Why Do We Have the Books of the Bible We Do?

The protestant Christian Bible has 66 books, 39 books in the Old Testament and 27 books in the New Testament. But why those particular books and who chose them?

I frequently hear people say that the church did not choose the books of the Bible, God did. How can you argue with that? From the faith perspective, anything good that happens because of God. Saying God chose the books of the Bible is not that helpful.

The Old Testament

The church inherited the Old Testament from the Jewish community. What Christians call the Old Testament, Jews often just refer to as “the Bible.” It is also sometimes called the Tanak, with the three letters T,N, and K referring to the Hebrew names for the three parts: Law, Prophets, and Writings.

We do not fully know how the Old Testament canon came about. Definitely all of the 39 books were compiled and recognized by the time they were translated in Greek as the Septuagint in the third and second century BC. But even then, there were other books that were valued as well.

Read What’s the Difference Between the Apocrypha and the Pseudepigrapha?

By the time of Jesus, at the very least the Law and the Prophets were recognized as canon. So when Jesus refers to the Law and the Prophets (Matthew 22:40), he is referring to the Bible.

But there may have been some discussion about the Writings. Should Esther be included with its lack of mention of God? And Ecclesiastes makes some statements that can be concerning. But these things were worked out and the synagogue and the church agreed (separately) on the books we have.

The New Testament

You will frequently hear about hundreds of Gospels, plus all sorts of other Christian writings that almost made it into the New Testament. The truth is more complicated than that.

It is true that there are more Gospels than the four canonical Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John). The Wikipedia article on the New Testament apocrypha gives a pretty good summary of the books that we know about.

Why the four we have rather than any of these others? My first response is to encourage people to read some of these other Gospels. Aside from having something to do with Jesus, they are very different than the four Gospels. They are not even really the same genre.

Not only that, the four Gospels are the only ones we have from the first century. Some scholars attempt to put the Gospel of Thomas into the first, but it is really a second century text. The only Gospels with a likelihood of recording the ministry of Jesus accurately are the ones in our New Testament.

Most likely, the church accepted the four Gospels and Paul’s letters (probably including Hebrews) as being authoritative. Remember that these texts were copied by hand and it would not be easy or affordable to have a widely distributed and complete collection of Christian texts.

There were some debates over some of the New Testament texts, such as 2 Peter and 2 and 3 John. There were also concerns about Revelation. Only a few books were considered that did not make it. This would include 1 Clement, Epistle of Barnabas, and Shepherd of Hermas.

Christian apologists will often try to build confidence in the canon by saying the church naturally recognized the inspiration of those authoritative books. Again, that is true as it goes but it neglects the fact that there was some disagreement. The exact list of 27 books as we know it does not appear until 367 AD in a letter by Athanasius.

Conclusion

So who chose the books of the Bible? Assuming God was in the process, the books were chosen by many people both Jewish and Christian and the process took centuries. There were debates and disagreements. There was widespread agreement on the largest portions of the Old and New Testaments.

This is a little more messy than some apologists might like to admit and a lost more reasonable than many skeptics would like. We have received the Bible we have. It did not drop out of heaven but it is the Bible God wanted us to have.

Recommended Book: One book that I have read and very much recommend is Who Chose the Gospels?: Probing the Great Gospel Conspiracy by C.E. Hill. This is an Amazon affiliate link.

I am working on an online course that is an Introduction to the Bible. When it is finished, it will be found here.