G'day, John!
Your dad tells me you have been discussing the Bible with your friends.
I'd suggest that you get hold of The Lion Handbook of the Bible and look around for anything else on the history of the Bible. There's also a good overview of the arguments for Christianity called, from memory, God Actually, by an Australian author, which might be useful to have.
THE OLD TESTAMENT
It is helpful to consider the history of the Old Testament separately from that of the New. The Jews used to destroy tatty scrolls, so, until the mid 20th century, the earliest available Old Testament scrolls dated from the 10th Century. In 1949, the Dead Sea Scrolls were found, so we now have first-century evidence for Old Testament texts.
One important fact from the Dead Sea Scroll discoveries is that what this desert sect used around the time of Jesus is scarcely different from the present-day Old Testament. The differences are the kinds of thing you would expect in anything hand-copied.
This discovery is not as world-shattering as you might think, because there was already independent evidence for the Old Testament in such things as the Greek Septuagint translation of about 200BC, and odd quotations elsewhere (some even in the New Testament) which probably reflected a Hebrew tradition rather than the Greek translation. Still, it is good to get direct confirmation.
However, it is hard to be sure about the early history of the Old Testament. There are a few markers along the way. We do know that, in the 8th Century BC, a Bible scroll was discovered in the Temple during a clean-up. Apparently the Bible hadn't been in use for some decades at that time. How much of today's Old Testament the scroll contained, we don't know, but it was probably the Pentateuch.
There is also clear evidence that parts of the Old Testament originally existed in separate documents which were later joined together. For example, the early chapters of Genesis almost certainly existed as four different documents at one time. Scholars call them, J, E, P and D (Jahwist, Elohist, Priestly and Deuteronomistic.) For example, Chapter 2 is Jahwist, because it uses the name Yahweh (Jahweh) for God, whereas Chapter 1 is Elohist, because it uses the title, Elohim, for God.
Many other parts of the Old Testament show evidence of having been compiled from earlier separate writings. For example, the Psalms were clearly written by a number of authors and later compiled into a hymn book.
Some Christians are embarrassed to find evidence of an editor's hand, and that embarrassment plays right into the hands of critics, like Muslims who claim that the Koran was dictated word-by-word to Mahomet. We believe that the God who inspired the original writers is powerful enough to guide the hand of an editor as well. Some books, like the Pentateuch (the first 5 books) have to have been edited, because Moses could not have written about his own death!
It is likely that the Old Testament as we know it appeared in three stages: first, the Pentateuch, which was lost but rediscovered in the Temple in the time of the kings, then the Psalms were added followed by the earlier prophets; finally, the books such as Daniel and Esther were added.
Remember that the Old Testament was written on scrolls, and, in the first century, these scrolls mostly contained one book, or two or three short ones. The “codex” form (book form) was not invented until around the end of the first century, and may well have been a Christian invention, as an easier way to carry the Bible around,
So the Old Testament is not really a single book.
Of course, the Catholics and Orthodox are suspicious of Protestants for omitting the Old Testament Apocrypha. These are writings found in the Septuagint, and used among Alexandrian Jews around 200 years before Christ, but not found in the Hebrew Bible. At the time of the Reformation, Christians still argued about exactly what books should be in the Old Testament, and Protestants settled on the Jewish tradition rather than the Greek one.
NEW TESTAMENT
The history of the New Testament is somewhat simpler. All the books were written between the mid-40s and the end of the first century (not too many people still argue that Revelation and some other writings appeared in the mid-second century.)
Many scholars date the New Testament books to the mid first century, with some, like Bishop John A.T. Robinson (who was far from being an Evangelical) arguing that every part of the New Testament was written before the destruction of the Temple in 70AD.
Robinson argued that the destruction of the temple was seen by early Christians as proof that, when Jesus died, that superseded the need for the Temple sacrifices, yet not one New Testament writer even mentions that the Temple was gone. He also finds some other internal evidence for early dating of the New Testament. However, not everyone agrees with him.
I think that Mark is definitely pre-70AD, and Matthew and Luke are probably from the same era, but John may be from around 80 AD. Matthew almost certainly comes from an Aramaic original, written perhaps 10 years before the Greek version. I also think that Hebrews was written before 70 AD. The writer spends well over half the book contrasting the Temple practices with Christianity, yet never once mentions that the Temple has been destroyed.
We know that Paul's letters to the churches are also pre-70AD, but maybe not his letters to Timothy and Titus. Revelation is probably also from close to the end of the 1st Century, say, 90 – 100 AD.
In the early days, the Apocalypse of Peter, the Shepherd of Hermas and a few other books were possible candidates for inclusion in the New Testament alongside the books we have today, but they were never widely accepted. During the second century, there were also many Gnostic writings like the recently discovered Gospel of Judas. The Gnostics combined some Christian teachings with ideas from Greek philosophy and/or Eastern religions. These were rejected by mainstream Christianity, and only ever found favour among Gnostics. None of them were based in history like the Gospels are.
Muslims often put forward the so-called Gospel of Barnabas as being the original book of the Gospel, and say that the four records of the gospel found in the New Testament are corrupted writings based on that source. However there is no known Greek text for it, and it seems to have been written in Spain in the 16th Century. It was probably written to support Muslim claims that Islam is the true successor to Christianity. Remember that Islam was very strong in much of Spain until the later 1400s.
One very strong support for the New Testament as we know it is the Gothic translation by Wulfila in the latter fourth century (about 380AD). There is no complete copy these days, but there are several partial copies which contain only books found in today's New Testament. If other books had formed part of the New Testament of the time, it should be expected that some parts of these books would have remained in the Gothic Bible.
People like Dan Brown argue that Constantine, at the Council of Nicea in 325AD, reinvented Christianity, forcing the omission of several books and rewriting others. The grain of truth is that Constantine paid for 50 copies of the New Testament to be made and provided to various churches, and that a collection of Gnostic writings was burned during the Council.
However, there are several reasons why Brown is wrong.
* Constantine hosted and opened the Council, but played no part in it, as he was not yet baptised, so could have no role in a Church council. The written records of the Council, made while it was being held, show this.
* The argument was who Christ is, not about the content of the New Testament. All parties agreed on what writings they disagreed about. They argued over how to interpret it.
* There were over 300 bishops and others at the Council, and it would not have been possible to push through a change in the New Testament.
* The Arian party (followers of Arius: they lost the argument) continued to have their own churches without any great conflict. When Wulfila (himself an Arian) produced a New Testament translation which any Gothic-speaking Catholic could have accepted, Arian bishops funded him. Because the Goths were outside the Roman Empire, no one had to be afraid of Government disapproval.
In the 15th and 16th Centuries, there was a growth of learning, and many old manuscripts were found. This was one of the foundations of the Reformation as well as of modern Biblical studies.
New translations were made from the Greek and Hebrew, and scholars began compiling and comparing the manuscripts. Obviously, manuscripts will contain errors, such as repeated or omitted words, and, occasionally, a writer will quote something similar from memory instead of checking the original, or will mishear what someone has dictated. The more manuscripts we have, the more able we are to detect and “repair” such errors.
In the 18th and 19th centuries, even more manuscripts became known, and we now have a better idea of the original manuscripts than ever. The King James Version/ New King James Version are largely built on the older compilations of Greek texts, and New English, New International and other recent versions rely on later scholarship. However, as the translators of the New King James Version admit, none of the variations between the different texts would alter any basic Christian doctrine.
Anyway, grab some of those books from Koorong, and see what you can find.
Cheers,
Peter
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