What if all copies of the bible had been destroyed by the Romans?

My Caffiene Friend We share one vice in common Coffee.

WE WILL ALWAYS HAVE THE WORD FOR ALL

Heaven and earth will pass away but the Word of God will not pass away, Mark 13:31 ...

Bible.

Constantine was Born in Nisi. My friend and and Was Eastern .. Show me On Serb, One Macedonian, One Greek of the Empire who is RC NONE.

I would never name my gorgeous 22 Year Old Son.Constantine if it was True :) Show me one RC name Constantine NONE.. Show me that BIble? Translated? wow

From Greek? No Constantine was ruler and Bible came from Greek Septuagint in 45 Ad. ( Prove me wrong)

Timeline of Bible Translation History

1,400 BC: The first written Word of God: The Ten Commandments delivered to Moses.

500 BC: Completion of All Original Hebrew Manuscripts which make up The 39 Books of the Old Testament.

200 BC: Completion of the Septuagint Greek Manuscripts which contain The 39 Old Testament Books AND 14 Apocrypha Books.

1st Century AD: Completion of All Original Greek Manuscripts which make up The 27 Books of the New Testament.

315 AD: Athenasius, the Bishop of Alexandria, identifies the 27 books of the New Testament which are today recognized as the canon of scripture.

http://www.greatsite.com/timeline-englis%E2%80%A6

BIBLE BURNINGS

299-311 A.D.

The Roman Emperor Diocletian issued an edict to stop Christians from worshipping Jesus Christ and ordered the destruction of all their Scriptures. He had churches razed, Christians thrown in prison, flogged and decapitated. Despite all the power of the Roman Empire, these measures failed totally, and twenty-five years later his successor, Constantine, changed course and issued another edict ordering fifty Bibles to be published at government expense.

1150 A.D. Though 1844 A.D.

One of the greatest dangers the Bible faced was the period when the Popes of Rome controlled the world. Pope Innocent III, 1199, had French Bibles burned and would not permit the people to have more. Pope Gregory IX, 1234, ordered the burning of Bible. Wyclif was condemned for heresy in 1383 for translating the Bible into the common language. 10,000 Bibles were burned on August 8, 1600, by order of Ferdinand II. Pope Clement II, 1713, condemned the reading of the Bible. Even as late as 1844, Pope Gregory decreed those favoring Bible societies were guilty of the greatest crime before God and the Church.

1700's A.D.

In the eighteenth century the atheist French writer Voltaire said, “Within 100 years, the Bible and Christianity will be swept out of existence, and pass into history.” In 1778 Voltaire was swept out of existence, but the Bible still stands. In fact, within 26 years of Voltaire’s death the age of the Bible Society was initiated with the founding of the British & Foreign Bible Society, and Bibles began to be distributed throughout the world in a manner heretofore unprecedented.

http://spokanebaptist.com/trustbible4.ht%E2%80%A6

Throughout Christian history, there has been many attempts to keep the Bible from hands of the common man. The Catholic Church was the biggest among these, with Pope Innocent III in 1199 banning the common man from having personal access to a bible, the Council of Tourlouse in 1229 ("Canon 14. We prohibit also that the laity should be permitted to have the books of the Old or New Testament; unless anyone from motive of devotion should wish to have the Psalter or the Breviary for divine offices or the hours of the blessed Virgin; but we most strictly forbid their having any translation

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?

We were Given the FIrst Greek Septuagint and Penteneuch ( Torah)

by the Jews. ( ALexander and the Jews ) True History , All Prove it to be True.

Right from the People of the Book T.…

http://www.aish.com/jl/h/48929692.html

Greek New Testament

The New Testament (Greek: Καινὴ Διαθήκη, Kainē Diathēkē) is the name given to the second major division of the Christian Bible, the first such division being the much longer Old Testament. The New Testament is sometimes called the Greek New Testament or Greek Scriptures, or the New Covenant.

The original texts were written by various authors sometime AD 45, in Koine Greek

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_Testament

We would still Have the Bible.THE WORD OF GOD WILL NOT PASS AWAY.. We will still have the Bible.. as the Hebrew / Greek / ARamic

aer stil in LIbraries all over the world in London, in Jerusalem ( fragmented but will Have THem) Now Lates Full Greek Bible

http://www.codexsinaiticus.org/en/

and Bible finds keep being found.. Dead Sea Scrolls. etc. Now in Toronto Canada at Royal Ontario Museum

http://www.rom.on.ca/scrolls/

WE WILL ALWYS HAVE THE WORD FOR ALL

Heaven and earth will pass away but the Word of God will not pass away, Mark 13:31 ...

Bible.

IC XC NIKA

Kyrie Eleison

Greek Orthodox Katholikos ( Gr Universal) Apostolic Christian

There is no Jew or Greek among you..... ne male or female. We are One in Christ.. Galatians 3.28

Bible

1) What if all copies of the bible had been destroyed by the Romans?

That would have been a neat trick, since the bible was not put together until years after Christianity became a legal religion of the Roman Empire - at the earliest, late in Constantine's reign. It's sort of like asking what would have happened if the Declaration of Independence were destroyed by the U.S. Army..

2) Without this book, what basis would Christianity have as a religion?

The very same basis that they had during the 300 years of Christianity that happened before the bible was put together. That basis: the teachings of Jesus and the apostles.

3) So Christians, I would be very interested to hear what it is you think would be different about your beliefs had the source of your faith in our time never existed.

The bible has never been the source of Christian faith - in our time or in any other. It has been a *reference* for our faith - the way that a dictionary is a reference for the English language. People would not suddenly stop speaking English if someone burned all of the English dictionaries in the world, would they?

4) Personally, I think if the bible had been destroyed, then all we would have is a religion based on word of mouth which would have therefore been subject to the effect of Chinese whispers (more than some might say it already has) and probably would not have survived as a result.

Well, there are certainly advantages to recording the events that surround the beginnings of Christianity. However, it is a fact that Christianity spread like wildfire during 300 years without any bible whatsoever, and that for most of the next several centuries there were so few bibles available that most Christians never saw one - let alone attempted to read one. You seem to be not well-informed regarding the importance of the bible in pre- printing press Christianity.

5) Constantine made the bible into the bible

Not true.

6) but their were writings and scriptures before him that he used to put it together

Also not true. It's true that all of the books of the bible predate Constantine, but it is not true that he took a personal hand in selecting them. What Constantine *did* do was commission 50 collections of Scripture - what we might term proto-bibles. He did not dictate the contents. Many scholars believe that Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus are two of these 50 proto bibles. It is interesting that Vaticanus does not contain the same Scriptures as Sinaiticus. Presumably, each of the proto-bibles was put together by a different individual, who chose what Scriptures to include independently of each other.

Jim, http://www.biblechooser.com/

actually i really like this question, it is intelligent and not insulting to anyone and your thinking is logical, unfortunately being hypothetical you will only receive personal and subjective answers.

my thoughts are that there may still be some form of jesus based religion but that it would be very different to the religion we know today, but in what way i don't know. Indeed if we look at the bible that most mainstream christians use today (based on the king james I version) we can see how things may have been so different - as one of your respondents correctly pointed out, until the time of constantine there was no bible as such but just a lot of different texts based on the same word of mouth stories but constantine had his scholars create one book from these writings -now the result of their work was drawn from about 70 of these texts (even though there were over 300 to choose from) and we must ask why were these specific texts chosen and translated from the original hebrew or greek and the only logical reply is that constantine will have chosen texts that suited his own purposes as emperor in control of millions of subjects and so from 400ad it would be fair to say that the bible contained an element of political agenda. The bible then remained basically the same until the 17th century when king James I had it altered drastically - again if we look at circumstances, britain had just gone through 150 years of religious termoil with catholics and protestants killing each other fervantly and so again it must be assumed that the book was rewritten with political aims in mind.

i think it would be interesting to rewrite the bible but leave out its current content and use the gnostic gospels, dead sea scrolls and the other unused texts and see just how different things would have been

The Romans didn't want to eradicate Christian religion and they didn't persecute Christians on a religious basis (using the word "religion" in its modern meaning). They considered Christians as bad citizens who refused to yield to the customs and duties of Roman civilian life. The only large scale search for Christian books was made during Diocletian's last persecution, in the beginning of the 4-th century, and it was too late to destroy the books, which have been copied and copied again during the previous centuries. Moreover, you forget that some Roman emperors did have sympathies for Eastern cults, including Christianity, and many others were so busy fighting at the borders that they didn't have any time to waste with religious quarrels. And there was another Bible centered religion, which was authorized by Romans ("religio licita"), Judaism, where books were kept. But you're probably thinking of the New testament...

Your point is to imagine what Christianity would be without books : but this religion, as opposed to Judaism, is not a book-centered religion, except in its Protestant form, which appeared much later. Primitive Christians lived in an oral society, where literacy was scarce, and where oral, personal, spoken testimony was the center of cultural and religious life. Even literate people didn't really read or write books, which in the scroll form were not very easy to handle, but had them read to them. Writers didn't write themselves, but dictated their words to a slave secretary. So I think that Christianity without books would have endured and outlived persecutions, because of that special status of writing and books. Your question is a little anachronistic.

What you're describing actually kind of happened. It was called the Middle Ages. Remember when all bibles got translated into Latin? What the heck was that? Jews never spoke Latin! Only a book here and there was saved and treasured in a cave somewhere. Maybe a person just had a single page of the bible to look at his entire sad life.

Now there is an endless supply of bibles, translated anyway that makes you feel at ease with what you're doing in life. So much for that.

The gospel is written not in pen and ink but changed lives.

Without the good news we would be insipid fence sitters ,rather ignorant and foolish chasing our own tails and wasting all day in sterile debate as did the Greeks at the time.Maybe writing futile questions in the spirituality section of Yahoo for the sake of what ? argument? time wasting?Not being rude but just wondering if people are seeking or venting in the spirituality section.

So without the gospel there would be no changed lives, would there?At least that is what the arch enemy of Christianity declared after He was converted. Paul of Tarsus was on the way to destroying the spreaders of Gods Word as it happens and he was asked " Why are you kicking against the pricks?"He happened to be on the road to Damascus and like many today- doing their bit to destroy or contradict Gods Word as seen in Scripture but only stirring it up instead.

As you know nothing and no one has ever been successful in destroying Gods Word. The whole atheist communist world failed, Rome obviously tried but then became converted in the process, not to mention the Jews that thought the cross was the end of the matter!

So the question is not only academic but rather foolish because obviously our lifestyles would be much the same as the unknowing heathen before the resurrection.Without hope, without sense and without enduring meaning . May I suggest reading Ephesians for a more erudite response to your question, spelled out in detail.

Bye.

First of all, Constantine was a Roman ruler.

Secondly a lot of books of the bible were removed from it under Constantine. e.g. the Gnostic Gospels.

A valid question indeed,this is why the Catholic church has the reliability of the oral tradition of the Apostles and the Bible which ensure the continuance of Christianity.

The Apostles taught by word of mouth and their successors(the church fathers) continued to teach the good news after they died keeping the message of Christ alive and vibrant.

God bless.

Ah, God made sure that didn't happen, didn't He?

Roman Empire...been and gone.

Christianity....still here despite of the opposition.

I think people would be more free to think for themselves. Gays wouldn't be bashed, there would be less wars, we'd be more innovative ect. ect. ect, but then again there will always be ignorant closed minded people in the world to make up for it.... not saying that christians are any of those things, anyone can fit that criteria.