As we begin this series on reading the Bible in the 21st century, we need to understand what’s in the Bible and how it got to be there.
Who wrote the books? Who decided which books were included and which were omitted? How did they make their decisions?
We look at these questions as well as dispel a couple of common myths.
The Bible is not one book
The Christian Bible isn’t a single text, but 66 separate texts written over a period of maybe a millennium. It includes many different genres of writing. So we need to be wary of thinking that all the books can be read and judged in the same way.
While many Christians describe it as the singular “Word of God”, this shouldn’t obscure the fact that the texts have many different, often anonymous, authors. It is likely that for many of the books, stories were passed down orally, which is common in oral societies, before finally being written down. So authorship isn’t a simple idea for many of them.
We’ll look at the two major divisions, the Jewish Tanakh, which equates approximately to the Christian Old Testament, and the New Testament, and examine when the “canon” of each was set (“canon” derives from a Greek word meaning “rule” or “yardstick”).
The Tanakh
The Christian Old Testament is derived from the Jewish Tanakh, an acronym made from the three major divisions, containing 24 books in all.
- Torah ( = “teachings”). The five books of Moses – Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.
- Nevi’im ( = “Prophets”). Four books of the “former prophets”: Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings) and four books of the “latter prophets”: Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel and the Twelve minor prophets (Hosea, Joel, Amos, Obadiah, Jonah, Micah, Nahum, Habukkuk, Zephaniah, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi, considered together as one book).
- Ketuvim ( = “Writings”). A diverse collection of 11 books which include poetry, history and “wisdom literature – Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel , Ezra + Nehemiah and Chronicles.
Almost the entire Tanakh was written in the Hebrew language of the Israelites, with just a few short sections in Aramaic, another Semitic language that was widely used within and outside Israel in the last few centuries of the first millennium BCE.
Dates & authors
Torah
The Torah (or Pentateuch = “five books”) covers events that were believed to have taken place sometime before 1,500 BCE, but was probably not finalised in written form until about 500 BCE.
Many Jewish and Christian scholars say the Torah was written by Moses around 1,300 BCE and then re-written by the scribe Ezra into a more contemporary script about 400 BCE.
Secular scholars, on the other hand, believe that several sources of various dates were compiled into the books we have now about 500 BCE, and doubt that Moses wrote any of the sources.
Prophets & writings
The books included in the prophets and writings were written by a variety of authors in the period of about 1,000 to 200 BCE.
- The former prophets are mostly historical accounts about the kingdoms of Israel and Judah over the period 1,200 to 600 BCE. They appear to have been compiled from earlier sources around 400 BCE. The authors are not stated.
- The latter prophets include writings and sayings by a succession of prophets over the period about 800-400 BCE, probably written and edited by later followers.
- Some writings are said to go back to the kings David and Solomon (about 1,000 and 950 BCE respectively), but most scholars think they are more recent than that.
- Regardless of the above dates, most scholars believe most of these books reached their final form about 400 BCE, while some were a little later.
The canon of the Tanakh
There isn’t agreement among scholars about when this list of 24 became set as the Jewish scriptures. It is clear that there was much discussion in the period 200 BCE to 200 CE about which books were considered valuable and canonical. Some scholars have felt that canonisation process happened in stages, with the finalisation of the canon by influential rabbis in the late first century CE, but others say simply that we don’t know.
But it seems fairly certain that the Torah was well accepted and unchangeable by about 400 BCE, the content of the remaining Tanakh sections was somewhat more fluid until well into the Christian era.
The Septuagint
In the second and third centuries BCE a group of Jewish scholars in Alexandria in Egypt translated the Tanakh into Greek, the common language of the Roman Empire. (By this time, few Jews could read Hebrew.) Tradition says there were 72 scholars, hence the name “Septuagint”.
Describing the Septuagint is complicated because it is collection of Tanakh translations and other Jewish texts, developed over time, well into the Christian era. It has significant differences to the Tanakh.
- The order of the books has been changed, being grouped into four parts (law, history, poetry, and prophets) instead of three.
- Several of the larger books were split in two.
- The text of some books is somewhat different, with some significant additions and omissions.
- About a dozen other writings, from the period 400-200 BCE, were included (more if some texts added into Daniel and elsewhere are considered as separate books).
While the Septuagint was widely used, it wasn’t accepted by Jewish scribes as authoritative and some of its translations are problematic. One reason it is important is that it was used by the early Christians, including by some of the New Testament writers because they wrote in Greek. It is unclear whether Jesus ever quoted the Septuagint – some parts of the gospels reflect the Septuagint but it is unclear whether Jesus used it or spoke in Aramaic and the gospel writers used the Septuagint when they translated Jesus’ words into Greek.
The Old Testament
The Biblical Old Testament derives from the Jewish Tanakh, but differs in several ways because it followed the Septuagint in many respects: it has a similar order to the Septuagint (law, history, poetry, and prophets) and the books of Samuel, Kings and Chronicles are split in two.
The early Christians generally accepted the authority of the Jewish scriptures without question. They accepted the Tanakh books but in the order and format of the Septuagint. The remaining Serptuagint books were often regarded as helpful but not always as authoritative.
Christians today disagree over use of the extra books included in the Septuagint which are sometimes called the deuterocanonical books ( = “second canon”) or the apocrypha ( = “hidden” or not authoritative).
- Catholic Bibles today include seven of the books, which are regarded as inspired.
- The various Eastern Orthodox churches generally accept the Septuagint as their Old Testament.
- Protestants do not accept any of the deuterocanonical books, but stick to the Tanakh text, albeit in a different order.
So the formation of the Old Testament canon was a long process with no one person or body responsible for the final choices by both the Jewish rabbis and the Christian church, and some differences of opinion which remain to this day on what should be included.
The New Testament
The formation of the New Testament is a simpler process, though a couple of curious myths need debunking.
Dates & authors
It is generally believed that the 27 books in the New Testament were all written in the period 48 CE to early in the second century.
- The four gospels were probably written between 65 and 95 CE, though some scholars place some of them a little earlier.
- The earliest books were some of the letters of Paul, written 48-62 CE. There is some dispute about whether some the letters which name Paul as author were in fact written by him or were written much later.
- The dates for many of the remaining books are more uncertain, some perhaps even being written well into the second century.
The authorship of the New Testament books fall into three categories:
- Those which name authors (generally Paul) and this is accepted by scholars.
- Those which name authors but scholars doubt the authorship, considering them later writings using a famous apostle’s name.
- Those that don’t name the authors (notably the four gospels – whose names reflect traditions about the authors).
Authorship of the four gospels is the key question because readers want to know whether these biographical accounts are telling a true story. Historians generally accept that the gospels are based on real events reported orally or in writing by eyewitnesses, and only compiled into the texts we have now a generation or two after the events. However there are differing opinions about how accurately the gospels report Jesus’ actions and words.
There are many opinions on the names of the actual authors, but most people seem to accept that Luke, who was an associate of Paul, compiled the gospel named after him from eyewitness sources. It seems to me that Matthew and John are likely based on writings by disciples of that name, but completed by others. There seems no reason not to accept that Mark was written by an early believer of that name.
But because authorship of all four gospels is anonymous, we are each free to accept the traditional authors, or not.
Myth #1: other gospels
It is sometimes claimed that there were many gospels written about Jesus, and the church suppressed the ones it didn’t approve of, thus controlling what we know about him.
It is certainly true that there was considerable diversity in the beliefs of the early church, and this is reflected in many other writings, including alternative “gospels”. Among these alternate views was gnosticism, a loose set of “secret” beliefs which “depicted a divine being whose mysterious sayings revealed the secrets to immortality”, contrary to the view of Jesus in the New Testament as a Jewish rabbi, miracle-worker, prophet and Messiah. Many of the other gospels have gnostic-like ideas.
But scholars examining all these texts today basically affirm that the four canonical gospels were written much earlier and are more historical than all the apocryphal gospels, which were written in the second and third centuries and have little historical basis. (A few argue that the Gospel of Thomas was written in the first century, but most scholars date in the second century.)
So there are good historical reasons to regard the four Biblical gospels as the best sources of information on the life of Jesus. None of the other “gospels” was ever included in the NT canon. The later “gospels” don’t tell us a lot about the historical Jesus, but they do give us insight into the diversity of opinion in, and on the fringe of, the early church.
The New Testament takes form
Documents written in the early centuries show that churches in different locations used different ones of the current NT books plus a few other texts. By the third century there was a broad consensus about the four gospels and Paul’s letters, based on them being ancient and considered to have apostolic authority. (An apostle was more or less someone who had seen and heard Jesus.)
There was discussion and disagreement about the inclusion of a number of books, generally those towards the back of the NT, and a few others that didn’t make the cut. But by the middle of the fourth century, the church had settled on the New Testament canon without a lot of dissension.
And so the influential Bishop Athanasius, in 367 CE, listed as canonical the 27 books of the Protestant NT. Later, the Council of Hippo in 393 CE approved a canon similar to the Catholic canon today, that is, then same 27 New Testament books, but with 7 apocryphal books included in the Old Testament.
So like the Old Testament, the canon of the New Testament wasn’t decided by one person or group at one time, but was a gradual process, which gradually reached broad agreement.
Myth #2: Emperor Constantine decided on the Christian Bible
There has been a story, told by Voltaire in the 18th century and repeated in Dan Brown’s Da Vince Code, that the Roman Emperor Constantine convened the church Council of Nicaea in 325 CE, and chose the books to be included in the Bible (some sources say by some magical means) and removed other books. You can even find some websites today repeating a version of this story as if it is historical.
However historians point out that the Council of Nicaea didn’t discuss the canon of the Christian Bible at all. The Council was called to resolve other matters and the canon was initially settled by general acceptance.
So what have we learnt?
It is clear that the choice of what books are in the Bible wasn’t made via some quick decision. Both Testaments were written by many different people and were only gradually formed into a collection of books and accepted as authoritative.
Christians will likely believe that God guided, to a greater or lesser degree, the writing of the texts and recognition of their value and authority. But it is clear is that neither Testament was forced on the Jewish or Christian believers by a cabal of religious leaders, or the Emperor.
I believe the rather messy and organic process by which the Bible has come to us is an insight into God’s character and how he chooses to operate on earth. The Bible didn’t come to us in a very direct verbal form, as the Muslims and Mormons each believe about their scriptures, but via a very human process. The God of the universe has chosen (I believe) to work almost unobtrusively through ordinary human beings – truly treasures in jars of clay (1 Corinthians 4:7)!
References
- Read more about the Bible on this website.
- When was the Old Testament written? Joshua Schachterle, 2025, Bart Ehrman website.
- Development of the Hebrew Bible canon. Wikipedia.
- The Old Testament Canon and Apocrypha. Michael Marlowe.
- Development of the New Testament canon, Wikipedia.
- How the New Testament Canon was Formed. R.A. Baker.
- Did Nicaea really create the Bible? John Meade, Text & Canon Institute.
- New Testament Apocrypha. Britannica.
Graphic: Bishops & Emperor at the Council of Nicaea in 325 CE (Wikipedia). It is an unfortunate myth that this Council, heavily influenced by the Emperor Constantine, made decisions on which books to include and omit from the Christian Bible. As noted in this post, the reality is somewhat different.
