The Bible: Where Did it Come From?
June 1st, 2025 “The Bible: Where Did it Come From?” Rev. Heather Jepsen
Summer Sermon Series: Stump the Pastor
Matthew 5:17-20 and the Gospel of Thomas 74-78
Friends, this morning we begin on our summer sermon series, “Stump the Pastor”. I am soliciting difficult questions from you this summer which I will then attempt to answer during our sermon times together. Today, we will discuss the Bible. What is it and how did we get it?
To begin with, it is a misnomer to think of the Bible as a book. It is more like a shelf of books or a special collection of readings. Right now, we could call this text the Christian Canon or the list of sacred books that serve as the rule or norm of Christian life. Go to any Christian church and you will find a Bible or some sort or another. But of course, they are not all the same. Open the pew Bible in front of you and we will take a look together.
In the third page is the list of contents. The Bible we have in our pews begins with the Old Testament or the Hebrew Scriptures. These writings come from the tradition of the Jews. They call their version of these texts the Tanakh and theirs has 24 books arranged by Torah, Prophets, and Writings. The Protestant tradition, of which we are a part, has 39 books covering the same writings. Ours are arranged as Law (Genesis-Deuteronomy), History (Joshua-Ester), Writings (Job-Song of Solomon), and then the Prophets (Isaiah-Malachi). If you were to be looking at a Catholic Bible, they would have 7 more books which were included in the ancient Latin and Greek versions of the Hebrew Bible but not in the Hebrew traditions. These are called the apocrypha or deutero-canonical (second canon) texts.
Who wrote these books? Many different people. The oldest portion of the Old Testament is sometimes called the Torah, and it covers Genesis through Deuteronomy. These stories probably existed as an oral tradition for many years, but they weren’t written down until the time of exile in Babylon, after king Solomon, in the late 500s BCE.
Who decided what books would be in the Old Testament? Lots of people with lots of different ideas. Early Rabbis argued against including Ecclesiastes because it has a negative view of life, Song of Songs because it is erotic, Ezekiel because it contradicts the Torah, Proverbs because it contradicts itself, and Ester because it has no mention of God. What we can know is that many of these texts would have been known and accepted as Scripture by Jesus and his followers. Including the portions that don’t appear in our Bible today. There was fluidity regarding the contents of the Old Testament in the early Christian community.
What about the New Testament? In your Bible you will see that we have 27 books in our New Testament canon, and they are shared by all Christians. They are arranged by Gospels, then Acts, and then the letters of Paul. Some of these letters are truly by Paul and some are only written in Paul’s name. We call these the Epistles, and they are arranged from longest to shortest. Then we have the letter to Hebrews, what are called the general epistles or letters not from Paul, and Revelation.
During the early years after Jesus’ life and death no one was trying to make a new sacred collection of writings. The focus of the early Christian movement was on Jesus himself, and not on anything anybody wrote down. The oldest part of the New Testament is the letters from Paul, and they were written to address problems in particular church communities and not as scripture for a worldwide movement. By the early second century, it is thought that a collection of Paul’s letters was beginning to spread as an early Christian text.
Separately the gospels were beginning to develop. Mark wrote first, around the year 70. Matthew and Luke copied Mark and also shared a source that was a collection of sayings by Jesus. John wrote much later using his own source material.
No one thought the church needed an official collection of Christian writings until fighting began. One church leader during the late 100s, Marcion wanted a small collection of writings, just the letters of Paul and the gospel of Luke. Another group, the Gnostics, wanted a huge collection of writings including additional gospels, acts, letters, and even revelations.
This argument continued for years with divisions between Eastern and Western Christian traditions. In 367 Athanasius, the bishop of Alexandria, proposed the 27 books that we have now as the New Testament canon. This was confirmed later by Augustine. By the year 397 at the third council of Carthage this list was more or less set as the Christian canon, and though some fuzziness remained around the traditions, by the year 400 it was mostly set in stone. It wasn’t until the Council of Trent in 1546 that it all was laid out, Old and New Testament, like we have it today.
The question I received asked how these books were chosen, and that happened by three major criteria. Orthodoxoy – is the book consistent with the basic doctrines already recognized as normative by the tradition. Apostolicity – does it presume authorship by an apostle or association with an apostle. And Acceptance – these books have been used by churches and citied by church leaders.
Who chooses the books? Leaders of the ancient Hebrew tradition and then early leaders in the Christian tradition. So basically, men in power.
Are there other writings that could be just as valid for learning about Jesus and ourselves? Of course!!!
If you haven’t already, I would recommend reading the apocrypha or the 7 books that exist in the Catholic Old Testament and not in ours. Written around the time of Jesus’ life these books give you an excellent insight into the religious culture at the time that Jesus was alive.
I also recommend reading the Gospel of Thomas. Found in 1945 in Egypt, this is an excellent source of the sayings of Jesus Christ and gives great insight again into his early followers. One of my favorite passages in that text, is verse 77 which I read today. “Split a piece of wood, and I am there. Lift up the stone, and you will find me.” Just google “Gospel of Thomas” and you can access this text on the internet.
Finally, I really want to encourage you to choose your Bible carefully. It is important to remember that all of the notes and guides that you find in your Bible are not actually a part of the Biblical text and oftentimes they are opinions and not facts.
This Bible here, the “New Geneva Study Bible – Christian Statesman Edition” will tell you that Moses wrote the first five books of the Old Testament. While some of the oral tradition probably does stem from Moses’ time, these books were not written until 1000 years after Moses’ life and death.
For actual Bible Study, I recommend the New Oxford Annotated Bible, with Apocrypha. This is a scholarly text and so it is not inspirational. This Bible will give you actual information about when and where books were written. Instead of implying that Mark sat down with pen and paper and wrote out everything that happened in Jesus’ life as it happened. This text it will tell you that Mark was written after the fall of the temple by a Greek speaking author. We didn’t even get into translations today, but I think we have covered enough for now.
In conclusion, do your homework. I remember one day when some kind Jehovah’s Witnesses came to my door in an attempt to convert me to their religion. They kept pointing to today’s reading from Matthew, of course in the old King James Version, where Jesus says that neither a jot nor a tittle of this text will pass away. I kept asking them what Bible Jesus was talking about, and they kept trying to tell me that the verse was in reference to this whole book. Now you know that there wasn’t a book like this when Jesus said that. He was only speaking of the law, which would have been our first five books today, Genesis-Deuteronomy. We could not come to an understanding because they could not accept the historical truth surrounding the creation of the text they were quoting from.
Muslims believe that the Quran existed before time and is divine in its presentation here on earth. Christians do not believe that about the Bible. It is a historical collection of separate books by separate authors written in separate historical circumstances over thousands of years. It is a beautiful story of God’s relationship with humanity that is both mythical and truthful. It is mystery and presence, and it is not the only source of information about Jesus or his movement. You can study it for years and never get bored. But take anything anyone says about it with a grain of salt until you do your own homework. Amen.
