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Too many times our religious knowledge today (concerning the New Testament for example) in respect to spiritual matters is limited to our generation and our generation only. We seem to forget that the "top ten" at your corner Christian Book store pails in comparison to a scholarly book. To much "denominational bias" and "party line theology" occupy the bookshelves today. Most Christians I know have never read a scholarly Biblical book in their life, but yet to listen to them, they have all truth because the Holy Spirit led them to it. This always amuses me when the same Holy Spirit has evidently led almost 2 billion people into the idolatrous worship of a sungod man as "Jesus" is depicted in the New Testament let alone the worship of Mary as well.
Over the years of intense study I have seem first-hand how we have lost more knowledge than we currently possess. Even in Seminary I was beginning to get the "drift" that all is not what it is made out to be thanks to credible and honest professors who walked a thin line between their "paychecks" and truth.
Those who consider themselves "knowledgeable" today concerning the Christian religion seldom seem to know more than rhetoric or their "denominational company line." Antiquity possesses the truths we look for if we would only look into the history of our inherited Christian faith and our inherited religious documents; for much of what we would find if we did so is a blatant contradiction to what we have been taught today. Our complacency and our laziness to search out these matters to see if we have been taught the truth has robbed us of this precious commodity. Sadly few of us even know that such inquiry is necessary since being taught since childhood that we have the truth and that others do not.
In this article I wish to deal with the subject of our Christian Canon of Scripture. The idea of a complete and clear-cut canon of the New Testament existing from the beginning, that is from Apostolic times, has no foundation in history. The Canon of the New Testament, like that of the Old, is the result of a development, of a process at once stimulated by disputes with doubters, both within and without the Church, and retarded by certain obscurities and natural hesitations, and which did not reach its final term until the dogmatic definition of the Tridentine Council. The Council of Trent (Italian: Trento) was an ecumenical council of the Catholic Church held in discontinuous sessions between 1545 and 1563 in response to the Protestant Reformation. It clearly specified Catholic doctrines on salvation, the sacraments and the Biblical canon, in opposition to the Protestants, and standardized the Mass throughout the church, largely abolishing local variations; this became called the Tridentine Mass, after Trent.
The following I provide to provoke your thinking. These men saw severe problems with the Canon and New Testament which most likely you, the reader, have not seen yet. Again, your inability to see these problems does not negate their existence. It is our hope at Bet Emet Ministries that once reading these quotes you will awaken to the personal need of serious study into the document you have accepted "by faith" without your personal investigation and verification. Let us see what the scholars have to say about the book we trust for our Eternal Life in Western Christianity today.
"And no other Pope, Bishop or Father (until Irenaeus), for nearly a century after "Pope Clement," ever mentions or quotes a Gospel, or names Matthew, Mark, Luke or John. So for a century and a half-until the books bobbed up in the hands of Bishop St. Irenaeus and were tagged as "Gospels according to" this or that Apostle, there exists not a word of them in all the tiresome tomes of the Fathers. It is humanly and divinely impossible that the "Apostolic authorship" and hence "canonicity" or divine inspiration of these Sacred Four should have remained, for a century and a half, unknown and unsuspected by every Church, Father, Pope and Bishop of Christendom-if existent. Even had they been somewhat earlier in existence, never an inspired hint or human suspicion was there, that they were "Divine" or "Apostolic," or any different from the scores of "apocryphal or pseudo-Biblical writings with which the East especially had been flooded"; that they were indeed "Holy Scripture." Hear this notable admission: "It was not until about the middle of the second century that under the rubric of Scripture the New Testament writings were assimilated to the Old"! (Catholic Encyclopedia. iii, 275), that is, became regarded as apostolic, sacred, inspired and canonical, or "Scriptures" (Joseph Wheless, Forgery In Christianity, Alfred Knoph, New York, 1930, p. 182-183).
"In the Twentieth Century it is astounding to hear Christian people declare that the Bible and particularly the New Testament , says so-and-so, and that therefore it must be true. Do they not understand that the New Testament is a collection of books of varying credibility collected only in the Fourth Century A.D., by clergy having the limited mentality of that very uncritical age" (Authur Weigall, The Paganism in Our Christianity, G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York, 1928, p. 34).
"The Scriptures were in the hands of the clergy only, and they had every opportunity to insert whatsoever they pleased; thus we find them (New Testament) full of interpolations". Johann Solomo Semler, one of the most influential theologians of the eighteenth century, speaking of this, says: "The Christian doctors never brought their sacred books before the common people; although people in general have been wont to think otherwise; during the first ages, they were in the hands of the clergy only" (Robert Taylor, Diegesis, p. 48).
"All the earliest external evidences points to the conclusion that thy synoptic gospels are non-apostolic digesis of spoken and written apostolic tradition, and that the arrangement of the earlier material in orderly form took place only gradually and by many essays..." (T. W. Doane, Bible Myth And Their Parallels In Other Religions, The Truth Seeker Co., New York, 1882, p. 463.).
"Dr. Hooykaas, speaking of the four 'Gospels,' and 'Acts,' says of them: 'Not one of these five books was written by the person whose name it bears, and they are all of more recent date than the heading would lead us to suppose'" (T. W. Doane, Bible Myth And Their Parallels In Other Religions, The Truth Seeker Co., New York, 1882, p. 463.).
"We cannot say that the 'Gospels' and the book of 'Acts' are unauthentic, for not one of them professes to give the name of its author. They appeared anonymously. The titles placed above them in our Bibles owe their origin to an ecclesiastical tradition which deserves no confidence whatever" (Bible for Learners, vol. iii. pp. 24-25).
"These Gospels can hardly be said to have had authors at all. They had only editors or compilers. What I mean is, that those who enriched the old Christian literature with these Gospels did not go to work as independent writers and compose their own narratives out of the accounts they had collected, but simply took up the different stories or sets of stories which they found current in the oral tradition or already reduced to writing, adding here and expanding there, and so sent out into the world a very artless kind of composition. These works were then, from time to time, somewhat enriched by introductory material or interpolations from the hands of later Christians, and perhaps were modified a little here and there. Our first two Gospels appear to have passed through more than one such revision. The third, whose writer says in his preface, that 'many had undertaken to put together a narrative (Gospel),' before him, appears to proceed from a single collecting, arranging, and modifying hand" (Ibid., p. 29).
Concerning the time when the canon of the New Testament was settled, Mosheim says: "The opinions, or rather the conjectures, of the learned concerning the time when the books of the New Testament were collected into one volume; as also about the authors of that collection, are extremely different. This important question is attended with great and almost insuperable difficulties to us in these later times" (Mosheim, Vol. i. pt. 2, ch. ii).
"Dr. Lardner says: 'Even so late as the middle of the sixth century, the canon of the New Testament had not been settled by any authority that was decisive and universally acknowledged, but Christian people were at liberty to judge for themselves concerning the genuineness of writings proposed to them as apostolical, and to determine according to evidences'" (Credibility of the Gospels, T. W. Doane, Bible Myth And Their Parallels In Other Religions, The Truth Seeker Co., New York, 1882, p. 464.).
The learned Michaelis says: "No manuscript of the New Testament now extant is prior to the sixth century, and what is to be lamented, various readings which, as appears from the quotations of the Fathers, were in the text of the Greek Testament, are to be found in none of the manuscripts which are at present remaining" (Marsh's Michaelis, Vol. ii. p. 160).
Bishop Marsh says: "It is a certain fact, that several readings in our common printed text are nothing more than alterations made by Origen, whose authority was so great in the Christian Church (A.D. 230) that emendations which he proposed, though, as he himself acknowledged, they were supported by evidence of no manuscript, were very generally received" (Ibid., p. 368)
"Though Irenaeus, in the second century, is the first who mentions the evangelists, and Origen, in the third century, is the first who gives us a catalogue of the books contained in the New Testament, Mosheim's admission still stands before us. We have no grounds of assurance that the mere mention of the names of the evangelists by Irenaeus, or the arbitrary drawing up of a particular catalogue by Origen, were of any authority. It is still unknown by whom, or where, or when, the canon of the New Testament was settled. But in this absence of positive evidence we have abundance of negative proof. We know when it was not settled. We know it was not settled in the time of Emperor Justinian, nor in the time of Cassiodorus; that is, not at any time before the middle of the sixth century, by any authority that was decisive and universally acknowledged; but Christian people were at liberty to judge for themselves concerning the genuineness of writings proposed to them as apostolical" (T. W. Doane, Bible Myth And Their Parallels In Other Religions, The Truth Seeker Co., New York, 1882, p. 464.).
"The Bible (New Testament) has been received by the Protestants on the authority of the church of Rome, and on no other authority. It is she that has said it is the word of God." Ingersoll's Works, Vol 5, Ibid., p. 364.
"None of those books have the appearance of being written by the persons whose names they bear, neither do we know who the authors were. They come to us on no other authority than the church of Rome, which the Protestant Priests...call the Whore of Babylon." Ingersoll's Works, Vol 5, Ibid., p. 365.
"...the bishop who has answered me has been obliged to acknowledge the fact, that the Books that compose the NT, were voted by yeas and nays to be the word of God, as you now vote a law, by the Popish councils of Nicea and Laodicea, about 1,450 years ago." Interviews, Ingersoll's Works, Vol 5, Ibid. p. 325.
"I admit that books were voted in and out, and that the Bible was finally formed in accordance with a vote...." Interviews, Ingersoll's Works, Vol 5, p. 300.
"Nothing can exceed the credulity of the early fathers, unless it may be their ignorance. They believed everything that was miraculous. They believed everything except the truth....They revelled in the mishapen and the repulsive. They did not think it wrong to swear falsely in a good cause. They interpolated, forged, and changed the records to suit themselves, for the sake of Christ. They quoted from persons who never wrote. They misrepresented those who had written, and their evidence is absolutely worthless. They were ignorant, credulous, mendacious, fanatical, pious, unreasonable, bigoted, hypocritical, and for the most part insane." Interviews, Ingersoll's Works, Vol. 5, p. 273
"The great religious historian, Eusebius, ingenuously remarks that in his history he carefully omitted whatever tended to discredit the church, and that he piously magnified all that conduced to her glory." Interviews, Ingersoll's Works, Vol. 5, Ibid., Vol. 1, p. 293
"Now, Sir, it is impossible for serious men, to whom God has given the divine gift of reason, and who employs that reason to reverence and adore the God that gave it, it is I say, impossible for such a man to put confidence in a book that abounds with fable and falsehood as the New Testament does." The Life and Works of Thomas Paine, Vol. 9, p. 128
"Taylor's [Reverend Robert Taylor 1784 - 1844], conclusion is: 'As we see Protestantism to be a mere modification or reform of Popery, so Popery was nothing more than a similar modification or reform of Paganism. It is absolutely certain that the pagans were in possession of the whole Gospel story many ages before its JEWISH ORIGIN WAS PRETENDED; and it was not until the first error had been committed of suffering the people to become acquainted too intimately with the contents of the sacred books that it became necessary to invent a chronology, and to 'give to airy nothing a local habitation and a name.'" H. Cutner [1881-1969], The Devil's Chaplain Robert Taylor (1784-1844), The Pioneer Press, c. 1950, 41.
"The gradual development of the canon, in our view, was primarily the achievement of gentile Christianity, although of course THERE WOULD HAVE BEEN NO NEW TESTAMENT IF AN OLD TESTAMENT HAD NOT ALREADY EXISTED. Among the earliest Christians there was no New Testament; their Bible consisted of the Old Testament alone." The Formation of the New Testament, Robert M. Grant, Harper & Row, 1965.
"Ironically, the more fully the individual documents of the NT have been understood, the LESS INTELLIGIBLE the NT as a whole has become, both historically and theologically." [13]. · · · from: The New Testament Canon, Harry Y. Gamble, Fortress, 1985. The New Testament Canon, Harry Y. Gamble, Fortress, 1985).
As von Harnack [Adolph von Harnack 1851 - 1930] has pointed out (The Origin of the New Testament [New York, 1925], p. 5), there were four possibilities open to the Church: [1] the Old Testament alone, [2] an enlarged Old Testament, [3] no Old Testament, and [4] a second authoritative collection." The Canon of the New Testament, Bruce M. Metzger, Oxford, 1987.
"...originally NONE OF THE DOCUMENTS NOW INCLUDED IN THE NEW TESTAMENT HAD THE TITLES TO WHICH WE HAVE BECOME ACCUSTOMED in the headings of the different books in traditional English versions....Only after several Gospels or several Epistles had been collected together was there need for separate designations in order to distinguish one from another." The Canon of the New Testament, Bruce M. Metzger, Oxford, 1987, p. 302).
'With respect to attribution, the [apocryphal] books resemble Jewish midrashim and the Old Testament apocrypha. TO SECURE AUTHORITY OR CREDIBILITY, THEY ARE WRITTEN UNDER THE HONORARY NAME OF AN APOSTLE OR SOME OTHER PROMINENT FIGURE. Put flatly, THEY ARE FORGED, but then SO ARE MANY [ALL!] OF THE CANONICAL NEW TESTAMENT BOOKS..." The Secret Gospels A Harmony of Apocryphal Jesus Traditions, Edited and Translated by R. Joseph Hoffmann, Westminster College-Oxford, Prometheus, 1996.
The Catholic Encyclopedia is quoted saying: "Until the Council of Trent, in 1546, there was no infallibly defined sanction of inspiration of these Jewish "apocrypha"; like the "canon" sacred Books of the Hebrew Bible, all alike were more or less eclectically accepted and used in the True Church; but, as said: "The Tridentine decree from which the above list is extracted was the first infallible and effectually promulgated pronouncement on the Canon, addressed to the Church universal. Being dogmatic in its purport, it implies that the Apostles bequeathed the same Canon to the Church as a part of the depositum fidei.... We should search the pages of the New Testament in vain for any trace of such action.... We affirm that such a status points to Apostolic sanction, which in turn must have rested on revelation either by Christ or the Holy Spirit" (Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. iii, 270.). This is luminous clerical reasoning: a lot of anonymous Jewish fables, derided by Jews and all the rest of the world for want of even common plausibility of fact or truth, and as to which the "inspired" Christian Books said to emanate from Apostles, are silent as the grave, are declared after 1500 years to have the ear-marks of Apostolic sanction, which "must have" been founded on divine revelation to them "either by Christ or the Holy Spirit,"—which the Church claims are one and the same Person; and it is curious that the "infallible" Council couldn't say which was which, but vaguely and uncertainly opined it must hate been one or the other. So much for infallible cock-suredness as to "inspiration" of Holy Scriptures. (Joseph Wheless, Forgery In Christianity, Alfred Knoph, New York, 1930, p. 54).
"The New Testament and the inspired Apostles are silent on the subject (inspiration) and left the matter to serious doubts and disputations for many centuries :''There are no indications in the New Testament . . . Of a definite new Canon bequeathed by the Apostles to the Church, or of a strong self-witness to Divine inspiration," admits the CE. (iii, 274); that is, there is nothing in the 27 booklets which would lead to the suspicion of their "inspiration" or truth. There was then no Church for them to bequeath to, nor was the Canon settled, as we shall see: "It was not until about the middle of the second century— [when we shall see the books were really written]—that under the rubric of Scripture the New Testament writings were assimilated to the Old.... But it should be remembered that the inspired character of the New Testament is a Catholic dogma, and must therefore in some way have been revealed to, and taught by, Apostles"! (Ibid., p.275.) This is a strikingly queer bit of clerical dialectic, and leaves the question of the "some way" of revelation to the Apostles and of their transmission of the "dogma" to posterity, in a nebulously unsatisfying state." (Joseph Wheless,Forgery In Christianity, Alfred Knoph, New York, 1930, p. 97-98).
"Further, the dubious and disputed status of the sacred writings through centuries, and the ultimate settlement of the controversies by the "ipse dixit" of a numerical majority of the Council of Trent, in 1546, after the Reformation had forced the issue, is thus admitted: "The idea of a complete and clear-cut canon of the New Testament existing from the beginning, that is, from Apostolic times, has no foundation in history. The canon of the New Testament, like that of the Old, is the result of a development, of a process at once stimulated by disputes with doubters, both within and without the Church, and retarded by certain obscurities and natural hesitations, and which did not reach its final term until the dogmatic definition of the Tridentine Council.... And this want of an organized distribution, secondarily to the absence of an early fixation of the Canon, left room for variations and doubts which lasted far into the centuries." (Catholic Encyclopedia. iii, 274.) The modus operandi of the Holy Council in ultimately "canonizing" Jerome's old Vulgate Version, and its motive for doing so, are thus exposed by the keen pen of the author ofThe Rise and Fall: "When the Council of Trent resolved to pronounce sentence on the Canon of Scripture, the opinion which prevailed, after some debate, was to declare the Latin Vulgate authentic and almost infallible; and this sentence, which was guarded by formidable anathemas, secured all the books of the Old and New Testament which composed that ancient version.... When the merit of that version was discussed, the majority of the theologians urged, with confidence and success, that it was absolutely necessary to receive the Vulgate as authentic and inspired, unless they wished to abandon the victory to the Lutherans, and the honors of the Church to the Grammarians." (Gibbon, A Vindication, v, 2; Istoria del Consiglio Tridentino, L. ii, p. 147.) A number of these books were bitterly disputed and their authenticity and inspiration denied by the leading Reformers, Luther, Grotius, Calvin, etc., and excluded from their official lists, until finally the Reformed Church followed the example of the Church hopeless of reform and swallowed the canon whole, as we have it today, minus, of course, the Tobit, Judith, and like inspired buffooneries of the True Bible" (Joseph Wheless, Forgery In Christianity, Alfred Knoph, New York, 1930, p. 97-98).
"To argue and prove that the Four (Gospels) were regarded as "Apostolic" and hence "canonical" after the middle of the second century, argues and proves that until that late date they were not so regarded,— which we have seen is impossible if they had been written by Apostles a hundred years and more previously and authorized by them "for the purpose of being read in the Churches," as the very ground and pillar of their foundation and faith....Follow the proofs and argument of the Church to its own undoing: ‘From the testimony of St. Irenaeus (A.D. 185) alone there can be no reasonable doubt that the Canon of the Gospel was inalterably fixed in the Catholic Church by the last quarter of the second century to the exclusion of any pretended Evangels. [Sundry writings mentioned] presuppose the authority enjoyed by the Fourfold Gospel towards the middle of tile second century.... Even Rationalistic scholars like Harnack admit the canonicity of the quadriform Gospel between the years 140-175.’ (CE. iii, 275.) Even CE. does not prove or claim that it was any earlier; so here the Church and the Rationalists are in accord on this fatal fact! Certainly Popes Peter and Clement I, not to review the silent others, would have "inalterably fixed" the Divine Canonicity of the Four a century before, if they had known about these precious productions of the Apostles;—if, in fact, they had existed, the known works of Holy Apostles and apostolic men! But until "towards the middle of the second century" there was no "canon" or notion of divinely inspired Apostolic Gospels—simply for the reason that until just about that period they were not in existence....The sudden appearance at a certain late date, of a previously unknown document, which is then attributed to an earlier age and long since dead writers, is one of the surest earmarks of forgery" (Joseph Wheless, Forgery In Christianity, Alfred Knoph, New York, 1930, p. 184-185).
I could go on and on but you get the point I hope. We have been deceived as Christians and followers of "the Christ" by Roman anti-Semitism into believing a forgery of texts mixed with pure invention mixed in for good measure. We have not the truth concerning either the Jewish Messiah or "the Christ" in our New Testaments. We have in reality, as shown earlier in this website, a falsification of the earlier truths concerning "the Christ" as once held by the earliest Gnostic Christians who never believed in a history fleshly Christ. That explains why so many of our passages and stories in our New Testaments can be shown to be but "literalizations" of Ancient allegories of "the Christ" which are presented to us in the names of the Jerusalem "apostles" to gain authority for their acceptance. What is passed off to us as a literal history of "Jesus" and the Jewish Messiah is anything but that. Surely after these few quotes you should be moved to want to know more about the document you have accepted "by faith" and trusted for your Eternal Life when it appears that often it is untrustworthy. I call for your personal investigation as to the claims made by the New Testament and its call to be the religious authority for your life.
I think it appropriate that we begin our investigation of this issue concerning the canonization of the New Testament by turning to The Light of Reason, volume one, a writing that appeared several years ago by Schmuel Golding, the editor of the Biblical Polemics newsletter. Golding's synopsis of the process by which the Bible was formed is not only accurate but succinct. On page 23 he says,
"First the NT was not written by any of the disciples of Jesus nor by persons who even lived in that era . . . When the church fathers compiled the New Testament in the year 397, they collected all the writings they could find and managed them as they pleased. They decided by vote which of the books out of the collection they had made should be the word of God and which should not. They rejected several, they voted others to be doubtful, and those books which had a majority of votes were voted to be the word of God. Had they voted otherwise, all the people since calling themselves Christians would have believed otherwise. For the belief of the one comes from the vote of the other."
It is important to note the key concept here is that the Bible was put together by a group of men who met, went through a collection of writings, and chose through voting those that are to be deemed divinely inspired. Many of them wound up on the cutting room floor. Golding continues,
Who the people were that did all of this we know little of. They called themselves by the general name of church fathers and this is all the average Christian knows of the matter.... Disputes, however, ran high among the people calling themselves Christians not only as to points of doctrine but as to the authenticity of the books.
Although not stated verbatim, the essence of Golding's next paragraph is that when disputes broke out the opposition was often either eliminated or ostracized. Then, he continues by saying,
Constantine, an unbaptized pagan, convened the Council of Nicea in the year 325 in order to settle these disputes. A major issue was the nature of the deity they worshipped. Based upon their decisions Jesus was changed from a man to God in the flesh, the sabbath was changed from Saturday to Sunday, the Passover was changed to Easter . . . and the NT was canonized as a holy book.
You may need to read that underlined passage above one more time for good measure.
Answer for yourself: Knowing the events just described, can you explain to yourself how the Holy Spirit could be leading the changing of the Eternal Sabbath to Sunday, or changing the Passover to the pagan holiday of Isthar (Easter), or making a human man or the Jewish messiah who was always but a man anointed of God into a God, which is admitted by most to be scandalous and idolatrous?
Answer for yourself: Are we to believe that in spite of such blunders by the Holy Spirit that we find in the New Testament manuscripts where we find over 600,000 variations in a little over 6000 fragments where no two fragments or pieces recovered agree that yet He got right the selection of a group of books in the early 4th century which for all practical purposed replaced the Hebrew Scriptures for the early church as their Bible?
Answer for yourself: Did the Holy Spirit have a bad day or something? Surely you can see that such events were not led by the Holy Spirit at all...for God cannot and will not contradict His Word...man may change it....man can deny it....man can invent and add to it as you saw...but the jots and titles of the Hebrew Scriptures are forever! In spite of what is said by New Testament scholars that the New Testament and the Christian Bibles are faithful to the Masoretic text....it is not. Read the references article and understand why the New Testament is not faithful to the Masoretic text when Christianity says it is.
We have shown you earlier in this website through abundant proofs how the First New Testament given to us by Marcion taught the allegorical concept handed down by the Ancients of "the Christ" of God which lives within every man and woman and life's quest which is to awaken to this "Christ within us" and became aware of the indwelling Christ and not only yield to His direction but at the same time allow the Christ to make mediation for us with the Divine Creator. This truth is totally erased later by the proto-literalist Catholics like Ignatius, Papias, Polycarp, and Justin Martyr, who begin to teach the "literalization" of "the Christ" as a historical personage. The culmination of all of this is the falsification of many "gospels" and "epistles" in the names of long-dead Apostles and Paul to gain a false authority for such later doctrinal creations like the "historical fleshy Christ". We look to Irenaeus for the supreme invention when we find that it was he that provides the ultimate refutation of the earlier Gnostic Gospels and the First New Testament by Marcion by the presentation of his Second New Testament in roughly 180 C.E.
In the opinions shared above taken from the pens of many scholars then it was men, rather than God, who composed the New Testament which we have today. And for that reason our current New Testament is suspect "doctrinally" in many regards whether you knew it or not. Many Christians, especially Protestants, have great difficulty with any assertion to the effect that men and not God is responsible for the New Testament coming into existence. On page 6 in Answering Christianity's Most Puzzling Questions, volume one, apologist Richard Sisson states.
"In fact, after the death of Jesus a whole flood of books that claimed to be inspired appeared.... [Disputes over which ones were true were so intense that the debate continued for centuries. Finally in the fourth century a group of church leaders called a council and took a vote. The 66 books that comprised our cherished Bible were declared to be Scripture by a vote of 568 to 563."
Evidently not all approved of the selection of "books" that make up our New Testaments today as you can see. Sadly what was not approved and what found the cutting room floor were often the earlier books which the earliest Gnostic Christians held sacred which Rome will methodically eradicate along with the worlds' libraries in order to hid their "religious lies" that won by only 5 votes! Only in our generation have precious archeological discoveries brought to light the truth of "the Christ" as believed by the earliest Christians.
Historical evidence strongly implies that these "books" which were chosen by vote were not canonical but simply deemed as such by a group of highly influential religious and political figures. History states that men merely convened and determined which books were divinely inspired. The book was put together by a vote; it was not compiled by God and subsequently discovered to be God's work. The choices by the winners of this vote were motivated by their current "religious beliefs;" many of which can be shown to be in conflict with the Old Testament and the Bible that the Jewish nation used.
