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Originally Posted by Hemi-Cuda
and what about all the passages that were written which didn't make the final cut into the bible, who was in charge of determining what was and wasn't the true word of god?
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This is actually a fascinating topic. A great place to start is a series of lectures by Bart Ehrman (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bart_D._Ehrman).
Early Christianity looked very different than current Christianity.. none of the books in the NT are first-hand accounts of Jesus, they're all written well after his life (decades or even centuries), and there are no direct accounts from other sources, so knowing exactly what Jesus said and did is problematic.
Early Christianity had many different beliefs (Jesus as divine but not human, human not divine, there was 1 God who wasn't the God of the OT, there was 3 gods, there was 30 gods, there was 365 gods), all of which used Jesus as their source. Over time as the church grew and the struggles over which writings were used, one set of beliefs and set of scriptures won out, eventually being ratified 400 years after Jesus or so.
It's a huge topic though, something people devote their entire lives to. But very interesting.