It is often said by creationists that everything in the Bible must be taken as literally true, and all of it divinely inspired. I have seen questions raised here and there about how this can be true given that it was constructed by humans, and indeed put through an artificial editorial process by others not even connected with the original writings. The fact that there was debate at all on what was good should raise an eyebrow.
I just found a site regarding the canonization of the Bible. It is:
http://www.ntcanon.org
It is not a debate site, nor one I am citing because it has an some slant about whether the Bible is true or not. It just looks like an interesting and useful site regarding the process humans went through to construct the Bible we see today.
I recommend especially that people go
go and view the table of New Testament writings and opinions on them.
Personally I found one statement on the history of the Bible quite interesting...
... the disrupting influences of opinions about the Scriptures expressed by such Catholics as Cardinal Cajetan, the humanist Erasmus, and by German, Swiss, and French Protestants, prompted Pope Paul III to convene the Council of Trent in order to consider what, if any, moral and administrative reforms needed to be made within the Roman Catholic Church. On April 8 1546, by a vote of 24 to 15 with 16 abstentions, a decree (De Canonicis Scripturis) was issued in which, for the first time in the history of the Church, the question of the contents of the Bible was made an absolute article of faith and confirmed by anathema. In translation:
"The holy ecumenical and general Council of Trent, ... following the example of the orthodox Fathers receives and venerates all the books of the Old and New Testament ... and also the traditions pertaining to faith and conduct ... with and equal sense of devotion and reverence (pari pietatis affectu ac reverentia) ... If, however, anyone does not receive these books in their entirety, with all their parts (cum omnibus suis partibus), as they are accustomed to be read in the Catholic Church and are contained in the ancient Latin Vulgate edition as sacred and canonical, and knowingly and deliberately rejects the aforesaid traditions, let him be Anathema."
Thus, even the canonization was not enough to make everything within the Bible stick for early Xians, and what fundamentalist Xians today regard as absolute truth was essentially the result of an order by the Catholic Church in 1546, without the benefit of a unanimous vote from the Church.
I also found it interesting to read of some of the heretical Xian writers who were quite popular in some sections, yet held radical views compared to what we think of Xianity today. For example one guy thought the Old Testament was only for the Jews by the God of Justice who created and ruled them, but the New Testament was for everyone else by the greater God of Goodness (who created the whole world). He had been quite influential and if his churches had not been blocked one wonders what Xianity might look like today... By the way his writings centered on spotting inconsistencies in the Bible, and that was
before full canonization ever happened.
I would like to know if this does not raise a question with Xians as to whether they need to believe it is all 100% inspired and literally true, and that other writings (since they are not in the canon) cannot be just as true and inspired? And if it doesn't, why not?
I guess I should note that I am actually raising two issues here that have puzzled me. Stating that the Bible as we see it now is the one and only literal truth, means to make the knowledge of God a static thing, which has not actually existed in history before. So in addition to the question above, does anyone see a problem in making the quest for God and knowledge of God a static thing, which up until very recently has been dynamic?
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