Hi all.  I joined just for this question but this looks like a good forum for other topics.  I’m in search of books that discuss the history of the establishment of Biblical canon.  Ideally the book would focus on the Apocrypha/Deuterocanonical and how they were included and excluded as books of divine inspiration or scripture.  I would love to go right to an unbiased examination of both arguments so the book would most likely be from purely scholarly perspective.  Other titles issued from specific religious organizations would also be of interest but ideally I know this ahead of time. Thanks this search has been difficult so I sought out forums for help.

Hello there HulaguBookSacker and welcome to the board. I'm afraid I don't know enough to contribute much to your question: it's more Tim of Aclea's area of expertise (or maybe Temperance's, although she hasn't been so active of late but maybe your post will tempt her back). Many of us here only clock-in occasionally, but have patience.

Thanks Meles meles.  I’m patient and have this thread flagged for updates.

I'm in touch with Tim on another board and also on email, so I could ask him about this.

Caro wrote:

I'm in touch with Tim on another board and also on email, so I could ask him about this.

Much appreciated.

Caro posted your query on the jiglu website.  This was my response which does not appear to have yet been passed on.

I am not aware of any books dedicated to this subject which is why the person may be having a problem finding any.  The formation of both the Old Testament and New Testament canon is however discussed in history books covering the period.  The formation of the New Testament canon is fairly straightforward and I do not think there is too much academic dispute.  In the fourth century, when Christianity became the established religion of the Roman Empire, at a series of church councils the NT canon was agreed upon.  Books were included on the basis that they were considered to apostolic (that is either written by an apostle or under their guidance), orthodox (so books the church considered to be heretical such as gnostic books were excluded) of relevance to the whole church and widely used.  The people deemed to be apostles were the twelve, Paul and Jesus' brothers.  Mark's gospel was included, even though Mark was not an apostle, because it was deemed to have been written by Mark under the guidance of Peter, similarly Luke and Acts were included because they were deemed to have been written under the guidance of Paul.  I am not aware of any book that we have that anyone considers should have been included in the New Testament that were left out.

I would add that it was only with the development of the codex that it would have been possible to put all the NT books together in one document.

I will get back on the OT and the Apocrypha.  

Tim

Thanks Tim.  Yes it’s the OT and the Apocrypha/Deuterocanonical that I’m most interested in. Ive been wading through heavy bias on both sides of the argument.  Even outright lies on both sides.  Interesting that there is no single book on the subject.  Makes sense since my search has come up empty.  I appreciate whatever references you can provide.

HulaguBookSacker

I think the gap between the fundamentalists who consider the OT to be a completely accurate record and the Minimalists who consider it largely to be a work of fiction is unbridgeable.  Linked to this is a lack of agreement as to when the various books were written.  Even where there is agreement about when a person such as Amos lived there is little or no agreement as to how much of the book of Amos can actually be credited to him.  

One of the problems is that for a lot of the OT period there are few if any surviving documents and inscriptions from other nations that either confirm or deny the biblical record.  For example Philistine documents could well settle the arguments over the Israelite confederation and the Davidic kingdom, but no such documents have survived.  

Below are three books I have on the OT period that I have found to be useful:

‘On the Reliability of the Old Testament’ Prof K.A.Kitchen.  Kitchen is a professor of Egyptology and is not a fundamentalist.  However, he is a conservative evangelical and does his very best to defend the biblical record.  The book is useful for covering all such external references to the land of Canaan, Israel and Judah.  I did meet and have a talk in in the late 1970s.

‘The Old Testament’ and ‘The Oxford History of the Biblical World’ both edited by Michael Coogan, both of which take what I would consider to be a ‘middle of the road’ approach.  For example referring to the Exodus it states that ‘the view of the majority of scholars, however, is that the biblical traditions … do preserve authentic historical records.’

Unlike with the NT, there is no record of the books that constitute either the OT or Apocrypha being decided upon.  The former are contained in the Hebrew bible while the latter are only included in the Greek translation of the same.  Protestant churches do not accept the Apocrypha as scripture while the Catholic church does.

Hope this is of some help

Tim

Many thanks.  I’ve been trying to find works on the various councils held by the Catholic Church.  The long gap between the Council of Rome and the Council of Trent is of particular interest.  I base this solely on my limited knowledge but it seems the papacy was not particularly invested in solidifying the canon until the challenge from the Reformation.  I get the impression before that the canon and those books were for the learned men of the church to ponder.  Seems to me the  Reformation and the rise of print hastened those decisions decided at Trent but there appears to be strong evidence documents from the Council of Rome support the ruling.  I’m in quite the rabbit hole with this lol.  The doubt over the reliability of the Septuagint makes some sense to me but the discovery of the Dead Sea Scrolls points to the use of those books by people of the Second Temple period.  This quest for information seems like a long one so I appreciate your help.  I should point that I’m not a Catholic but as a matter of faith and in agreement with my church I believe in the divine inspiration of the deuterocanonical books.  As far as where I stand on the meter you mentioned I believe the OT was handed down to us for spiritual inspiration and not to do things like try to figure out the age of the world.  As stated above the sources I’ve found so far have such obvious bias as to frustrate me pretty bad.  The goal isn’t to decide what I believe as much as to understand what is known and theorized about the subject. Again Tim I appreciate your efforts.

Edit.  Oh and this forum seems cool but a little light on engagement.  Can you or anyone else recommend other forums where history, particularly military history is discussed? Engagement with other mega nerds sounds like a decent past time.

HBS, re your edit:
This forum was created when the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) closed down nearly all its chat and discussion fora in 2011. The BBC's history discussion board had been very active and as a group we tried to find a new home. Rather than migrate to an existing board, one of us, Nordmann, decided to create this board and so many of the BBC's subscribers moved here. We were considerably more active then but over time age and infirmity have taken their toll and we have sadly lost many of the original members, including Nordmann himself. So what you see now is just the rump of what was once a very active and friendly community. There are now just a few stalwards that keep posting regularly but several others drop in now and again or keep in touch through personal messaging.

As Caro implies some of us are members of other boards. Another history discussion forum where I occasionally post is historum.com. It is more active than here, although they too have seen a great decline in activity over the past few years. But I personally find Historum to often be rather adversarial, with people more concerned about 'winning' the argument or rushing to make their point first before anyone else does, rather than making a considered, relevant and factual contribution, nor indeed in having an intelligent debate, but that is perhaps itself a function of a larger membership and anyway it's entirely subject to the individual members themselves. Unfortunately as I've said I do not know enough to make much contribution to this thread but in the future there's bound to be something about which we can both engage so I do hope you stick around here too.
Regards, MM

Thanks MM. Ancient and medieval military history is my subject of choice. I’ll make sure to stop by and try to participate.  Thanks for the background on the forum.  I also appreciate Caro for asking Tim for help on my behalf.  Also big thanks for the non religious members for not making me read a bunch of anti-religious twattery.  Lol.  I was worried this thread would devolve into that.

The old BBC fora could at times be quite strictly moderated, although generally the history one was always quite relaxed and mostly relied on common sense, but being part of a public service broadcaster essentially under the control of the British government, it was strict about not proselytizing and bullying etc, and always maintaining respect for other posters' personal opinions and beliefs. Now that Nordmann (this sites's creator) has left us, there's little, if any, regular moderation here, so it again relies on common sense. Trolls do pop up occasionally but if they're ignored they generally slink away after a while.

Historum is quite good for ancient and military history (I get the feeling we tend to be more pacifist here) although on Historum be prepared for a lot of ridiculous posts along the lines of "who was the best commander ever?" or "Roman legions against Waffen SS Panzers, who'd win if they'd fought at Gettysburg?" etc, although admittedly, as you've already seen, that can crop up here too.

But apologies for diverting the interesting discussion you were having with Tim. Going off-topic was one of the things the BBC's moderators were always quite strict on, although frankly some of the best discussions we've had on this site have often started when someone has strayed away from the original thread, before the discussion either gets back on course or maybe takes another interesting direction. But yet again I digress, sorry.

MM and HBS

Just to comment that I think the decline in activity is common to most such groups possibly caused by Facebook.  I used to be on an English History group, as was Nordmann, but that declined in postings until the owner closed it down.  Along with Caro and a couple of other members of Res Historica I am also on another group that also came out of the BBC fora and predates RH.  It is smaller than this site but more active although these days we are more a group of friends discussing such things as the UK and USA elections, the Ukrainian war and our latest holidays.  We are also getting older and, like this site, have had active members die.

Tim

HBS

my background is that I am a retired Anglican Reader (lay preacher) doing my training in the early 1980s.  In the Anglican church the Apocrypha is not considered as part of the canon but readings from it do appear in the lectionary.

My understanding is that the Apocrypha is never quoted in the New Testament which is perhaps not surprising as it was written predominately by Jews and they do not consider the Apocrypha to be part of the canon.

At the time of Jesus, the Sadducees only accepted the Five books of Moses as scripture.

The Letter of Jude in the New Testament is unusual in that it quotes authoritatively from 'The Assumption of Moses' and the 'Book of Enoch', neither of which are in either the Hebrew Bible or the Apocrypha.  

Concerning the use of the Apocrypha, my understanding is that the church fathers used the Greek Old Testament which included the Apocrypha and so were quite familiar with the books, but divided between those considered them part of the canon and those who did not.  There was, however, no definitive statement until the Council of Trent at the time of the Reformation, which stated that they were.  The reason for this was that the proof texts for certain Roman catholic doctrines, with which the Protestant churches disagreed, came from the Apocrypha.  When I did my Reader training we did nothing on the Apocrypha.

Tim

My church and me in accord with them share the Catholic and Orthodox view that the canon is open.  I’ve also become interested in the books of Enoch which is in the Ethioptic Bible which from my understanding is the oldest manuscript.  The Book of Jasher aka Book of the Upright or Just Man is also interesting.  This book is referenced in Joshua.  As I understand it the copies are widely believed to be forgeries.  For me at least the reference supports the open canon argument.  

I have an itch for history discussion.  If there are other forums of interest that you or anyone would rather not post on the net, please PM me.