Expert: Messianic Rabbi Yochanan Levine - 9/13/2007

Question
I would like to know how and/or who choose the books to be in the bible. Also, why does the Catholic bible have other books?

Answer
Hi Nathan,
As you can imagine there is lots of debate on this question.

The first five books of the Bible are called the Torah (and/or Pentateuch). There were written by Moses circa 1400 BCE and forms the foundation of Jewish religion.

The rest of the Tanakh (the Hebrew Scriptures, called the "Old Testament" by most Christians) were written by various people over the next several hundred years. Most Bibles will list the name of the human author on the title page of the book.

We know the history of the Tanakh and can be fairly certain that the Tanakh (including the Torah) we have today, in Hebrew, is essentially as it was written. There are a few questionable passages that don't effect the teachings at all (mainly in the form of duplicate versions which appear to be scribal errors).

After the final Tanakh books were penned there was a revolution in Israel. A group of Jews, known as the Maccabees, tried to restore Israel to independence. Their stories are usually called the Apocrypha. These books include the stories of the Maccabees, the Song of Susan and the Holy Children, an additional chapter of Daniel, Bel and the Dragon etc. The Roman Catholic Church accepts these books as canonical (biblical), as did the original edition of the Protestant Authorized King James Version. The KJV later dropped these books however and today I am not aware of any Protestants who accept them as inspired texts. They are generally considered extra-biblical history and mythology. There are many reasons for this. These books contain things that Protestants thought sounded more like wives tales than history (for instance spit is placed on the eyes of the blind Tobias and he regains sight by magic rather than by God's touch), and so the Protestants decided to only accept as inspired the books the Jews accept as scripture. These books can be read here: http://www.breslov.com/bible in a Jewish version (the JPS). The JPS and the King James are almost the same in every respect.

The New Testament is a bit more complicated.

The earlier portions of the New Testament are actually the pastoral letters from Paul and others to the diverse Christian communities. Later on the Apostles commissioned the writings of the four Gospels and John the Revelator had his awesome vision we know as the Book of Revelation or the Book of the Apocalypse. Many people, including myself, regard this book as the divinely promised ending of Prophet Daniel's important End Time prophecies.

What makes this complicated is that a lot of people were writing books and letters following the resurrection of Jesus. After the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE the followers of the Nazarene Way (like the Jews) were scattered throughout the world. Some of these groups carried on the essentially Jewish sect of the Nazarene Y'shua ben Miriam (Jesus son of Mary) while others merged these teachings with diverse regional mysticisms, with Roman Paganism, with Hermeticism and asceticism, with Gnosticism, with Zoroastrianism, etc. etc.

Which form of Christianity was the original and true one? At this point its a matter of faith. Which group had the right, enlightenment and power to determine the true from the false? That's the problem.

In the early 300's a Pagan Roman general turned emperor named Flavius Valerius Aurelius Constantinus (known generally as Constantine the Great) claimed to have a vision of Jesus. Constantine was a worshiper of  the Roman Sun God (Sol Invictus) until the day he died, literally, he was baptized a Christian on his death bed.

Constantine held a series of counsels at Nicea and elsewhere. He ordered leaders of all Roman recognized religions to attend. This much is a fact of history.

Enter the debate.

According to Roman Catholicism, the One True Church's authority had been vested in the Apostle Peter and those  who followed him in an unbroken lineage. Constantine was in this lineage and formalized what "true Christians had always believed" into official Roman Church dogma.

To defend their doctrines Church fathers met to determine which of the books being used by Christians were "authorized" and which were to be deemed "heretical." Bishop Iraneas was one of these men. Those books that contradicted Catholic doctrine were banned and destroyed, those that supported it were edited, amended and canonized. Reading the unapproved books was declared a capital crime. Seeking a Jewish origin for one's Catholic beliefs was called Judaizing and also declared a capital crime. Thousands of people were killed for reading the scriptures and questioning the new teachings.

However, critics (like me) charge that Constantine and his counsels set out NOT to preserve the true 300 year old Way of Prophet Y'shua and his reformed version of Judaism, but to unite the Roman Empire into a single religion that could unite the people and restore Rome's former glory.

In defense of this view it is noted that the name of the Church is not Christianity but the Holy Roman Catholic Church. The word "catholic" means "universal" and so the actual name of the Roman Church is the Holy Universal religion. At Nicea and elsewhere Universal Church fathers created a brand new religion that bore almost no resemblance to the religion of Jesus and his disciples, which is to say Judaism. Christianity is far more similar to Roman Paganism.

Jews believe God is absolutely One and indivisible. Christinity says God is One, but in an eternal Triune division. For Jews this is pure blasphemy. Also, every Christian holiday is based on preexistent Pagan holidays. Even the collar worn by priests is Pagan in origin.

In order to understand the origins of the New Testament we must consider these controversies. The New Testament we have today is that which was determined and codified by the Roman Catholic Church (minus the Apocrypha for Protestants).

Most Christians of whatever denomination believe that God revealed both sections of the Bible in the forms they now appear... But there was more to it than that.

The following link is to a Fundamentalist Christian web site offering a HUGE among of information about the Bible. The focus on this site is to defend the King James Version, however they also offer a lot of good information on how the Bible came to be that might be of interest to you: http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/Bible/1611_authorized_king_james.htm     

Hope this helps,

~John of AllFaith