Quote:
Originally Posted by Enunciated Piffle
Sorry to interrupt the primate discussion, but does anyone know where to find the books of the Bible that were omitted? [I'm kinda sorta looking at you, Stulagu...]
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OK. So, I just had a discussion with my friend who got a church related degree and is married to a pastor. Wanted to make sure I had things straight before I wrote it here. (I only had a couple years of education on this not the 8 plus she has)
SO...the Council of Nicea met in the 300's and that was to unite all of the small churches that were spreading like crazy throughout Europe. They decided on basic doctrine and agreed on the books collected being the books of the Bible. These books were already in place, but this was the confirmation of setting the books as canon.
From my friend: "the Catholic church includes the apocrapha which has 1 and 2 Maccabees as books, among others. There are also Peter and Stephen, which were never considered by 1st century Christians to be worth anything at all"
The New Testiment was made up of letters written by the followers of Jesus to the churches to help guide them in living the way Jesus taught. The Peter and Stephen letters, when read by people who knew them, were deemed fake. The others were authentic...once again, because the people they were written to knew these men personally.
The letters were written to specific congregations, who passed them around to each other, and that basically makes up the New Testiment. The Old Testiment has been around obviously much longer and pieces are in Muslim and Jewish faiths as well.
My friend doesn't know much about the apocrapha because she is Lutheran, not Catholic...but says the gnostic books are throwaway, like the books of Mormon. They were meant to supplement the Bible, but aren't "God's Word" and most were discredited early on.
So that's what I've got. Christianity was very much a grassroots oganization to start with and, as usual, humans ruined it and turned it into a political power way back when and have been abusing it every since.