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by jwmbiz on January 22nd, 2005

jwmbiz

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Has anyone ever had the power to dictate that changes be made to the Bible worldwide?

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  • by Stormarm on February 28th, 2009

    Stormarm

    No.

    The OT canon was formally established by the Rabbinical council at Jamnia/Jabneh circa 85 AD, though the books they declared authoritative had been held authoritative by rabbis for at least 300 years - and all Jews of all sects - even the Samaritans -regarded the Torah as absolutely authoritative. To become a Rabbi in those days you had to have the whole Torah and Haftorah memorized. They even argued theological points not by quoting the prooftext itself, but by quoting the passage immediately before or after it, and the other rabbi had to infer which passage was meant, and then respond with a rebuttal in the same way.

    As for the New Testament, Christianity never had one single governing authority over it all: as early as the 3rd century there were churches scattered not only throughout the Roman Empire, but also in Armenia, Parthia (Iran, Iraq, & Pakistan), Arabia, Ethiopia, the Crimea, India, and even western China. And all were pretty independent, and yet all told pretty much the same story, and all accepted the NT canon - despite rejecting the authority of Rome, Constantinople, or Alexandria.

    That being said, most of the earliest copies of the NT we have come in two families: the Byzantine and the Alexandrian. Alexandrian scribes were more concerned with theology and thus more meticulous and faithful about preserving the original word. Byzantine scribes were more interested in developing a beautiful liturgy and so occassionally took poetic license to polish up the prose for moving and elegant liturgical reading. While the authorized Bibles of the Roman Catholic Church and Eastern Orthodoxy, and also the King James, follow the Byzantine texts, scholars along with most theologians, and the translators of the NASB, NIV, NRSV, NLT, and most other English translations, follow the Alexandrian texts. Even so, the differences between them make no historical or theological difference at all.

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