Our final sermon in our "Summer of All Request Sermons" was all about the Bible and how we got the final product we now have. This final requested sermon was not only educational, but it gave those in attendance the opportunity to participate in mock biblical text selection!
To begin with, the word "Canon" is not the big gun that shoots out cannon balls, but rather it refers to a religious community's sacred texts. In the case of Christianity we call it The Bible, and Sunday's sermon described how those texts were chosen both formally and informally. Another point of interest, that we only spent a short period of time on is what we commonly call the "Old Testament" or Hebrew Bible. The reason we spent only a short time is because the Hebrew Bible was already mostly established by the Jewish community, and because there is only so much time in alloted to any given sermon. I did discuss the fact that like the New Testament, the Hebrew Bible was written over a long period of time, and then gradually portions of it were accepted by the larger community as being authoritative. Unlike other books, the Hebrew Bible, and New Testament were not written all in one sitting, nor where the books within each section compiled all at one time.
We began our discussion of how the New Testament came to be what it currently is, with a very rough timeline hitting some of the highlights of the canonization process, beginning with Jesus birth sometime around 6 B.C.E. and ending with the ecumenical councils of Hippo and Carthage in 393, 397, and 419 respectively. In between we had rough dates for Paul's epistles (50-60 C.E.) and the four canonical Gospels (70-100 C.E.). The real important point on the timeline was 144 C.E. where a man named Marcion started his own church in Rome, and also officially set what he claimed to be an authoritative Christian set of scriptures. Marcion's "bible" included most of the Gospel of Luke, and Paul's epistles, but nothing else. He claimed that the other texts, including the Hebrew Bible (which had been the primary scriptures for the first generation or two of Christians) were too focussed on the material/physical world which were evil. Therefore he rejected any scriptures that mentioned the physical world, or the God of Creation.
In response to Marcion's radical understanding of Christianity, the rest of Christianity began to more precisely set its own canon. The process first began unofficially in local churches, where Paul's epistles, one or two Gospels, and other epistles from prominent Christian leaders were read in worship alongside the Hebrew Bible. Finally the process took on a more official tone at the Council of Hippo in 393 C.E. and at the two Councils of Carthage in 397 C.E. and 419 C.E.
This marked the end of the history lesson part of this week's sermon. Now we turned our timelines over where there were three hypothetical lists of Scripture. The congregation engaged in narrowing these lists of hypothetical scriptures from 6 to only 3. This activity was to illustrate the criteria used by early Christians to determine what texts became canonical (or got into the Bible) and which ones did not.
The Criteria we used were as follows:
1. Authorship - writings with apostolic authorship were more readily accepted
2. Content - writings that agreed with other established sources and orthodox (right) Christian practice were more readily accepted.
3. Location - writings to major cities, and/or stable locations were more likely to be preserved and therefore were more likely to be considered for inclusion
Once we completed the three examples, I encouraged everyone to remember that The Bible as we now have it, was written over a great period of time, and was not compiled until even later in the history of Christianity. I also pointed out that The Bible is the text that we as Christians claim to live our lives by, but sadly many of us have a very limited knowledge of even the most fundamental portions of The Bible. I pointed out that the best way to solve this problem is for each of us to spend more time reading our Bibles, and more time in conversation about what we've read.
Grace & Peace,
Pastor John
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