Dr Paul Allen

History’s Most Important Book When it comes to books, none is more famous than the Bible. It’s the most sold, translated, and arguably the most influential book in history. As a result, it occupies a vaulted place in our shared cultural conscience. When American presidents want to raise their rhetoric or filmmakers want to add gravitas, they reach for a biblical reference. Even today, as the Bible’s cultural authority waxes in the West, everyone knows something about the Bible. As with anything of historical importance, the Bible has accumulated its share of mythical distortions in the popular mind. Many of these swirl around its origins. Maybe this is because the Bible’s origins span such a long time or our culture is primed to distrust authority. Whatever the cause, these are five myths inside and outside the church about the history of history’s most important book. Myth #1: The books were chosen by a church council. This first myth may originate as far back as the 17th century, but...

The early Christians saw that the Old Testament was incomplete, and they realized that Jesus had fulfilled it. Thus, they expected that the New Testament would be written and quickly recognized the divine authority of these books. These books, as soon as they were written, would have borne the authority of the apostles, and people would have recognized that from the very start. Now, if that's the case, then you don't need to wait 200, 300 years to have a New Testament canon, because you have books written with the authority of an apostle even in the first century that people would have known bore that apostle's authority, and therefore you would have had books with the authority of Christ from the very get-go. So when someone comes along and says, "Oh, Christians could never have conceived of a new collection of authoritative books," I'm thinking to myself, "But what about the books the apostles wrote? They would have been seen as a new collecti...

Why these 66 books? What about “all the other books”? The Apocrypha? Pseudepigrapha? The Gospels of Thomas, Peter, and Judas? Why didn’t they make it in? Says who? People told me things like, “Yeah, a bunch of guys in the fourth century got together and decided what to include and exclude from the Bible . You can’t really trust it.” I didn’t know what to think. Recently we began a series addressing fundamental questions surrounding the Bible. What is it? Where did we get it? Who decided what would, and would not be, in the Bible? How can it be said that the 66 books alone are the inerrant , infallible words of God ? These questions concern the topic of bibliology. First,  we studied the topic of revelation , answering the question, “What is the Bible?” From there,  looked at inspiration , answering the question, “Where did the Bible come from?” Then, we observed the logical conclusion, namely, that  the 66 books of the Bible are the inerrant and infallible ...

The Bible is considered the best-selling book in history. Estimates say some five billion copies have been sold. It is thought to be the most translated and distributed book in the world. Bibles have been burned, smuggled, and dipped in blood. It’s safe to say that no other book has drawn more comment and controversy than the Bible. The Bible contains a collection of 66 books (39 Old Testament, 27 New Testament) originally written in three languages (Hebrew, Aramaic, Greek) over a period of about 1600 years through the instrumentation of some 40 different writes, from around the Mediterranean region. But, what is the Bible exactly? This has been an important question in my life. Permit a brief testimony to explain. Well into my adult life and education, I thought that the Bible was a collection of bizarre, man-made tales with zero bearing on the world today which had been concocted by some hand-wringing, narrow-minded fascists looking to oppress people for personal gain. Throughout,...

[Paul] writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction. [ 2 Peter 3:16] Which books from the ancient Jewish culture are Holy Scripture ? For us that seems a very difficult question, but at the time the books were written it was not. The Holy Spirit confirmed the writings of Moses, the prophets, David, and the apostles, with signs and wonders. The Spirit caused believers to recognize instantly the voice of the Master in these writings, and they were immediately added to the list of sacred books. Peter speaks of Paul’s letters as part of Holy Scripture in 2 Peter 3:16. The list of inspired books of the Bible is called the “canon” of Scripture. Satan tried to confuse the issue in the second century A.D. First, he worked through the gnostic heretics to produce a lot of obviously fake gospels and...

For whatever set of reasons, there is a widespread belief out there (internet, popular books) that the New Testament canon was decided at the Council of Nicea in 325 AD—under the conspiratorial influence of Constantine.    The fact that this claim was made in Dan Brown’s best-seller  The Da Vinci Code  shows how widespread it really is.    Brown did not make up this belief; he simply used it in his book. The problem with this belief, however, is that it is patently false.    The Council of Nicea had nothing to do with the formation of the New Testament canon (nor did Constantine).     Nicea was concerned with how Christians should articulate their beliefs about the divinity of Jesus.    Thus it was the birthplace of the Nicean creed. When people discover that Nicea did not decide the canon, the follow up question is usually, “Which council did decide the canon?”     Surely we could not have a canon...

One of the most basic facts about the New Testament canon that all Christians should understand is that the canon is intimately connected to the activities of the apostles. Jesus had commissioned his apostles “so that they might be with him and he might send them out to preach and have authority” ( Mark 3:14 –15).  When Jesus sent out the twelve, he reminds them that “For it is not you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you” ( Matt 10:20 ).  Thus, he is able to give a warning to those who reject the apostles’ authority: “If anyone will not receive you or listen to your words…it will be more bearable on the day of judgment for the land of Sodom and Gomorrah than for that town” ( Matt 10:14 ). In sum, the apostles had the very authority of Christ himself.  They were his mouthpiece.  As such, their teachings, along with the prophets, were the very foundation of the church.  Paul describes the church as “built on the foundation of th...