Subject: Re: Bible origins
Date: Wed, 16 Feb 2000 05:10:54 GMT
From: 
Newsgroups: aus.religion.christian

In article <38A79DDC.19CCF0>,
Richard Kerr <> wrote:
> Robert L. Johnson wrote:
> >
> > The origins of the Bible can be found at
> > http://www.deism.com/biblevotes.htm  You may be surprised!
>
> This page is a monsterous misrepresentation of Crossan's work. It
> purports to show that John Dominique Crossan thinks:
>
> "The Bible was not handed to mankind by God, nor was it dictated to
> human stenographers by God. It has nothing to do with God. In
actuality,
> the Bible was VOTED to be the word of God by a group of men during the
> 4th century."
>
> Of course this refers to the Council of Nicea in which the leaders of
> the church gathered to decide which of the letters purported to be
> written by the Apostles actually were.

G'day Richard,

I've seen this claim (that there was a vote on the
New Testament canon at Nicea) from time to time but
I've never seen a definite reference.
And I can find nothing on it when I search
the documents on the Council at Nicea.
Can you provide a definite reference?

And the claim seems odd to me, since my understanding
is (a) the majority of the canon was in common use in the
second century; (b) the status of the last few the books
wasn't settled until late in the 4th century (well after
Constantine and Nicea); and (c) the final 27 books
were arrived at by consensus rather than by a conciliar
decision.

Regards,

Peter Ballard