I learned that the books for the current bible were picked out and chosen on which should be included. Apparently there were lots of other texts and gospels that explained much of the things that might have been missing. Apparently they were done for political-social reasons and to contribute to the new Christian religion. The rest are called the deuterocanonical books and aren't included in the bible along with alot of others. Do you think it was right for them to pick things out or should they have left things as they were and organized everything into one big book?
The books that weren't put in the canon of the Bible?
I learned that the books for the current bible were picked out and chosen on which should be included. Apparently there were lots of other texts and gospels that explained much of the things that might have been missing. Apparently they were done for political-social reasons and to contribute to the new Christian religion. The rest are called the deuterocanonical books and aren't included in the bible along with alot of others. Do you think it was right for them to pick things out or should they have left things as they were and organized everything into one big book?
Actually many of the apocryphal and deuterocanonical books were excluded because of internal discrepancies regarding things like grammar, vocabulary, theological variations, etc. It is a popular position of liberal scholars to claim that the motivations were "socio-political". There may have been some theological "discrimination" but mostly it was internal textual issues.
The main issue is the date of composition. Most of the apocryphal and deuterocanonical writings were composed much later than the canonical writings. This is demonstrated by historical and cultural variations between the earlier and the later documents as well as the previously mentioned internal differences.
Biblical scholars have dedicated their careers to the fields of textual criticism, redaction criticism, form criticism and other specific areas within biblical criticism and as with all scholarship camps have emerged based upon different governing presuppositions. It is worth investing some time in if one is interested but it is critical to study scholars from all camps in order to get a well rounded understanding of the issues and the conclusions.
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