谁决定在圣经中包含哪些书？|事情怎兴发首页x么样

Ethiopian Orthodox priest shows an ancient Bible“width= — An Ethiopian Orthodox priest shows an ancient Bible in a church in Lalibela, Ethiopia.埃里克·拉福格（Eric Lafforgue）/我们所有人/柯比斯（Corbis）

In his best-selling novel, "DA Vinci代码," Dan Brown wrote that the Bible was assembled during the famous Council of Nicea in 325 C.E., when Emperor Constantine and church authorities purportedly banned problematic books that didn't conform to their secret agenda.

除了那不是真正的事情。“DA Vinci代码“was fiction, but Brown wasn't the first to credit the Council of Nicea with deciding which books to include in the Bible.伏尔泰, writing in the 18th century, repeated a几个世纪大的神话圣经在尼克（Nicea）中被构成了圣经，通过将所有已知书籍放在桌子上，说祈祷并看到哪些非法文字落在地板上。

In truth, there was no single church authority or council that convened to rubber stamp the biblical canon (official list of books in the Bible), not at Nicea or anywhere else in antiquity, explainsJason Combs，Brigham Young University的助理教授专门研究古代基督教。

康布斯说：“丹·布朗给我们所有人造成了损害。”“我们没有证据表明任何基督徒聚在一起说：'让我们一劳永逸地哈希。解决宗教问题与圣经的书无关。）

学者们确实有哪些证据 - 以神学论文，信件和教会历史的形式得以幸存，这些历史已经生存了数千年much longer process of canonization. From the first through the fourth centuries and beyond, different church leaders and theologians made arguments about which books belonged in the canon, often casting their opponents as heretics.

The books that make up the Bible were written by various people over a period of more than 1,000 years, between公元前1200年和公元一世纪圣经包含各种文学类型，包括诗歌，历史，歌曲，故事，字母和预言著作。这些最初是写在羊皮纸的卷轴上，而不是我们今天想到的“书籍”中封装。（记住，printing press直到1440年才发明。）

圣经手稿“width= — Rare and ancient biblical manuscripts are displayed at the "Book of Books" exhibition in the Bible Lands Museum in Jerusalem, Israel. Note they are all on scrolls.
Uriel Sinai/Getty图像

Over time, the books that were deemed authentic and authoritative by the communities who used them were included in the canon and the rest were discarded. Although the bulk of that editing work ended in the late 300s, the debate over which books were theologically legit continued until at least the 16th century when church reformer Martin Luther published his German translation of the Bible.

争议，虚假和彻头彻尾的异端

路德（Luther）对詹姆斯（James）的书有问题，该书强调了“作品”与信仰一起的角色，因此他将詹姆斯（James）和希伯来人（Hebrews）与裘德（Jude）和启示录一起在圣经的后面，他也认为这是值得怀疑的。Combs说，在路德的原始圣经中，这四本书甚至都没有出现在目录中。

尤塞比乌斯（Eusebius）是300年代初期的基督教历史学家写作早期列表之一of which books were considered legit and which were borderline bogus.

Eusebius broke his list down into different categories: recognized, disputed, spurious and heretical. Among the "recognized" were the four gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John), Acts and Paul's epistles. Under "disputed," Eusebius included James and Jude — the same books Luther didn't like — plus a few others that are now considered canon, like 2 Peter, 2 John and 3 John.

当尤塞比乌斯（Eusebius）转向“虚假”和“异端”类别时，我们瞥见了第二世纪和三世纪的其他文本，您是否听说过彼得的启示，巴纳巴斯的书信或《巴纳巴斯书信》或托马斯的福音？Combs说，有数百条与《新约》和《旧约》中发现的文本类似，这些文本并未进入经典。

Making the Cut

为什么有些书裁员而不是其他书？梳子引用了早期教会领导人使用的三个标准。首先是作者身份，无论是被认为是由使徒，保罗还是由他们附近的人撰写的。例如，马克不是使徒，而是彼得的解释者。第二个标准是古代，较旧的文本优先于较新的文本。第三个是正统观念，或文本与当前的基督教教学相符的程度。

“That last reason is so interesting, of course, because 'current Christian teaching' changed over hundreds of years," says Combs.

虽然说一个教会委员会裁定要在佳能中包含哪些书籍并不是真的，但可以说，在神学辩论的前几个世纪中，获奖者必须决定哪些书将留下来，哪些书必须走。

It's important to mention that not all Christian denominations consider the same books to be canon. Most Protestant Bibles have 66 books, 39 in the Old Testament and 27 in the New Testament. The Roman Catholic Bible has 73 books including the seven known as the Apocrypha. And the Ethiopian Orthodox Church includes81 total books in its Bible, including pseudepigrapha like 1 Enoch and Jubilees.

What are the Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha?

“ apocrypha”一词来自希腊语“隐藏”或“秘密”。这有点令人困惑，因为在谈论标准圣经佳能之外的书籍时，用几个不同的方式使用了这个词。

First, there's the category of "New Testament Apocrypha" which includes a长列表主要写在公元前第二世纪，超越与耶稣和他的使徒有关。正如Combs所说，有数百种文本，我们没有为所有文本写过标本。

Then there's a subset of Old Testament books that are included in the Roman Catholic Bible. These seven books, including Tobit, Judith and 1 & 2 Maccabees, are published between the Old and New Testaments in the Catholic Bible and called "the Apocrypha" or sometimes the "Deuterocanon" which means "second canon."

And then there's a third category called "pseudepigrapha" from the Greek for "false author." This list includes超过50条文字written between 200 B.C.E. and 200 C.E. by both Jewish and Christian writers expanding on stories and characters from the Old Testament. Notable Old Testament pseudepigrapha include 1 Enoch, Jubilees and the Treatise of Shem.

您在星期日学校没有学到的故事

Many of the New Testament texts familiar to Christians today were being used authoritatively already in the second century, but different congregations preferred some texts over others and included some texts that don't appear in the New Testament. Here are a few:

The Gospel of Peter：在1886年在埃及发现了本文的片段，但它包括复活的耶稣离开坟墓的唯一叙述。根据彼得的版本，两个巨型天使降落在坟墓上，护送复活的耶稣出来，耶稣也突然巨大。但是最奇怪的是，这三个数字之后是一个可以说话的浮动十字架。

“And they heard a voice from the heavens, saying, 'Thou hast preached to them that sleep.' And a response was heard from the cross, 'Yea.'"

The Gospel of Mary: Combs says that some apocryphal texts reflected theological and doctrinal debates going on within the early church, such as the role of women. In the Gospel of Mary (discovered in the late 19th century),玛丽·抹大拉不仅被称为耶稣的门徒之一，而且也许是他最喜欢的门徒。在这段文字中，在耶稣复活后，他将深奥的教义转向玛丽，玛丽随后告诉另一个门徒。彼得问他们为什么应该听一个女人，另一个门徒李维[马修]回答：

“如果救主使她值得，那么你是谁来把她抛在一边？肯定是救主对她的全部了解。这就是为什么他比我们更爱她的原因。”

1 Enoch：据称是诺亚时代之前古代先知以伊诺克（Enoch）撰写的，这段文字是早期基督徒（如三世纪神学家特图利安（Tertullian））所闻名的，并被引用为权威经文。文字以它对“观察者”的描述《旧约创世纪》中简短提到的堕落天使。这些天使渴望人类妇女，并与她们在一起，创造了巨大的后代。在1 Enoch中，这些天使还以武器，魔术和性感的妆容形式将邪恶引入世界。