Where Did the Bible Come From? How Did We Get the Bible that We Possess Today?

Contrary to proper belief, the Bible did not fall out of the sky; nor did was it merely written or organized by one man. It was neither created by perfect men or mindless "possessed" men, but holy men of God spoke as they were carried along by God the Holy Spirit (2 Pet. 1:20-21). Without losing their own personalities, style, mind, being, etc. these men wrote and spoke God's Word as if God had said or written the words Himself. The Bible was written by men from different walks of life. The authors were farmers, kings, educated, uneducated, rich, poor, etc. You name a person's place in society, and you can almost bet that this type of person authored some of the Bible. Furthermore, they existed in different cultures that spanned over 1500 years from beginning to end. Thus, as a result of its divine inspiration, where the Bible speaks, God speaks.

A Brief History of How we Got the Bible

To begin, ultimately through the avenue of God the Holy Spirit, the church recognized the canon instead of determining the canon. The canon formed the church, not the church the canon. In 144 AD Marcion, an early heretic who peculiarly rejected Judaism and affirmed the evil of all that is material, developed a following. He formed his own butchered canon made up of some of Luke's Gospel, some Old Testament references, and some of Paul's letters (Gonzalez 61-62). In order to combat this heretic and others as well such as the proponents of Gnosticism, the church needed to officially recognize the canon that the present and future church should submit to as authoritative.

After the Scriptures were written in the first century, they were widely circulated. At the time of these early church heresies, the churches were already largely using the proper books. The problem was more so that there was no official list, than that the church was confused. In order to publicly recognize the canon, the church developed the use of three criteria: apostolicity (every book must be written by an apostle or someone approved by the apostles), orthodoxy (the text must line up with the historical teaching of the early church; as well as, agree with itself), and universality (the books must be recognized by a large section of the purported church as authoritative) (Lea and Black 71-72). Though there were some lists already circulating that agreed with the church's eventual decision, the church did not officially recognize the canon we possess today until 397 A.D. at the Third Council of Carthage (Lea and Black 73).

Bibliography

Gonzalez, Justo L. The Story of Christianity, Volume 1. New York, NY: Harper Collins, 1984.

Lea,Thomas D. and David Alan Black. The New Testament: Its Background and Message. Nashville, TN: Broadman & Holman, 2003.