Why The Bible exists
Why The CATHOLIC CHURCH created a " SINGLE UNIVERSAL BOOK," in the 4th century (eventually called the Bible) to be used at every Mass
What really happened at the time that persuaded the holy men of the Church to create a book to be used by the Universal Church? ...one which is still used today, in various forms, even by non-Catholic Christians?
The widespread persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire ended when Emperor Constantine the Great, along with his co-Emperor of the East Licinius, had signed the Edict of Milan in 313 AD.
Well..... Licinius eventually recanted, and persecutions sporadically appeared from time to time, but they were mostly in local jurisdictions and they didnt last much longer.
By 380 AD, upon the influence of St. Ambrose of Milan, the Christian emperor Theodosius the Great issued a decree known as the Theodosian Decree that completely banned the practice of paganism in the Roman Empire and encouraged much of the population to convert to Christianity. So with persecutions now a thing of the past, and the Theodosian Decree in effect, The Catholic Church became the de facto religion of the Roman empire.
This now made it easy for the Church leaders to gather without the threat of being arrested or persecuted, so they might discuss whatever problems or issues arose within the Church, unmolested....and one of these problems was the issue of the Scriptures.
Specifically, scriptures around Jesus and His salvation story.
The Old Testament already existed, and they all knew it. It was the Tradition of the people of that place and time to have such scripture...the Word of God to His people, The Jews.
And as many of the early Christians were converted Jews, it is no surprise that a scripture around Jesus and His Apostles would be considered.
But things were moving fast in the early Church, and the NEED for, "The Book" was pressing in.
There were many new converts from all across the region, bringing different cultures and languages, so there was a fast-growing need for a unified approach.
What really happened at the time that persuaded the holy men of the Church to create a book to be used by the Universal Church? ...one which is still used today, in various forms, even by non-Catholic Christians?
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The widespread persecution of Christians in the Roman Empire ended when Emperor Constantine the Great, along with his co-Emperor of the East Licinius, had signed the Edict of Milan in 313 AD.
Well..... Licinius eventually recanted, and persecutions sporadically appeared from time to time, but they were mostly in local jurisdictions and they didnt last much longer.
By 380 AD, upon the influence of St. Ambrose of Milan, the Christian emperor Theodosius the Great issued a decree known as the Theodosian Decree that completely banned the practice of paganism in the Roman Empire and encouraged much of the population to convert to Christianity. So with persecutions now a thing of the past, and the Theodosian Decree in effect, The Catholic Church became the de facto religion of the Roman empire.
This now made it easy for the Church leaders to gather without the threat of being arrested or persecuted, so they might discuss whatever problems or issues arose within the Church, unmolested....and one of these problems was the issue of the Scriptures.
Specifically, scriptures around Jesus and His salvation story.
The Old Testament already existed, and they all knew it. It was the Tradition of the people of that place and time to have such scripture...the Word of God to His people, The Jews.
And as many of the early Christians were converted Jews, it is no surprise that a scripture around Jesus and His Apostles would be considered.
But things were moving fast in the early Church, and the NEED for, "The Book" was pressing in.
There were many new converts from all across the region, bringing different cultures and languages, so there was a fast-growing need for a unified approach.
But it wasn't yet possible for real unity, as we know it, to be in place. Time and distance prevented it.
The Faith was there...
The Church was there...
The Apostolic Tradition was functioning as Jesus intended.*
But The Church didnt just fall from the sky as one cohesive body, like we know it today.
* Remember, Jesus didn't come to give us a Bible - he didnt bring one, and he didn't have anyone write down a sigle thing. No, He came to start an Aposotolic Tradition that would carry on His teachings of salvation from person to person. The fact of the matter is, there was no NEED for a book insofar as Jesus arranged things.
But The Church didnt just fall from the sky as one cohesive body, like we know it today.
* Remember, Jesus didn't come to give us a Bible - he didnt bring one, and he didn't have anyone write down a sigle thing. No, He came to start an Aposotolic Tradition that would carry on His teachings of salvation from person to person. The fact of the matter is, there was no NEED for a book insofar as Jesus arranged things.
But the Bible exists - it came much later, and for reasons you may not even suspect. So keep reading....
The fact is, before the late 4th Century, each city-church had its own, local "canon" of Scripture, and these local canons differed from city-church to city-church.
Needless to say, this complicated and prolonged the controversy, and made Arianism much harder to defeat.
Well, by the year 382, the Arian heresy was finally defeated. Then, Pope St. Damasus I of Rome (who had been the librarian for the church of Rome prior to becoming Pope) took it upon himself to correct this problem, and to ensure that it would not happen again.
What he did was initiate steps for the formation of a universal canon of Scripture which all city-churches would hold in common, which would likewise eliminate any work which even implied Arianism (or other condemned heresies).
To "start the ball rolling" on this, Pope Damasus I promoted a Biblical canon which was a union of the canon of the city-church of Rome and that of the city-church of Alexandria --the two leading city-churches of the universal Church.
To get ahead of the game, he also commissions St. Jerome (Dalmatia) to make an official translation of Scripture into Latin, from the mixtures of Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic that were in use at the time.
Pope Damasus then turned this proposed canon over to the bishops of North Africa for analysis and debate. He did this for four reasons:
1. North Africa was not part of the theology schools of either Alexandria or Antioch, which were the two intellectual factions that had caused the Arian controversy.
2. North Africa had the most bishops per capita of anywhere in the universal Church at the time, so they would reflect a good sample of universal opinion among the bishops.
3. The North African Church had a traditional custom of meeting in council (either at Carthage or at Hippo) every two years, which would give them the ability to hash things out effectively; and
4. Many of the North African bishops were renowned scholars, such as St. Augustine of Hippo, who participated in the debate and helped to formulate the canon.
So, at both the councils of Hippo in 393 and at Carthage in 397, the North African bishops worked out the final canon of the both the Old and New Testaments for the universal Church. This is the present canon of the Catholic Church, which the North Africans then submitted to Rome for final ratification.
Now, we're not sure when this final ratification was given, but we do know that the next pope, Pope St. Innocent I, was already promoting the so-called, "canon of Carthage" in 397 throughout the Western Church.
Rome would also have sent rescripts of its decision (final ratification of the Carthaginian canon) to Alexandria, the 2nd See of the universal Church and the primate in the East, with the expectation that Alexandria (as Eastern primate) would disseminate it throughout the East.
Lastly, by A.D. 405, after 23 years of work, St. Jerome finalized and produced the written translation and collation of both the Hebrew texts of Scripture and the New Testament into the Latin translation of the Bible. This would come to be known as the Biblia Vulgate, or “The Books in Common tongue,” aka Latin.
Thereafter the Bible, or rather the Vulgate*, was available for copying and it started to spread throughout the Catholic world.
* This Vulgate was not the Bible in the form you know today. That would not come until much much later.....
1228-1263, chapter division by bishop Stephen Langton of Canterbury
1551- Robert Estienne, known as Robert Stephanus, a printer, divided NT into chapters and verses for the first time.
It should also be noted that no original manuscripts of the works in the Bible exist. It is all based on numerous copies, among several languages, and the earilst of those only date to the 5th century give or take. Likewise, there have been a zillion translations, edits, and re-organizations of the Bible, itself, over the years. Some were brilliant, some were mediocre at best.
But to date, only the Catholic Church still adheres to the original canon with their Bible. Any bible with the Magisterium's seal can be trusted to follow this canon, and be as close as is possible to the original known manuscript copies.
By contrast, protestant Bibles have a different arrangement, based on Martin Luthers own edits and re-organization of the Bible - according to his ideas of what it should contain.
And he didn't come along until 1515, so he was copying from 1100 years of Latin Bible versions. So, its pretty obvious that no protestant Bible could have derived from anything like original copies.
Fortunately, over the years, most modern versions have attempted to go back to the earliest known texts and utilize available scholarship, so that they are all pretty similar.
Bottom line, though, if you want a Bible that is as close as can be had to the original texts - or rather the earliest known copies of those texts - you'll need a verified Catholic Bible.
The fact is, before the late 4th Century, each city-church had its own, local "canon" of Scripture, and these local canons differed from city-church to city-church.
Many local canons included books which are were eventually excluded from the Bible as we know it (such as 1 Clement to the Corinthians, or the Epistle of Barnabas, or the Book of Enoch, etc.).
Meanwhile, books which are currently included in our present Bible (such as the Epistle of James, and Hebrews, and 2 Peter, and 2 & 3 John, Jude, and Revelation), were rejected by these churches.
There were, in fact, dozens of spurious "gospels" floating around at the time.
The reason that city-churches had different local canons is because city-churches had different local liturgies --for example, the Liturgy (form of worship) in the city-church of Rome was different from the Liturgy (form of worship) in the city-Church of Corinth, or the city-church of Ephesus, or Antioch, or Jerusalem, etc.
This included the yearly Liturgical calendar, with different city-churches celebrating different local feast days on any given date.
Since the feast days differed, so did the corresponding readings for those feast days; and since there were only so many Liturgical readings (from so many canonical books) that a city-church could have in a given year, this limited the number of books in the local canon of that city-church.
As the Church entered the 4th Century, there was no such thing as one, universal "Bible" (one universal Scriptural canon, which the entire, universal Church shared in common).
Then came the Arian heresy, which ripped the Church apart. This internal doctrinal conflict pitted bishop against bishop, and city-church against city-church.
Meanwhile, books which are currently included in our present Bible (such as the Epistle of James, and Hebrews, and 2 Peter, and 2 & 3 John, Jude, and Revelation), were rejected by these churches.
There were, in fact, dozens of spurious "gospels" floating around at the time.
The reason that city-churches had different local canons is because city-churches had different local liturgies --for example, the Liturgy (form of worship) in the city-church of Rome was different from the Liturgy (form of worship) in the city-Church of Corinth, or the city-church of Ephesus, or Antioch, or Jerusalem, etc.
This included the yearly Liturgical calendar, with different city-churches celebrating different local feast days on any given date.
Since the feast days differed, so did the corresponding readings for those feast days; and since there were only so many Liturgical readings (from so many canonical books) that a city-church could have in a given year, this limited the number of books in the local canon of that city-church.
As the Church entered the 4th Century, there was no such thing as one, universal "Bible" (one universal Scriptural canon, which the entire, universal Church shared in common).
Then came the Arian heresy, which ripped the Church apart. This internal doctrinal conflict pitted bishop against bishop, and city-church against city-church.
Most Christians, today, know nothing of this, as the general attitude is that and Christendom as a whole was just 'one big happy family" from the beginning. But nothing is further from the truth. There were several conflicting heresies within The Church, and a serious one was Arianism.
In simple terms, Arianism is a belief that Jesus Christ was a created being, like a subordinate puppet, doing the bidding of God, but not equal to God the Father. It also contends that the Holy Trinity is not one being existing in three co-equal persons: Father, Son (Jesus), and Holy Spirit.
Essentially, it denies that Jesus is God, in the same way the Father is God.
This heresy created an enormous problem, since you had different bishops (Arian vs. Catholic) quoting from different books (or sets of books), more concerned with defending either Arianism or Catholic Trinitarianism.... rather than preaching the salvation gospel of Jesus.
Needless to say, this complicated and prolonged the controversy, and made Arianism much harder to defeat.
Well, by the year 382, the Arian heresy was finally defeated. Then, Pope St. Damasus I of Rome (who had been the librarian for the church of Rome prior to becoming Pope) took it upon himself to correct this problem, and to ensure that it would not happen again.
What he did was initiate steps for the formation of a universal canon of Scripture which all city-churches would hold in common, which would likewise eliminate any work which even implied Arianism (or other condemned heresies).
To "start the ball rolling" on this, Pope Damasus I promoted a Biblical canon which was a union of the canon of the city-church of Rome and that of the city-church of Alexandria --the two leading city-churches of the universal Church.
To get ahead of the game, he also commissions St. Jerome (Dalmatia) to make an official translation of Scripture into Latin, from the mixtures of Hebrew, Greek and Aramaic that were in use at the time.
Pope Damasus then turned this proposed canon over to the bishops of North Africa for analysis and debate. He did this for four reasons:
1. North Africa was not part of the theology schools of either Alexandria or Antioch, which were the two intellectual factions that had caused the Arian controversy.
2. North Africa had the most bishops per capita of anywhere in the universal Church at the time, so they would reflect a good sample of universal opinion among the bishops.
3. The North African Church had a traditional custom of meeting in council (either at Carthage or at Hippo) every two years, which would give them the ability to hash things out effectively; and
4. Many of the North African bishops were renowned scholars, such as St. Augustine of Hippo, who participated in the debate and helped to formulate the canon.
So, at both the councils of Hippo in 393 and at Carthage in 397, the North African bishops worked out the final canon of the both the Old and New Testaments for the universal Church. This is the present canon of the Catholic Church, which the North Africans then submitted to Rome for final ratification.
Now, we're not sure when this final ratification was given, but we do know that the next pope, Pope St. Innocent I, was already promoting the so-called, "canon of Carthage" in 397 throughout the Western Church.
Rome would also have sent rescripts of its decision (final ratification of the Carthaginian canon) to Alexandria, the 2nd See of the universal Church and the primate in the East, with the expectation that Alexandria (as Eastern primate) would disseminate it throughout the East.
Lastly, by A.D. 405, after 23 years of work, St. Jerome finalized and produced the written translation and collation of both the Hebrew texts of Scripture and the New Testament into the Latin translation of the Bible. This would come to be known as the Biblia Vulgate, or “The Books in Common tongue,” aka Latin.
Thereafter the Bible, or rather the Vulgate*, was available for copying and it started to spread throughout the Catholic world.
* This Vulgate was not the Bible in the form you know today. That would not come until much much later.....
1228-1263, chapter division by bishop Stephen Langton of Canterbury
1551- Robert Estienne, known as Robert Stephanus, a printer, divided NT into chapters and verses for the first time.
It should also be noted that no original manuscripts of the works in the Bible exist. It is all based on numerous copies, among several languages, and the earilst of those only date to the 5th century give or take. Likewise, there have been a zillion translations, edits, and re-organizations of the Bible, itself, over the years. Some were brilliant, some were mediocre at best.
But to date, only the Catholic Church still adheres to the original canon with their Bible. Any bible with the Magisterium's seal can be trusted to follow this canon, and be as close as is possible to the original known manuscript copies.
By contrast, protestant Bibles have a different arrangement, based on Martin Luthers own edits and re-organization of the Bible - according to his ideas of what it should contain.
And he didn't come along until 1515, so he was copying from 1100 years of Latin Bible versions. So, its pretty obvious that no protestant Bible could have derived from anything like original copies.
Fortunately, over the years, most modern versions have attempted to go back to the earliest known texts and utilize available scholarship, so that they are all pretty similar.
Bottom line, though, if you want a Bible that is as close as can be had to the original texts - or rather the earliest known copies of those texts - you'll need a verified Catholic Bible.
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