Gazelam wrote:Well, the Old Testament was put together by Solomons guys if memory serves. The Torah being established previously.
New Testament was put together for Constantine by the leaders of Christianity at that time.
Here is a synopsis:
By the turn of the 5th century, the Catholic Church in the west, under Pope Innocent I, recognized a biblical canon including the four gospels of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, which was previously established at a number of regional Synods, namely the Council of Rome (382), the Synod of Hippo (393), and two Synods of Carthage (397 and 419).[8] This canon, which corresponds to the modern Catholic canon, was used in the Vulgate, an early 5th century translation of the Bible made by Jerome[9] under the commission of Pope Damasus I in 382.
* Gospel according to Matthew
* Gospel according to Mark
* Gospel according to Luke
* Gospel according to John
So you see, the Church which you Mormons call "the great and abominable church of the devil" (in BRM parlance) is the very Church which gave us the canon.
They selected the Four Gospels. And that's what the Book of Mormon builds upon, with it's own
pseudepigrahical content, and expansions upon the original texts. So if you're looking for "history", go back and try to understand how the original texts of the New Testament were expanded upon by Joseph Smith and have a far less "historical basis" than the original texts. That is why the majority of scholars don't take the Book of Mormon seriously as "history". It's like building myth upon texts that are already of questionable "historicity".
And when the Mormons say things like it's either "truth or fraud" and can do nothing else, they completely abort the original premise of the canon, which was to build
faith, NOT based in "historicity", but in the
teachings of the gospels.