General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: John Pavlovitz: This Isn't Christianity [View all]Hekate
(90,674 posts)Last edited Sun Nov 3, 2019, 12:37 PM - Edit history (1)
First, it was oral transmission, while people waited for Jesus to come back in an immediate sense. Then as the first generation of believers began to die off, it became necessary for things to be written down -- and for various versions to be compared and decisions made about what was the real version of events.
Saul of Tarsus, later called Paul, never met Jesus except in a vision, but he wrote extensively. All those Letters (Romans, Corinthians, Galatians, Thessalonians and on and on and on) were Paul tying together the widely scattered congregations. In an organizational sense, he really was a founder, so what he said and did was important.
The Council of Nicaea wasn't until 325...
In any case, you've got to go back a long way to examine what was and was not included, and to parse out why. If you just want the words of Jesus, they are in there -- at least as people best remembered -- and they differ from Saul-called-Paul in ways that cause dispute from that day to this. It's just that Jesus did not set out to organize anything, and when he didn't come back other people did.
ETA: Forgot to add that it was those various Councils that determined what texts got included in what became the Christian Bible, both Old and New Testaments. There are some Apocrypha, books that have been added back into some versions, but on the whole the official thing is set in concrete aside from new translations.