Scripture, Certainty and Power: an analytical look at how “the Word” is made — and used

 

1) Why the Bible looks the way it does (and keeps changing)

Canon wasn’t dropped from the sky. The writings that became the Christian New Testament circulated for centuries before a broadly shared list congealed. Early snapshots include the Muratorian Fragment (a late-2nd-century Latin list) and, later, Athanasius’s Festal Letter 39 (AD 367), which is the first surviving source to list exactly the 27 books now in the New Testament. Local councils (Hippo 393; Carthage 397) echoed that list; none of these invented the books, but they did mark a social consensus that had been forming in churches.

Nicaea did not choose the books. The Council of Nicaea (AD 325) addressed Christological doctrine and church discipline, not the table of contents. It’s a common myth that it “picked” the Bible.

Texts are revised because evidence improves. Early English Bibles (including the King James Version, 1611) relied on the Textus Receptus—late medieval Greek manuscripts available to Erasmus. Modern translations draw on earlier and more numerous witnesses (e.g., Codex Sinaiticus, 4th century) and on critical editions (Nestle-Aland/UBS). That is why newer translations sometimes move or footnote passages: they are following older evidence.

Living languages shift. Translators periodically update wording for clarity and readability (e.g., NIV preface; NRSV Updated Edition 2021), and sometimes to reflect current scholarship on ancient idioms. This is normal for any long-lived translation project.

2) “New books” keep turning up — and what that really means

Archaeology keeps widening the library. Discoveries such as the Dead Sea Scrolls (from 1947) and the Nag Hammadi codices (1945) did not “rewrite” the canon, but they do illuminate the world of Second Temple Judaism and early Christianity — revealing variant textual traditions and alternative theologies that circulated before and alongside orthodoxy.

Textual variants are real and documented.
– The longer ending of Mark (16:9–20) is absent from the earliest complete Greek manuscripts and is marked as secondary in many modern Bibles.
– The story of the woman taken in adultery (John 7:53–8:11) also appears to have entered the Gospel tradition later.
– The Comma Johanneum (1 John 5:7–8’s trinitarian gloss) is missing from early Greek witnesses and seems to have entered via later Latin tradition. (digitalcommons.andrews.edu, Facebook)

These examples don’t “debunk” Christianity; they show how human copying, translating and disputing shaped the text we have.

3) One Bible? In fact, several — and why the contents differ

Different churches, different canons.
– Most Protestants use 66 books (39 OT + 27 NT).
– Roman Catholics recognise 73 books (adding the Deuterocanon).
– Eastern Orthodox and Oriental Orthodox churches include a somewhat larger Old Testament (lists vary by jurisdiction). (SAGE Journals)
– The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church preserves one of the largest canons in regular use (81 books in the “narrower” canon).

The differences emerged from distinct Jewish and Christian textual traditions, translation histories (Hebrew/Aramaic/Greek), and local usage that solidified at different times.

4) Why so many believers want “irrefutable” belief

From a cognitive point of view, three well-replicated forces are at work:

a) Cognitive dissonance. When core commitments collide with disconfirming evidence, the resulting discomfort motivates people to reinterpret, dismiss or avoid the challenge. That’s why “proof texts” can function as pain-killers, not just evidence. (American Psychological Association, PMC)

b) Motivated reasoning & identity-protective cognition. People often use their intelligence to defend cherished identities and in-group commitments, steering attention toward congenial arguments and away from threatening ones. In religious contexts that means scripture and authorities are selectively elevated to protect the group’s worldview. (SciSpace, Wiley Online Library, AEA Publications)

c) Hyperactive agency detection (and its critics). The influential idea that human minds over-detect intention and agency (a handy evolutionary bias) helps explain why gods/spirits feel “obvious” to many; even so, scholars debate the neural specifics. Either way, a hair-trigger for agency supports anthropomorphic images of a god who speaks and wills. (ResearchGate)

Together, these mechanisms make unfalsifiability attractive: if the belief is bound up with group identity and existential security, “irrefutable” becomes a psychological feature, not a bug.

5) Scripture, authority and the policing of sexuality

You asked specifically about how sacred-text authority is mobilised to justify homophobia. Two observations:

a) Social data. Acceptance of homosexuality varies widely and correlates with factors like religiosity and political ideology. Pew’s global surveys repeatedly find lower acceptance in more religious and conservative societies; the strength of religious commitment is a consistent predictor of negative views. (Correlation is not destiny, but the pattern is robust.)

b) Hermeneutics as gatekeeping. The same textual pluralism that yields multiple canons also yields multiple readings. “Literal” readings tend to express (and enforce) group boundaries, while alternative readings (historical-critical, liberationist, queer-affirming) often emerge from different communities of interpretation. In short: the text doesn’t “speak for itself”; communities—with their incentives and fears—speak through it.

6) Abuse scandals and the cost of institutional opacity

When moral authority concentrates and oversight fails, harms scale. The Catholic Church’s abuse archives offer hard numbers:

• United States (John Jay Report). For 1950–2002, dioceses reported 10,667 allegations involving 4,392 priests; an estimated 4% of priests active in that era were accused.

• France (CIASE, 2021). The independent commission estimated about 216,000 victims of clerics and religious from 1950–2020; including lay workers in Catholic settings, the estimate rises to ~330,000.

• Australia (Royal Commission). Data submitted to the Royal Commission indicated 7% of priests in certain orders/dioceses were alleged abusers across 1950–2010; some orders showed even higher rates.

These numbers don’t show that “religion causes abuse”; they show how institutional self-preservation, sacralised status and secrecy can let predators operate, and why external accountability matters.

7) A brief note on Jesus across monotheisms (full deep-dive reserved)

• Christianity centres Jesus as Son of God/Messiah; the New Testament Gospels are the primary sources for his life and teaching.

• Judaism does not accept Jesus as Messiah or divine; later rabbinic literature reflects polemical distance.

• Islam honours ʿĪsā (Jesus) as prophet and Messiah (in a non-divine sense), born of Mary, miracle-working, and eschatologically significant; the Qurʾān denies his crucifixion in the usual sense.

This wide divergence underscores the central thesis here: claims about revelation are filtered through communities, languages and centuries of argument.

Analytical synthesis

1. Human fingerprints are everywhere. From competing canons to variant endings, the Bible bears the marks of a long editorial history. That’s not a smear; it is a call to intellectual honesty about how authority was constructed.

2. “Irrefutability” is a psychological strategy. When beliefs anchor identity, dissonance hurts; people reach for interpretive manoeuvres that preserve the group’s story and their standing within it. Scripture then functions less like a courtroom exhibit and more like a shield. (American Psychological Association, SciSpace)

3. Power needs stories; stories need editors. Canon lists, translation choices and authorised commentators are all levers of social control. The same mechanisms can also be redeployed for reform—think of how fresh evidence (Sinaiticus; Dead Sea Scrolls) and fresh translations push communities to revisit old certainties.

4. Harm thrives where scrutiny fails. The abuse inquiries show what happens when prestige plus secrecy outmuscle transparency. Independent investigations, open archives and survivor-centred processes are not “anti-religion”; they are pro-justice.

If you want, we can spin this into a publishable essay for your blog—tighten the framing, add Kenyan context on how imported theologies meet local power, and end with practical reforms (open data, independent safeguarding, hermeneutic pluralism).

References & further reading

Canon, text and translation
– Athanasius, Festal Letter 39 (AD 367), transcriptions and notes.
– Muratorian Fragment, English translation and discussion.
– Council lists (Hippo/Carthage) and canons.
– Encyclopaedia Britannica: “Biblical literature: Later and modern editions.”
– King James Version history (Textus Receptus).
– Codex Sinaiticus (British Library overview).
– Dead Sea Scrolls (Britannica).
– Nag Hammadi Library (Britannica).
– Bible textual notes: Mark 16:9–20; John 7:53–8:11.
– Comma Johanneum background. (digitalcommons.andrews.edu, Facebook)
– NIV Preface (Biblica); NRSV Updated Edition notice.

Canons across traditions
– USCCB on the Catholic canon (73 books).
– Britannica on Protestant canon (66).
– Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church: canonical overview (81).

Religion & sexuality attitudes
– Pew Research Center: The Global Divide on Homosexuality (latest global trend report).

Abuse inquiries
– John Jay College, Nature and Scope report (US).
– CIASE Commission report (France).
– PBS summary of Australian Royal Commission findings (7% priests).

Cognitive mechanisms
– Festinger, A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (1957) & APA overview. (American Psychological Association, Stanford University Press)
– Kunda, “The Case for Motivated Reasoning” (1990). (SciSpace)
– Kahan et al., identity-protective cognition. (Wiley Online Library)
– Lisdorf, “What’s HIDD’n in the HADD?” (critique of hyperactive agency detection). (ResearchGate)

Book referenced
– Ray, Darrel. The God Virus: How Religion Infects Our Lives and Culture. IPC Press, 2009. (Cited here as a framing metaphor rather than a primary historical source.)

If you’d like, I can adapt this into a long-form essay with sub-headings tailored for Andishi Africa (UK English, tightened for flow, with a compact reference list at the end).