Joel
Amos
Obadiah
Jonah
Micah
Nahum
Habakkuk
Zephaniah
Haggai
Zechariah
Malachi
if i removed these books from the bible i don't know how many people will even realize there missing...if anything fewer books makes our work easier. kinda makes it more effecient in a way. unless you want a religion with 900000books of which can be (possibly) summarized in 66books..even catholics have more books than protestants but from what i hear there's not really anything that would warrent a paradigm shift in christianity
The Kudos is for actually tackling the question.
How to say this politely...
Read what you wrote...
You were "told" they had a "process" for figuring out the Canon... I'm not one to develop a complete system of belief based solely on what one person tells me. If I'm going to make the leap of faith that god exists, I want to know how we know about him => the bible => how was the bible created? Simply saying they had a "process" doesn't explain said process or explore possible problems within that process. Exploring possible issues with a system is necessary for rational thought. Only when these issues are brought to light can one discern if they are negligible or truly problematic.
Your response, while I give you credit for actually tackling the issue, is unsatisfactory.
