One category of criticism of the Bible concerns the way it came about the first place. One internet posting claims that the canon of the New Testament (list of divinely inspired books) was determined by the command of Emperor Constantine and his bishops. They are pictured as his official henchmen dressed in fancy robes and living in the Vatican. In actuality, they were closer to the equivalent of pastors or elders of local church bodies or over a geographical group of congregations. This site goes on to say that opponents of Christianity were persecuted, and that their “pre-christian books that disproved the new religion” were banned. In fact, there were laws restricting pagan religion beginning with Constantine's son, but enforcement of the laws was largely ignored. It wasn't until 391 AD that any pagan priests were actually persecuted. Also, the books that did give a different theological slant on things, the Gnostic writings, dated from well after the NT books were written. By no means were they “pre-christian.”
If you want to know more regarding this issue, I recommend F. F. Bruce's highly readable book on the subject, The Canon of Scripture. Basically, the decision reached by leaders of several prominent churches merely ratified the consensus most of them had reached much earlier.
The early lists of NT books show that there is substantial agreement on which books should be included and which ones excluded. The approximate dates for these various listings are as follows. Muratorian Canon 157-170; Origen 240-250; Eusebius 290-300; Council of Carthage 397. Note that first three lists predated the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD, where Constantine first became involved. And none of the dubious books on these lists was ever burned. The only early book burnings, aside from the Emperor Domitian trying to burn all Christian books in 303 AD, was of some letters of the heretics Arius and Nestorius. The NT scholar Elaine Pagels claimed that in 367, Athanasius ordered monks in Alexandria to destroy all “unacceptable writings,” with the rest constituting the NT. There is no historical confirmation of that statement, but it is widely quoted on the internet.
And then you get the opposite side of the coin where the Bible is criticized for including books in the Bible that are obvious forgeries and lies written falsely under famous apostles' names. Going back to the lists of early church canons, the following disputed books were excluded from the canon: The Revelation of Peter, The Wisdom of Solomon, Didache (Teachings of the Twelve Apostles), and the Letter of Barnabas. One of the prime reasons for excluding them was that they were obviously pseudonymous, written later than the life of the supposed authors with no strong church tradition to back them up.
Now considering the NT books that did end up in the canon, the authorship of only a few are actually in doubt even by liberal scholars. Pseudonymous works almost always go out of their way to first establish the credentials of the author. Just read through the Book of Mormon sometime to see that. By contrast, the only NT books to even bothering mentioning the name of the author are Paul's letters, James, Peter, Jude and Revelation. The book titles we have for the other books were added later on the basis of firm tradition. The author of Revelation merely identifies himself with the common name John, with no further designation so it is doubtful that the author is trying to pass off a forgery or he would have said “John the Apostle.” Now it is possible that another John such as an early church leader known as John the Elder wrote it, but in favor of the Apostle as author is strong church tradition. Two early 2nd century church leaders, Iraeneus and Justin Martyr, state that the apostle was the author. Iraeneus' testimony is especially important since he was a student of Polycarp who was in turn a student of John the Apostle.
Secondly, the main reason actual Bible forgeries were written in the first place was to push some new theological point the author wanted to make. By contrast, the Letter of James strikes no new ground and firmly belongs within the background of 1st century Christianity in Jerusalem with heavy borrowing from Jesus' (his brother's) own teachings. And it is doubtful that the Book of Jude was written under a false name since hardly anyone in ancient times bothered to pen a forgery under the name of an obscure person. That only leaves the letters of Paul and Peter in doubt.
As far as the Pauline epistles are concerned, opinions range all over the map and vary widely depending what criteria are used. As just one example, look at the results from so-called objective and scientific computer analyses of the language used.
Study Authentic Books
Morton 5 Rom, Cor, Gal, Phm
(1966)
Kenny 12 all but Titus
(1986)
Neumann 10 all but the Pastorals
(1990)
Mealand 8 all but Pastorals, Col, and Eph
(1995)
Ledger 6 Rom, Cor, Gal, Phm, 2 Thess
(2011)
(Raymond Brown, An Introduction to the NT, p. 588)
But one fact alone can account for any so-called stylistic differences between these letters: namely, that Paul employed a series of co-authors and secretaries in writing them. Another problem with this sort of analysis is that it assumes that an author never changes his style with time or different circumstances or audiences. That assumption can be disproved just by looking at one modern novelist, James Joyce, who completely changed his writing style each time he wrote another of his four novels. And actually, within Ulysses, each chapter is written in a different style, and Finnegan's Wake is not even written in what would be called English.
A teaching that is widely found among liberal Christian sources is that just because the dubious Pauline letters found in the New Testament were written without any direct contribution from Paul himself, that didn't hinder the early Christian authorities from including them in the Canon. In fact, they state, pseudonymity (writing a book under the name of a more famous personality) was quite a widespread and perfectly acceptable practice in the ancient world of the time. D. A. Carson (Dictionary of NT Background, pp. 857-864) skewers that argument by marshaling a number of ancient citations proving that (a) the early Church Fathers took great pains to determine the actual authors and discard any spurious writings and (b) Greek, Roman and Hebrew sources agree that pseudonymity was a dishonest practice.
It is interesting that one of Paul's “disputed” epistles is II Thessalonians, which happens to contain a warning against those who produce and circulate letters purporting to be by him (II Thessalonians 2:1-2).
The Epistles of Peter
1 Peter: “The language, style, and content and theological developments seem unlikely for the Galilean fisherman and missionary...” (Boring)
Silvanus as co-author (I Pet. 5:12): The unusual literary structure of the letter is identical to that of I and II Thessalonians (co-authored by Silvanus).
2 Peter: “...the book does not seem to have any distinctive views that would require presentation under a false name.” (Blum)
There are stylistic similarities with both 1 Peter and the speeches of Peter in the Book of Act (Harvey & Towner)
One critical source points out that there are tens of thousands of differences between KJV and the earliest NT manuscript. I don't know whether that is meant to cast doubt on the accuracy of the Bible or just on the KJV. If it is the latter, I am not at all surprised at the number, although much depends on how you define and count the differences. The reason is that KJV is not based on the oldest manuscripts, but on the majority of the existing manuscripts available at the time (1600's). Modern translations rely on all the manuscripts. including many important earlier ones that weren't available to the translators of KJV.
Mormons relegate the Bible to a secondary status and will explain to you that it can't be trusted to tell the whole truth since it was in Roman Catholic hands for years and they introduced distortions in the Bible to justify their doctrines. You should be especially aware of one verse they like to quote, which contains wording not found in modern translations. “There are three witnesses [in heaven: the Father, the Word and the Holy Spirit and these three are one.]” Again, we have so many early manuscripts nowadays that the few later additions to the text such as this one are readily caught. While we are on the subject of Mormons, they treat the Bible as one of four holy texts and add the caveat that it is only trustworthy in a proper translation. Joseph Smith produced the official translation, which had an uncommon number of borrowings from Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible. Interestingly, you can see from comparison of these two translations of Genesis 1:1, both by Smith at different time periods, that his own “inerrant” translation of this verse appears to have undergone a drastic shift over the years.
“Inspired” Version: “Yea, in the beginning I created the heaven, and the earth upon which thou standeth.”
King Follett Discourse: “The head of one of the Gods brought forth the Gods.”
Then there are five biblical passages in which it supposedly states, according to an anonymous internet source, that the scribes introduced falsehoods into the Bible. Read each of them for yourself and see if you agree that statement is true. These passages are listed below with some explanatory comments.
Jeremiah 8:8-9
“Their confidence in the written page (Law of Yahweh) prevented them from accepting the word of Yahweh spoken through the prophets.” J. A. Thompson
“The delusion, or falsehood, which the scribes have created seems to be not so much the law itself, as the resultant conceit that possession of the law gives all necessary wisdom.” John Bright
“People or scribes (we are not told which) ...think that because they have the law...they are safe...They manipulate it to their own ends.” Douglas Jones
Job 13:4 refers to Job's three friends, who are “wise” men, not scribes.
Isaiah 43:27 may refer to false prophets (NRSV), priests (NIV), or kings (Anchor Bible).
Luke 11:52 refers to lawyers, not scribes (who are mentioned in the following verse).
In Jeremiah 16:19, the “inherited lies” refer to the worship of idols by Israel, as made clear in the following verse.
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