Rambling Rector

From the Rambling Rector

The Bible

 

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The bible is a significant piece of writing, it is far more than an old historical document as it provides spiritual and moral guidance for millions of people around the world. Over 5 billion copies of the bible have been printed. Yet who wrote it? And when was it written? The principal of the theological college I attended when training (The Reverend Professor Martyn Percy at Ripon College, Cuddesdon) is quoted as saying that ‘the bible didn’t arrive as a fax from heaven’ in one of his books. This was even quoted by Dan Brown in his book the DaVinci Code. I thought I would share some of the things I have learnt about the origins of the bible. Bear with me as this next bit is a bit fact heavy. The bible consists of two parts, the Old Testament (before Jesus) and the New Testament (about Jesus and the early church). With the space available in this article, I will stay with the New Testament. This was written between 50 and 100AD, so the earliest writings appeared just 17 years after Jesus died and rose again. In 64AD there was a big fire in Rome and Emperor Nero blamed the Christians, which, coupled with the destruction of the temple in Jerusalem in 70AD separated Christianity from Judaism and drove Christianity underground and into secrecy. Admitting your belief in Jesus at that time was punishable by death. This continued until Constantine became ruler of the Roman empire in 306AD and declared that Christianity was a good thing and the persecution stopped. It was discovered that Christianity had spread far and wide around the world. It was also the case that the result of being secret for so long meant that different writings were prominent around the world and there were differences in what people from various countries believed about Jesus. The most significant was the Arian controversy. Feel free to look this up on the internet as there is not room here to go into the details. To sort this out and finalise what Christianity is all about, Emperor Constantine called the first world council of churches in Nicaea (now Iznik) in Turkey. The result of this was the Nicene Creed, which has had only two changes in content since (381 and 1000AD).

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Many people had written about the life of Jesus and the works of the early church which led to debates about which of these writings were genuine and which were not true to Jesus’ teachings. Bishop Athanasius, who had been one of the leaders of the council of Nicaea produced the first known list of the 27 books of the New Testament as we have it today. Part of the selection process was that the books supported the content of the Nicene Creed. These 27 books were affirmed as ‘canon’ by the councils of Hippo (393AD) and Carthage (397AD). This meant that these 27 books, that had been previously written were recognised as containing the valid teachings of Christianity. There were many many more books written, but they were deemed more as supporting literature rather than authoritative.

A lot of prayer went into this, and these councils are thought to have discerned what God had divinely chosen. It remains that scripture is the inspired word of God revealed through fallible human beings. There are many different types of writing in the bible and it needs to be treated as a literary mosaic. It contains prophecy, history, moral teaching, spiritual guidance, parable, poetry, instruction, example and more. One thing it does not contain is a biography of Jesus. By this I mean that it does not tell us anything about his looks, his eye colour, how tall he was etc. We learn nothing of his hobbies or his favourite food. The four gospels purely focus on his acts that teach us how to live spiritually and physically and each gospel has an intended audience that slants its content. This leads to the conclusion that the purpose of the bible is for everybody around the world to believe in God and live lives loving their neighbour.

I hope this was helpful in understanding the nature of Christianity’s Holy Book and its benefit to society.

 

Rev Chris

 

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