Biblical Literalism - History

History

The high regard for religious scriptures in the Judeo-Christian tradition seems to be related in part to a process of canonization of the Hebrew Bible which occurred over the course of a few centuries from approximately 200 BCE to 200 CE. In the Jewish tradition, the high-regard for the written word represented a direct conduit to the mind of God, and the attendant scholarship that accompanied a literary religion was encouraged in the later Rabbinical School of Judaism. Similarly, the canonization of the New Testament by the Early Christian Church was an important aspect in the formation of the separate religious identity for Christianity. The acceptance or rejection of specific scriptural books was a major indicator of group identity and played a role in determination of excommunications in Christianity and cherem in the Jewish tradition.

In the Reformation, Martin Luther separated the Biblical apocrypha from the rest of the Old Testament books, and later the Westminster Confession demoted them to a status that denied their canonicity. American Protestant literalists and Biblical inerrantists have adopted this truncated Protestant Bible as a work not merely inspired by God but, in fact, representing the Word of God without possibility of error or contradiction.