圣经是怎么来的？

How we got the Bible?
Traned from a talk by Alan Watts

A lot of people don’t know how we got the bible at all. We westners got the bible thanks to the Catholic church. The Catholic church and its members wrote the book of new testment and they took over the book of old testment, which even by the time of Christ had not been finally decided upon by the Jews. The Jews did not close the cannon of the old testment until the year 100 AD or thereabouts.

The books to be include in the new testment were not finally decided upon until the 382 AD. So it was the Catholic church that promulgated the bible, and said “ We are giving you these ures on our authority and by authority of the informal tradition that existed among us from beginning inspired by the holy spirit.” So you receive historically the bible on the church’s say so.

The Catholic church insists therefore, that the church, collectively speaking , under the presumed guidance of the holy spirit, has the authority to interpret the bible. And you can take that or leave it.

Because obviously, the authority of the bible is not, first of all, based on the bible itself. I can write a bible and state within that book that it is indeed the word of God which I have received. And you are at liberty to believe me or not.

Hindus believe their ures are divinely revealed and inspired. Muslims believe the Koran is divinely inspired. Some Buddists believe that their sutras are also of the divine or rather Buddhic origin. The Japanese believe their ancient texts of Shinto are likewise of divine origin.

And who is to be judge?

If we are going to argue about this, as to which version of the truth is the correct one, we’ll always end up in an argument in which the judge and advocate are the same person. And you wouldn’t want that if you were brought into a court of law, would you?