No, the Church Didn’t Create the Bible

In this video, leading biblical scholars Don Carson and Michael Kruger discuss the common claim that the church invented the Bible sometime in the fourth century.

[SircyGrig]

I’ve personally never heard anyone say that the Bible was formed at Nicaea - the main council I’ve heard mentioned was Carthage. Also I’d be interested to see Kruger’s perspective on the book of wisdom or Maccabees, which Carthage held as canonical.

[strikevipermkII]

Okay, so a couple mistakes right off the bat. First, it's not Nicaea, but Rome, Hippo, Carthage, then finally Trent that established the cannon in its entirety. Second, councils are not called when the spirit comes down and says 'here's this teaching you need to adopt'. They are called when questions are raised and need to be answered. So, yes, an unofficial cannon was adopted before the council of Rome, but in the following years, many many many heretical groups rose with similar writings that claimed to be inspired scripture. So, once that question needed to be answered, the council was called, and a cannon was established. Trent was specifically about the so-called deuterocanonical books precisely because Luther called into question their authenticity.

[johnsteila]

Of course, The Old Testament existed before the Church. It’s quite misleading to say that The Church may have made The Bible. If you want to be taken seriously, you’ll need to present the facts.

[tavuzzipust]

Gosh, early Christians first found the Bible (KJV of course) in Kmart.

[markrome]

Whenever you say that the church recognized what was scripture, remember you are talking about the Catholic Church. It is that tradition which Protestants follow, at least with respect to the New Testament. Yes, the core was there from the 1st century, but it was the Catholic Church which chipped away the extraneous books that weren't inspired in the 4th century, after Christianity was legalized and they could freely go to the various regions to see what was used in the liturgy. This wasn't some shadowy Protestant group doing this, it was the Catholic Church.

[musicarroll]

They should also point out that the canon of the old testament was very much in dispute among Jewish scholars around 100 AD. They ended up rejecting many booksof the bible that Christians accepted. The Church needed to promulgate the canon in the face of this challenge (and other supposed new testament writings). In fact, Church councils are generally only called in response to challenges of the times.

[craigsherman]

I read Dr. Krueger’a book. It was good. However, like people have said in the comments, it is a both and and not an either or. God gave us Scripture through the men of the Church and the Church recognized it as such. It was not until 385AD when the books of Scripture were challenged that the Church declares which books were inspired (73 books Old and New Testament).

[jacksoncastelino]

Thanks Be to God for Giving us Holy Bible through Holy Catholic Church

[SteveHohman-ye]

In arguing that the Church didnt create the Bible, he shows us that the Church created the Bible. He says that there was general agreement in the CHurch that these books went in the Bible, from very early on. So he is saying that the CHURCH agreed on these books. If the church didnt agree on these books, there would be no Bible. Who does he think this "church" is that agreed on these books?? It is kind of like the fact that many Catholic doctrines werent officially defined until centuries later (i.e. the immaculate conception), but since the early church, it was generally accepted, just not formally defined. He is essentially saying that this is also the case with the books of the New Testament. But if there was in fact agreement on these books, who exactly was it that was agreeing- well, the CHURCH

[martyshrader]

I don’t know any legit authority who says the councils created the books. The councils sorted through what was generally agreed to be scripture and rejected some books as ‘not scripture’ and others as ‘worthy of study but not to be included’. The work of the councils was significant as the Catholic and Orthodox have the same Bible, whereas the Coptic church has a different one. Protestants had the same Catholic Bible KJV until mid 1800s. Many changes happened in the West during the mid 1800s, ie, rise of Marx, Darwin theory of evolution, Theological innovations including textual criticism and final dropping of deuterocanonical books. You can trace the affects and effects of this time, witness the demise of the great denominations, rise of significant cults, theological novelties, and further reduction and debate about the word of God. We have no one to blame but ourselves. I am seriously considering Catholicism.

[jcchurch]

In the opening lines, the guy on the right suggests that the church didn't create the Bible, and yet he goes on to suggest exactly how the church went about the creating the Bible.

Yes, the church created the Bible. Like most things, the truth is in the details.

[david_porthouse]

The Catholic Church took an existing collection of scrolls and compiled it as a codex. The oldest complete codex we have is the Codex Amiatinus which has 72 books, excluding Baruch, and is written in Latin. It was produced in Jarrow or Monkwearmouth about 700 AD. The oldest Jewish codex is the Leningrad codex, written in Cairo about 1008 CE. There is an Aleppo codex which is a bit older but has been damaged.

Certain heretics have mutilated the Bible to produce a 66 book version. Some idiots have misread the Tetragrammaton as “Jehovah”. The rendering of the Tetragrammaton as “Yahweh” is merely a guess concerning the vowels, and is blasphemous.

The Book of Baruch contains an extended attack on priests who turn religion into a business. That could apply to the sale of indulgences, or any trade in advowsonships, or the antics of some megachurches in America. It was added about the ninth century, so the Gutenberg Bible of the 1450s has 73 books.

[liamconverse]

The Biblical canon was determined by the Church, there's just no way around it. The Church was created by Jesus, not a book. If it wasn't for Athanasius of Alexandria the book of Revelation wouldn't be in your Bible today.

[davidaimer]

The Church Christ established gave the canon of the Bible in year 380 to answer the question : what to read during the Eucharist?

[lalagordo]

There were many counsels that ratified the Bible.

[johnkalin]

How could the Bible not be created by man these are the people that will lie to their kids if they ask if Santa Claus is real

[MGR]

How do they know the Bible is inspired? Just because they think it’s so? They can’t answer that.

[chowyee]

Carson and his ilk need to realize that theological discourse isn't divided into conservative evangelicals and liberal everyone else. I actually confronted him about the authority of the Church regarding scripture and at an event. I argued that the Church was needed to interpret and canonize scripture and that Sola Scriptura had resulted in theological confusion. He accused me of being influenced by "liberal theology" though I was actually bringing up arguments from extremely conservative traditionalist Catholics and Orthodox. I was confused considering I was arguing AGAINST liberal theology that I thought he was enabling by promoting Sola Scriptura over tradition. I then asked about how evangelicalism could be considered valid considering our schismatic nature and he insisted it was the Catholics who split from us.

I have to say that Carson disgusted me. Though I remain evangelical, that is due to the influence of much more stable Protestants like Michael Heiser and Jordan B Cooper. I still utterly reject Carson's brand of Calvinist evangelicalism.

[phillipschulz]

so if the authors were simply ordained by god when they wrote these books in our canon, then does that permit us to change the canon as we see fit? papyrus 5575 was found to have Matthew's gospel on one side of the fragment and the gospel of Thomas on the other side. Thomas was written in late 1st century just as early as the other gospels. So if the publishing companies decided to add that gospel in next year, then by the original logic in the video, it was ordained by god as much as any other book.

[MrEvoXI]

On point. So the church was the tool God used to canonize the scripture. After all God uses the means.