The Bible

Who made the decision about what books to include in the bible and what to omit? The answer is, people, human beings, not God or God's, normal human beings. The Jewish Tanakh or Old Testament was ratified at the council of Jamnia in approx, 90 CE. The council of Laodicea in 363 CE agreed that the Old Testament and 26 books of the New Testament were allowed to be read in churches. The council of Hippo in 393 CE finally decided that again, the Old Testament and now 27 books of the New Testament were allowed to be read in churches. The point is that the canon of the Bible was decided by human beings and nobody else. That decision led eventually to splits in the church, ie the breakaway of the Greek orthodox church. It also lead to hundreds of Christian books being banned and people reading them being charged with heresy and we all know what happened to them. The upshot is, human beings wrote the Bible and human beings decided what literature was allowed to be included in the Bible. That brings us to the fact that as printing presses had not been invented, human beings were tasked with copying the books, and to illuminated that I can highly recommend a book titled Misquoting Jesus by Bart Ehrman. Very informative and well worth a read.

Till next time.

Theological Dilemma.

I have been reading various sources who are putting forward a theory that the God of the old testament is different from the God of the new testament. The reason being, for instance, the mass slaughter of the Cannanites. There are lots of other passages that include orders to kill thousands of people. For example, Deuteronomy 7/1-2 the Israelites are commanded to destroy the Cannanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, Jebusites. Every living thing was ordered to be killed. Joshua 6/17-22 Ordered to destroy Jericho and kill every living thing. First Samuel 15/2-3 Ordered to destroy the Amalekites, kill every living thing. They were only three examples, there are quite a few other examples. 

Personally, I cannot believe that what I have quoted came from a loving and merciful God. 

I will be continuing this theme in later posts.

Till next time.