The story of how the Bible was definitively set at 66 books is complex, but the fanciful notion popularized by The DaVinci Code, with nefarious maneuvers by power grabbers who doctored what we have and shredded documents, is fiction.  Remember that the Bible was formed when God did something, and those whose knees were buckled by the experience remembered, reflected, and told their story; the story spread, others believed, congregations formed, the stories were repeated in worship, more lives were changed - and then, after dozens or even hundreds of years, God's doings were finally put down on paper. 

   As the Jews began to feel their existence threatened, and as Christians began to be persecuted, the need became urgent to gather the writings that had given birth to the body of believers, and to agree on which were absolutely essential, which were merely valuable, and which were a little too weird, too jaded by cultural influences.  The Old Testament was fixed, probably late in the first century, although the books from Genesis through 2 Kings, and the prophets like Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, had functioned as Scripture for centuries by that time.

   There was a time gap between the end of the story covered by the 39 books in the Old Testament and the beginning of the New, and some books from those days, such as Maccabees or the eloquent Wisdom of Solomon, were treasured, quoted in the New Testament, and even included in the Bible itself by the Roman Catholics; we call these books The Apocrypha, and you can pick up a copy in a grocery store.

   The New Testament was more quickly shaped.  Less than 100 years after Jesus' death, virtually all Christians treated the four Gospels we have, and the letters of Paul, as Scripture.  For the next two centuries, there were a handful of debates on which books were in or not in the Bible - but only a handful of books were debated at all:  Esther (which doesn't mention God!), 2 Peter, James.  No one ever said "Matthew is bogus, Isaiah is heresy, Romans is fake."  No conclave was called to shore up what should be in or out; the Church councils simply affirmed what had been shaping the Church for centuries - and to say, reasonably, that the Bible had no need for newfangled writings that "excluded themselves because under careful scrutiny by many Christians it was recognized that these documents were inconsistent with the sacred texts everyone respected" (Ben Witherington).

   There were other gospels, but they were written a century or more after our four; none could claim authority.  The DaVinci Code suggests that gospels were excluded because they portrayed Jesus as human.  But you can pick up such gospels in any bookstore, and if you read you will find a less human Jesus, a more divine Jesus.  One gospel tells of Jesus playing in his crib, fashioning birds out of clay which miraculously fly away.  Another has Joseph in his carpentry shop:  one board is too short, so the toddler Jesus magically lengthens it.  One day Jesus turned his playmates into goats.  The Church never tried to "cover up" such gospels, but did recognize how they might lead us away from the Gospel that is our life.

James

james@mpumc.org

To read my review of Dan Brown's The DaVinci Code click here.

The complete email series on Bible Questions can be found if you click here.

Sunday's sermon, on 1 Thessalonians 2:9-13, about how "words" become "God's Word," may be heard on our web site.

Coming up:

eBibleQuestions5 - Is the Bible history? or metaphor?

eBibleQuestions6 - How reliable are translations?

eBibleQuestions7 - How do we read the Bible?

eBibleQuestions8 - What about Creation and Evolution?