Some years back I was asked how I could accept one book of the Bible and reject all the others when I sought to draw attention to the teachings of the Letter of James which used to fascinate me. Naturally, the question is perfectly fair. In truth I do not accept it over or in place of others, but merely consider it worthy of interest. All of us read books at times with which we disagree or which conflict with our own beliefs; because they sit on our bookshelves it does not mean that we concur with the words contained therein. In the case of religious texts my view is coloured by the sciences established by the believers of my faith in centuries past. In this worldview a text is not considered accurate purely on the basis of emotional attachment--like mine for the Letter of James--but rather as a result of exacting scholarship.

In Muslim tradition, a report concerned with matters of religion was always scrutinised for reliability on the basis of two factors: the study of the text itself and consideration of its chain of narration. The famous Orientalist, Montgomery Watt, explains:

The chains of transmitters were therefore carefully scrutinised to make sure that the persons named could in fact have met one another, that they could be trusted to repeat the story accurately, and that they did not hold any heretical views. This implied extensive biographical studies; and many biographical dictionaries have been preserved giving the basic information about a man?s teachers and pupils, the views of later scholars and the date of his death.

When a Muslim considers the reports presented in the Bible by contrast the first thing with which he or she is faced is the absence of a chain of narration. The Jewish scholar, Bernard Lewis, writes:

From an early date Muslim scholars recognized the danger of false testimony and hence false doctrine, and developed an elaborate science for criticizing tradition. "Traditional science", as it was called, differed in many respects from modern historical source criticism, and modern scholarship has always disagreed with evaluations of traditional scientists about the authenticity and accuracy of ancient narratives. But their careful scrutiny of the chains of transmission and their meticulous collection and preservation of variants in the transmitted narratives give to medieval Arabic historiography a professionalism and sophistication without precedent in antiquity and without parallel in the contemporary medieval West. By comparison, the historiography of Latin Christendom seems poor and meagre, and even the more advanced and complex historiography of Greek Christendom still falls short of the historical literature of Islam in volume, variety and analytical depth.

It would be illogical then for me to accept a book of the Bible as authentic when it does not meet the strict criteria required by Muslims in this regard. The biographical information offered at the beginning of this letter, for example, is severely limited. The Letter of James has never been a source of my religion, but its address to the believers in Christ amongst the twelve tribes interested me nevertheless, suggesting roots in Christianity's earliest era. In my own studies as an agnostic, one of my major interests was the beliefs and practices of the earliest Christian communities for they should--I hypothesised--have been closest to the religion of Jesus, peace be upon him. Thus, as a matter of interest I always felt that the Letter of James carried great import.

If we claim to follow Jesus and Muhammad we need to know what they themselves taught which entails going back to the source. During the month of Rabi' Al-Awwal each year many Muslims commemorate our Prophet's birth and life. The first time I encountered such commemorations--only a couple of years ago--I listened to a fascinating talk detailing his noble character, followed by recitation of poetry and then dinner. On another occasion I listened as a group of Muslims, young and old, studied the Prophet's sunnah, reading from an-Nawawi's Riyad al-Salihin, before spending over an hour reading poetry about him aloud. As I pondered on those I witnessed expressing such love for the Prophet as they read his sirah and his sunnah one year, I realised that I did not know the him as I should. Taking note of my distance from his noble example I concluded that I too should pick up his sirah again.

"How can you accept one book of the Bible," asks an inquisitive voice, "and reject all the others?" This is a question not just for an eccentric who became obsessed with the Tiniest Spark, but equally for the various denominations of the Christian Church. After all, there is great difference between denominations even now with regard to which books are accepted as canonical and which are not. Historically, the famous case is that of Marcion who sought to reject the whole of the Old Testament, claiming that the loving Father of the New Testament was a different God from that of the Old. Today it could be said that many take a similar stance to Marcion even if they would never actually articulate it, as wrote Walter Moberly:

For many Christians the Old Testament tends to be more of an embarrassment than a resource, more of a stone to trip over than a well to drink from. The ghost of Marcion, who in the second century was the first Christian seriously to propose that Christians did not need, and would be better off without those Scriptures of Israel which came to be known as the Old Testament, still haunts many a Christian mind. Although the official position of the churches down the centuries has been that Marcion was wrong, the actual practice of many churches suggest a position more along the lines of "he was probably more right than wrong".

Where the canon of the New Testament is concerned, the debate about which books are accepted and which are not has been on going for centuries. Bruce Metzger lists the following canons amongst others: the Canon of Origen, the Canon of Eusebius of Caesarea, the Canon of Cyril of Jerusalem, the Cheltenham Canon, the Canon approved by the Synod of Laodicea, the Canon of Athanasius, the Canon approved by the 'Apostolic Canons', the Canon of Gregory of Nazianzus, the Canon of Amphilochius of Iconium, the Canon approved by the third Synod of Carthage. A number of books which were once considered part of the Roman Catholic New Testament canon, but which are absent today include several of the writings of the Apostolic Fathers. The Didache was considered scripture by Clement of Alexandria and Origen. The fifth-century Greek Codex Alexandrius contained the first Epistle of Clement, which was read in services of worship at Corinth around 170CE.

More recently, Zwingli insisted that the book of Revelation was not part of the New Testament at the Berne Disputation of 1528. Martin Luther called the Letter of James an epistle of straw, and denigrated Jude, Hebrews and Revelation. Although he printed them in his German Bible he explained in their prefaces his doubts about their authority. Andreas Bodenstein of Karlstadt divided the New Testament into sections of different levels, the lowest of which included James, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Jude, Hebrews and Revelations. Erasmus doubted that Paul was the author of Hebrews and James of the Letter of James, and questioned the authorship of 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, and Jude. The Swedish Gustavus Adolphus Bible of 1618 labelled these books as 'Apocryphal New Testament'.

It would be wrong to assume that the Bibles of today are all united upon one canon. Indeed, the major denominations actually differ as to which books are accepted and which are rejected. The Protestant church has the Hebrew canon as its Old Testament, with some books divided, numbering thirty-nine books in total. This denomination rejected a number of books and parts of books which were previously included in the Old Testament in the Greek Septuagint and Latin Vulgate. The Protestant New Testament is made up of twenty-seven books. The Roman Catholic Old Testament includes Tobit, Judith, the Greek additions to Esther, the Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, Baruch, the Letter of Jeremiah, the Prayer of Azariah and the Song of the Three Jews, Susanna, Bel and the Dragon, 1 Maccabees and 2 Maccabees. In total, therefore, the Roman Catholic Bible is made up of seventy-three books. The Greek Orthodox Church has a Bible which includes all the books accepted by the Roman Catholic church, with the addition of 1 Esdras, the Prayer of Manasseh, Psalm 151 and 3 Maccabees. The Slavonic canon adds 2 Esdras. Other Eastern churches also include 4 Maccabees. It is clearly easy to ask one eccentric how he can accept a book of the Bible while rejecting all the others--if that were the case--but rather more difficult to explain the reasoning of the Church.

Absolutely fascinating Your depth of knowledge is extraordinary, and the topic itself has always interested me. Is it true that Biblical scholars can trace 23 different authors of the Old Testament from the various writing styles of the texts? And that much of it was written during the Babylon diaspora to give the captive Hebrews some sense of history to believe in? God knows the truth.