MoonChild
30-03-04, 08:32 PM
Modern Christians divide their Bible into 2 major sections - the Old Testament and the New Testament.
The Old Testament is a partial collection of earlier Jewish scripture, seen by most as the literal word of God "for that time", but superceded by the New Testament.
The New Testament is a record of the the life of Jesus and his teachings. As such, Christians refer primarily to the New Testament for their rules of living and no longer feel bound by the laws of Deuteronomy etc. Christians consider the New Testament to be the Word of God, although this requires faith in the guiding hand of God through the centuries of choices made by the "winning sect" before a final format was codified in 367AD.
From http://www.maplenet.net/~trowbridge/NT_Hist.htm:
*The oldest surviving complete text of the New Testament is the Codex Sinaiticus, dating back to the middle of the fourth century. (this is about when the complete text was assembled)
*The oldest fragments, the Bodmer and Beatty Papyri and Papyrus 52, date back to the second century but only contain bits of the Gospel of John. All of these texts are Greek.
*Jesus's native tongue was Aramaic. Without any surviving Aramaic texts, the actual words of Christ are lost forever, mired in a sea of subjective translation by ancient scribes
*Different groups of early Christians maintained their own oral traditions of Jesus's wisdom, as writing was a specialized skill and not every fellowship enjoyed the services of a scribe. When written accounts of Jesus's teachings began to circulate, the independent groups would supplement them with their own traditions about the savior, each believing their own versions to be "the Gospel."
*It was not until the pronouncement of Bishop Irenĉus (185 C.E.) that Christians began to accept only the four familiar gospels as authoritative, and to refer to them by their modern titles.
*The rest of the canon was much slower to develop. For the next two centuries, the four gospels would be coupled with a myriad of different letters, epistles, stories and apocalypses, according to what a particular congregation judged as relevant to their understanding of Jesus Christ and his message.
*Catholicism was only one of the dozens of "denominations" within the early church. Eventually, the Catholic church was adopted as the state religion of the Roman Empire, and all other systems of belief were branded as heresies.
These are the historical facts. There are scholars who conclude that the selection of gospels was politically motivated to exclude portions that dramatically changed the meaning of the whole. Others claim that the 4 gospels and various epistles were chosen by scholars only on the basis of authenticity, and they were guided by God in their selection.
The Old Testament is a partial collection of earlier Jewish scripture, seen by most as the literal word of God "for that time", but superceded by the New Testament.
The New Testament is a record of the the life of Jesus and his teachings. As such, Christians refer primarily to the New Testament for their rules of living and no longer feel bound by the laws of Deuteronomy etc. Christians consider the New Testament to be the Word of God, although this requires faith in the guiding hand of God through the centuries of choices made by the "winning sect" before a final format was codified in 367AD.
From http://www.maplenet.net/~trowbridge/NT_Hist.htm:
*The oldest surviving complete text of the New Testament is the Codex Sinaiticus, dating back to the middle of the fourth century. (this is about when the complete text was assembled)
*The oldest fragments, the Bodmer and Beatty Papyri and Papyrus 52, date back to the second century but only contain bits of the Gospel of John. All of these texts are Greek.
*Jesus's native tongue was Aramaic. Without any surviving Aramaic texts, the actual words of Christ are lost forever, mired in a sea of subjective translation by ancient scribes
*Different groups of early Christians maintained their own oral traditions of Jesus's wisdom, as writing was a specialized skill and not every fellowship enjoyed the services of a scribe. When written accounts of Jesus's teachings began to circulate, the independent groups would supplement them with their own traditions about the savior, each believing their own versions to be "the Gospel."
*It was not until the pronouncement of Bishop Irenĉus (185 C.E.) that Christians began to accept only the four familiar gospels as authoritative, and to refer to them by their modern titles.
*The rest of the canon was much slower to develop. For the next two centuries, the four gospels would be coupled with a myriad of different letters, epistles, stories and apocalypses, according to what a particular congregation judged as relevant to their understanding of Jesus Christ and his message.
*Catholicism was only one of the dozens of "denominations" within the early church. Eventually, the Catholic church was adopted as the state religion of the Roman Empire, and all other systems of belief were branded as heresies.
These are the historical facts. There are scholars who conclude that the selection of gospels was politically motivated to exclude portions that dramatically changed the meaning of the whole. Others claim that the 4 gospels and various epistles were chosen by scholars only on the basis of authenticity, and they were guided by God in their selection.