Talk:Development of the New Testament canon/Archive 1

CoE content removed
I think the CoE stuff was helpful. It explained the position and development of the canon within that denomination, and I would disagree that the info was off topic. It also seems to have been well sourced as well, and removing of sourced content bothers me. Maybe we could find another home for this info? or maybe we could restore it and cut down on the long quotes to make it more concise?-Andrew c [talk] 13:51, 31 July 2007 (UTC) Strike that entire comment. I see now it has been moved to the OT development page. Sorry. I think it's a little confusing to have 3 articles on such similar subjects. Maybe we don't need the "Christian" parent article, and we can just use biblical canon as the parent? Also, we should probably come up with a Development of the Tanahk or something to cover the "Old Testament" from a Jewish perspective, or rename Development of the Old Testament canon to Development of the Hebrew Bible canon and include both Christian and Jewish POV to avoid POV forking. -Andrew c [talk] 13:55, 31 July 2007 (UTC)


 * I have been struggling to figure out how best to organize and present this material. It's a difficult question and I am not 100% confident that I have got it right.  In order to centralize discussion of these issues, I have responded to the points that you raise at Talk:Biblical canon.  --Richard 14:49, 31 July 2007 (UTC)

Marcion
Why do you assume Marcion's canon was the one edited? It seems more likely to me that Marcion had the more original version and it is the current canon that was edited to fit the redactors point of view. 24.150.120.140 06:07, 7 October 2007 (UTC)

Proto-Orthodoxy
What on earth is Proto-orthodox_Christianity and why is it referred to as a standard term? The article on it is not very helpful at all. 128.189.175.242 04:08, 26 October 2007 (UTC)

To the new editor that has been contributing, (careful when running over each others edits)
This article sure is getting messy. The person adding content anonymously over the last month or so from 75.0.x.x and 75.14.x.x is adding useful information for the most part, with useful citations. However some of the formatting that has been done has ran over other editors contributions, and have made parts of the article nonsensical, such as

The Codex Claromontanus canon[53], c. 303-367[54], a page found inserted into a 6th century copy of the Epistles of Paul and Hebrews, has a 27-book OT plus Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, 1–2,4 Maccabees, and the 27-book NT plus 3rd Corinthians, Acts of Paul, Apocalypse of Peter, Barnabas, and Hermas, but missing Philippians, 1–2 Thessalonians, and Hebrews.

a 27 book OT? a 27 book NT but its missing Phil, 1-2 Thess. and Hebrews??

Please be careful when replacing phrases throughout the entire article, also consider reserving bold for titles of the article. You may also want to register a user name as you have been editing for quite some time now. Thanks for your contributions. Brando130 (talk) 18:34, 16 December 2007 (UTC)


 * These edits are correct. There is a 27-book OT list and scholars assume there was a 27-book NT list originally even though some books are missing. Bold type is used to emphasize significant terms, such as 27-book or disputed books. 75.14.213.77 (talk) 20:37, 18 December 2007 (UTC)


 * The manual of style has a section on boldface, found at Manual_of_Style_(text_formatting). Your use of bolding is not covered. Can you please explain why you feel those phrases need to be in bold. The MoS says to use italics, not boldface for emphasis. That said, I'm not even convinced these phrases need to be in italics. Please also go to the same MoS page I linked above and see the list of where to italic. Can you point out under what category your use of emphasis would fall under? Thanks.-Andrew c [talk] 20:59, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Well, at this point I'll just concede. The number of books in a particular canon is highly significant, see The Canon Debate for details. Likewise the terms used by Eusebius to divide the canon are highly significant, see The Canon Debate for details. Best wishes. 75.14.213.77 (talk) 21:07, 18 December 2007 (UTC)

Catholic point of view
This article needs to be written from a neutral point of view. Text like "The Church's response to early Christian heresies" is obviously written from a Catholic point of view. — Omegatron 22:38, 9 October 2007 (UTC)


 * Agreed. Consider the statement: "The development of the New Testament canon was, like that of the Old Testament, a gradual process" -- this can not be known. It can be hypothesized, even "widely accepted." But this notion has also been argued against by bible scholars, e.g. David Trobisch. -- Geĸrίtz (talk) 00:05, 22 January 2008 (UTC)

African Councils
This article claims that the synod of Hippo met in 393 and approved the 27 book canon. The acts of the synod were lost but approved by Councils of Carthage in 397 and 419. The article also claims that the book of Revelation was "added" to the list at Carthage in 419, with secondary source cited. This is obviously inconsistent: either Hippo and first Carthage did not approve a 27 book canon (at least not our present 27 book list), or Revelation was not added in 419. Ocyril (talk) 17:54, 14 May 2011 (UTC)


 * The first claim is the standard common view, a ref was not provided but I'm sure they exist. The second claim is a more detailed scholarly claim and the scholarly ref was provided. 75.15.203.37 (talk) 17:59, 14 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Shouldn't an effort be made to lay out and explain the contradictory claims then? Ekwos (talk) 05:48, 20 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Doesn't seem necessary. The common or introductory view is that the Councils of Carthage approved the 27 book canon of the NT. The more detailed scholarly view is that the Book of Revelation was only added at the 419 council. 75.15.198.151 (talk) 19:59, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

Too much info on OT canon
This article is somewhat long as is and contains a fair amount of information relating to the formation of the entire biblical canon...that is the OT canon. I suggest trimming as much of that info out as we can and restricting to the actual subject of the article. Ekwos (talk) 03:53, 10 May 2011 (UTC)


 * You block deleted a paragraph on the Synod of Jerusalem (1672), apparently on the assumption that it only pertained to the Old Testament . That assumption is incorrect. I urge you to learn about the relevance of the Synod of Jerusalem to the New Testament canon and to add that information to the article. 75.15.203.37 (talk) 17:37, 14 May 2011 (UTC)


 * I block deleted it for the simple reason that the paragraph in the article didn't mention the NT canon at all. If you would like to write it so that it actually  mentions the NT canon, you may (and apparently did).  Ekwos (talk) 05:44, 20 May 2011 (UTC)


 * Also, it is impossible to completely separate the development of the NT canon from the development of the OT canon, they were not decided separately but at the same time, so there will be overlap in the split articles. 75.15.203.37 (talk) 17:55, 14 May 2011 (UTC)


 * If this is true, then the articles on the OT and NT canons should be combined with the article on the Biblical canon. If you are saying they cannot be dealt with separately, then this article is nonsense.  If the article is not nonsense, then effort should be made to restrict it to the NT canon (especially as it is getting  long).  Ekwos (talk) 05:47, 20 May 2011 (UTC)


 * In my personal opinion, one article on the development of the Christian canon should not be split into Old and New Testament parts, since as stated above, for the most part, they were not decided separately but at the same time. Originally on wikipedia, there was just one article. However, it was split, and no doubt if recombined would simply be split again. Such is the nature of wikipedia. 75.15.198.151 (talk) 20:09, 4 June 2011 (UTC)

Page name issue
I was interested in the history of the Christian bible, what texts it came from and their likely veracity, i.e. how close to their source material the different parts are. So I googled "history of bible" and got The Bible and history which wasn't what I was looking for, in fact a bit misleading imo. Took me a while to get to this page, so I made a redirect here from Origin of bible which I understand might not be perfectly accurate, but better than nothing. My issue is that the name of this page isn't prominent enough or simple enough to find for any random person (i.e., me) who's just looking for information on the early history of the text that the vast majority of people in the world, Jews excluded, call "the bible". For someone deep into biblical issues and history and literature I understand that this page might be perfectly well named - but let's not make wikipedia for specialists, let's make it easily accessible for the average person. Yay or nay? Pär Larsson (talk) 18:53, 8 July 2011 (UTC)

Scholars Bible of the Jesus Seminar
Not sure if this deserves mention in the article or not, however, the Jesus Seminar has issued a book called The Five Gospels or The Scholars' Version in which they include, evidently as canonical or virtually canonical, the Gospel of Thomas. Does that merit mention in this article or not? I find it discussed in the book The Case for Christ by Lee Strobel. John Carter (talk) 01:27, 4 January 2012 (UTC)

'Circa's in CS1 date ranges
In most of these case I don't thing the circas in the date ranges can be legitimately removed. In the Eusebius reference, for example, it's a series of several writings, and the approximate range of years in which they were written is known, but not the exact dates. For example, because of the dedication of the last part, it's known to have been completed before 325, but whether it was 323 or 324 is not known. Thus the circa range is appropriate. The error comes from edits applied in the (newly enhanced) CS1 template, and I've requested a change to allow circa-style ranges at Module_talk:Citation/CS1/Feature_requests. Please feel free to comment there. Rwessel (talk) 07:11, 5 January 2015 (UTC)


 * Understood. I've added back the semicolons to improve readability, but left the circas alone. Will check the module talk page for updates. Texas Dervish (talk) 19:33, 6 January 2015 (UTC)


 * The cite errors are a problem in the template, see above discussion and link - and please bug the guys working on the template! Rwessel (talk) 22:26, 26 March 2015 (UTC)


 * I do recognise that. I guess the only solution is not to use the template; something similar can be achieved manually, after all. To be honest, I don't really understand the point of that whole paragraph (particularly given the length of the lead), but this isn't my field at all, so it may be fine. --Stemonitis (talk) 07:08, 27 March 2015 (UTC)

Dubious information
Till the East–West Schism, the Orthodox churches were one with the Catholic Church. So it baffles me the attribution to two different councils (Trullan and Carthage), when the churches have split many centuries after both councils have ended. Tgeorgescu (talk) 02:40, 13 December 2015 (UTC)


 * The Roman Catholic Church never accepted the Trullan Council, it's not one of the Seven Ecumenical Councils, well before the full schism occured. 75.0.6.97 (talk) 07:52, 19 January 2016 (UTC)


 * See also East–West_Schism. 75.0.6.97 (talk) 07:58, 19 January 2016 (UTC)

Assessment comment
Substituted at 13:18, 29 April 2016 (UTC)