They say that C. S. Lewis’ inspiration for his novel The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe came
to him with the simple image of a lonely lamppost in a snowy wood, with a satyr
standing under it. In one sense, the whole
world of Narnia was written “from the
inside out,” around that central image.
While people sometimes approach the Bible as though it
was written from cover to cover, beginning to end, in many ways it’s more like
the world of Narnia than it is like a typical book. It, too, is a book that “grew up” so to
speak, around a central image or idea.
This central image, of course is the historical person of
Jesus of Nazareth, a Jewish Holy Man who lived and ministered in ancient
Israel, between the years of 5 BC and 30 AD.
He was crucified by the Roman State as a political revolutionary, and
his followers believe that the third day after
his execution, he rose from the dead, alive and glorified, declared in
power to be the Son of God.
A number of the earliest Christian writings, in fact,
were written simply to tell and interpret his story—they are early biographies,
so to speak, of Jesus Christ.
These books are sometimes called the Gospels, and the
Gospel writers were intent on setting down the historical events of his life,
from what they personally witnessed, or what was handed down to them through
oral tradition.
Of course, at the same time as these books were being
written, communities of Jesus’ followers—the early Christians—were springing up
all over the ancient world. These were
groups of men and women who worshipped and followed Jesus as the Saviour, but
needed guidance and instruction to worship him and follow him correctly.
So the Apostles—church leaders who had been specially
commissioned by Jesus for this job—wrote letters to these churches for specific purposes: to
settle church disputes, maybe, to clarify teaching, perhaps, to encourage
Christians who were going through persecution, and so on. These letters were circulated and
re-circulated around the various churches as occasion arose and opportunity
allowed.
After a number of generations, a bunch of these epistles
were in circulation, along with a number of documents telling the story of
Jesus, so Church leaders decided it would be a good idea to identify which
writings were historical and reliable and authentic writings about Jesus, which
books, that is, belonged in the Canon.
The earliest official “list” of books that belonged in
the Bible wasn’t approved until 393 AD, but the list itself goes back to the
earliest generations of the church.
Of course the Gospels and the Epistles only account for
1/3 of the actual content of the
Bible.
To understand where the other 2/3rs came from you need to
remember that Christianity originated out of first-century Judaism. Jesus himself was a Jew, and the Jews in his
day had their own set of sacred writings that described the history of God’s
life with Israel. Christians sometimes call
these Hebrew Scriptures the Old Testament, and the essentially, this was the
Bible as it existed in Jesus’s day.
Jesus’ message, in fact, was that, as the Messiah, he was
the fulfillment of whole entire message of the Hebrew Scriptures—the fulfillment
of all its prophecies, the meaning of its law, the answer to all its questions
and the completion of its story.
So: Because it’s impossible to know who he is without
knowing the story that he claimed to fulfill, Christians have always insisted
that the Old Testament—the Hebrew Scriptures—are an integral part of God’s
Word, and that it’s not complete without them.
This then, is how we got the Christian Bible. It’s a book that literally grew up around the
person of Jesus Christ—the writings that promised him before-hand, the writings
that interpreted his life story, and the writings that teach us how to follow
him, now.
Or, like Jesus himself said it in one place, "These were written to testify about me."
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