I know that in the land of secular leftism, there are many myths, and those myths survive because they circulate in an echo chamber. But this is the Wintery Knight blog, and on this blog, we go back to the evidence. So what’s the myth? “The list of authoritative books of the Bible was determined hundreds of years after they were written”. Is that true? Let’s take a look at the data and see.

So, the allegation is that before 325 AD, people were using the canonical gospels equally with the forgery gospels like Judas, Peter, Mary, Thomas, etc. Then there was a church council that whittled down that list of equally valid sources to just the 4 gospels we recognize today. But did it really happen like that?

So, before we look to a scholar, I want to take a stab at this, and say what I would say if someone asked me this question. So, the first thing that came into my mind is that you don’t need a church council to tell you which books of the Bible are authoritative, you just have to look at which books the earliest church fathers are quoting. And they are quoting the gospels.

Here is a snip from a conversation between Frank Turek and J. Warner Wallace, and here’s what Wallace says:

So, I write in this new book, Person of Interest, I reached out to David now that Norm has passed, and he had some great people who he was working with on this, and I cited them in the case notes of this book. And you can see it in the book. It’s illustrated. Every church father who precedes the Council of Nicaea, and how many books, how many gospels, and how many letters are quoted by that particular church father. There’s a graphic for this, and you can see them all standing with the numbers of gospels they quote, and the numbers of letters they quote. And then I went through, I did the research, and he has compiled numbers. David and his associates have compiled numbers on how many…so this is a much more accurate. So, here’s what we know. And this is what I talked about in the book. It turns out that about 87% of the Gospel of Matthew is quoted by the early church fathers prior to the Council of Nicaea. About 935 verses. 66% of Mark, about 435 verses are quoted by these same church leaders. But 86% of the Gospel of Luke, 990 verses quoted by these church leaders. And 97% of the Gospel of John, about 859 verses that are quoted by these early church fathers.

So, if you go by that standard of who are the early church fathers quoting, it’s the 4 canonical gospels. And by the way, if you are looking for specific reasons why some “gospels” were not included, I would look at the Michael Licona chapters of Lee Strobel’s “The Case for the Real Jesus”. And there is an audio book!

But I also found this article over at Canon Fodder (Michael Kruger’s blog), that had more.

He writes:

First, we don’t measure the existence of the New Testament just by the existence of lists. When we examine the way certain books were used by the early church fathers, it is evident that there was a functioning canon long before the fourth century.  Indeed, by the second century, there is already a “core” collection of New Testament books functioning as Scripture.

Second, there are reasons to think that Athanasius’ list is not the earliest complete list we possess. In the festschrift for Larry Hurtado, Mark Manuscripts and Monotheism (edited by Chris Keith and Dieter Roth; T&T Clark, 2015), I wrote an article entitled, “Origen’s List of New Testament Books in Homiliae on Josuam 7.1: A Fresh Look.”

In that article, I argue that around 250 A.D., Origen likely produced a complete list of all 27 New Testament books–more than a hundred years before Athanasius. In his typical allegorical fashion, Origen used the story of Joshua to describe the New Testament canon:

But when our Lord Jesus Christ comes, whose arrival that prior son of Nun designated, he sends priests, his apostles, bearing “trumpets hammered thin,” the magnificent and heavenly instruction of proclamation. Matthew first sounded the priestly trumpet in his Gospel; Mark also; Luke and John each played their own priestly trumpets. Even Peter cries out with trumpets in two of his epistles; also James and Jude. In addition, John also sounds the trumpet through his epistles [and Revelation], and Luke, as he describes the Acts of the Apostles. And now that last one comes, the one who said, “I think God displays us apostles last,” and in fourteen of his epistles, thundering with trumpets, he casts down the walls of Jericho and all the devices of idolatry and dogmas of philosophers, all the way to the foundations (Hom. Jos. 7.1).

As one can see from the list above, all 27 books of the New Testament are accounted for (Origen clearly counts Hebrews as part of Paul’s letters). The only ambiguity is a text-critical issue with Revelation, but we have good evidence from other sources that Origen accepted Revelation as Scripture (Eusebius, Hist. eccl. 6.25.10).

So, if you ever hear someone saying that the authoritative books of the Bible were not decided until the 4th century, then there are a couple of ideas of how to respond to that.

I was having a conversation with my friend Katy the other day, about whether men are not interested in marrying because they find older women unattractive. I told her that men find older women very attractive, if they are slim and athletic. I left it at that, but I wanted to go on and explain to her why men are declining to  marry, even good Christian men who have good jobs and savings,

My thesis is that men have recognized that the legal system is very much against them, and it is unwise for them to expose themselves to that legal system.

What’s the evidence?

So, on this blog, I have written about how women overall initiate 69% of the divorces that they are involved in. In fact, college-educated women initiate 90% of the divorces they are involved in. And I’ve written about how the sentences for men are 63% more severe than for women, for the exact same crime and criminal record. And I’ve written about how a high number of the accusations of rape or sexual assault by women (20-40 percent) are hoaxes. And I’ve written about how men are often the victims of paternity fraud. Men don’t even have to cohabitate with a woman to be billed for thousands of dollars in alimony and child support. False accusations of child abuse are routinely used in order to eject husbands from their homes, and to get custody of the children (and the child support money that comes with having custody).

I could go on and on, but I hope enough has been said to show what the evidence supports the view that the legal system in America is biased against men.

But wait! There’s another reason. Men have also noticed that women can easily press false accusations, and they suffer virtually no consequences when those accusations are proven false and / or recanted.

Here is a recent example, reported by New York Post:

A Pennsylvania woman who admitted to fabricating kidnapping and rape allegations against a stranger whom she “specifically targeted” because she thought he was “creepy” last year is paying for her lies.

Anjela Borisova Urumova, 20, was sentenced to from 45 days to 23 months in Bucks County Correctional Facility on Tuesday by Judge Stephen A. Corr, according to the Bucks County District Attorney’s Office.

The article notes that she “pleaded guilty to seven misdemeanor counts, including tampering with or fabricating physical evidence and false reports.” As a result of her lies, the accused spent 31 days in prison.

Three things. First, he is married:

Pierson, 41, was present with his wife in court Tuesday but did not wish to make a statement during the sentencing since the ordeal has been “too emotional” for him and his family, the DA’s office said.

Second, the false accuser recanted her accusation:

She then went to the police and accused Pierson as her attacker before eventually fessing up to the tale.

Third, she judged him as evil based solely on her feelings (intuitions, first impressions) about his appearance:

Urumova told investigators that she “specifically targeted” Pierson because she had seen him and his blue Ford F-150 pickup truck in the area before and thought he was “creepy.”

I asked Grok what the average sentence is for a false accusation of rape, compared to a real conviction of rape, and it said:

Data on sentences for false accusations of rape or sexual assault by women in the USA is limited. Available studies and legal cases suggest most convictions result in light punishments, often suspended sentences, fines, or no jail time. Estimating based on available information, including cases with zero jail time, the average sentence is approximately 2 months (0.17 years).

For men convicted of rape in the USA, the average prison sentence is 212 months (17.67 years), per 2019 USSC data.

So, women get “approximately 2 months” for a false accusation of rape, and men get “average prison sentence is 212 months” for a rape conviction.

False accusations deter good men from marrying

Even if a good man is very clever about choosing the right women to be his wife, he would still be vulnerable to false accusations from women in the workplace, and other places. It’s not the Christian homeschooling future wife in the house who is the problem. It’s the radical feminist single mother in the office who is the problem. The bitter, angry one with the 200+ body count, and the 200K of student loan debt for a degree in misandry.

And the worst part of this is that when you tell pro-marriage people about these false accusations, they dismiss it. I’ve been told “why would you make decisions off of evidence and calculations? One day you’ll meet a nice girl and fall in love” It’s terrifying to be dealing with people who approach major life decisions by feelings and wilful blindness. They try to goad you into bad decisions by shaming you.

Imagine if someone tried to sell you a lemon at the car dealership by attacking your masculinity. “I dare you to buy this used car without getting it checked out by a mechanic!” You would have to be really lacking in education and work experience to think that the “man up!” approach would work on a man. And yet, when I talk to pro-marriage people, this is their only argument. They scream “Get Married!” and then refuse to address any of the evidence of the threats posed by feminism, such as false accusations.

Who is going to support the good wife and good children if the man is in prison because of a false accusation? Not the pro-marriage advocates. And the younger generation of women are sliding further and further into secularism and leftism, making the risk of false accusation even higher. Why would a wise man expose himself to these risks? Especially when no one wants to fix the problem.

Here’s the bottom line: It’s an enormous deterrent to a good man’s desire to be a husband and father that they are exposed to prison and / or financial ruin because of false accusations. You have to give men a good value proposition if you expect them to go the husband and father route. Good men have other things that they can do with their money and time. Just because you really want them to do your plan with their lives, it doesn’t mean that they can’t find something else to do with their time and money – like focus on serving God. If you want men to marry, then take men’s concerns seriously.