Council of Nicea - Picking the books of the Bible Rumor

[DanTheLost]

It is a common misconception that the books of the bible were picked out by the 300+ scholars that attended Emperor Constantine's Council of Nicea in 325 AD.

For all those seeking the historical truth about this - That is not true.  The Council of Nicea did establish some church doctrine and officiliates, and condemmed some people who argued the Gnostic Beliefs (Arius and etc)

A simple search in your library or on the net will provide many copies of the "meeting minutes" of that council meeting. The choosing of the books of the bible is not part of it. Through lots of searching and researching, lots of rumor squashing, I did find the truth (according to history) -

Old Testament:
The Council of Jamnia (A.D. 90) recognized our 39 books.
Josephus (A.D. 95) indicated that the 39 books were recognized a authoritative.

New Testament:
The Council of Athenasius (A.D. 367) and the Council of Carthage (A.D. 397) recognized the 27 books in our N.T. today as inspired.


Let me know if I wrong, but this is what I have found!

[fuji257]

>>It is a common misconception that the books of the bible were picked out by the 300+ scholars that attended Emperor Constantine's Council of Nicea in 325 AD.

For all those seeking the historical truth about this - That is not true. The Council of Nicea did establish some church doctrine and officiliates, and condemmed some people who argued the Gnostic Beliefs (Arius and etc) <<

I don't know about "not true" - it depends how you look at it.  Its not really black and white.

The argument over whether Christ and God are one was the "major" issue IIRC.

However the decisions they made had the (undeniably) largest impact over the NT canon, though the council didn't outright "pick" a list of books and say check or no-go; they did give a go or no-go to many arguments that are still bickered about today and the books in the NT were accepted or rejected largely on whether they appeared (at that time) to support the councils decisions.

You can get a real headache trying to study the evens of nicea 325.  Here is a link to a very BRIEF version of (but fairly accurate, IMHO) the course of events . . .

http://www.kencollins.com/bible-c1.htm