Who Decided Which Books Are in the Bible?

No one invented the list: the books of the Bible were inspired by God and then recognized by God's people. The Jewish people received the Old Testament; Christian churches recognized the New over a few centuries. The councils of the fourth century gave no book its authority; they confirmed, in essence, what the churches already used as Scripture. The result is the 66 books of Scripture, 39 in the Old Testament and 27 in the New, which evangelical churches receive and which Midvash receives as the word of God.

Did people invent the canon, or recognize it?

The canon is the list of books that serves as the measure of Christian faith. The deciding question is whether the church created that list or recognized what God had already given, and Scripture itself points to the second answer. Paul writes that all Scripture is breathed out by God (2 Timothy 3:16), and Peter says no prophecy ever came by human will, but people spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:20-21). If a book's origin is in God, its authority existed before any gathering of bishops.

A comparison helps, though it is not a biblical argument: a botanist who classifies a plant did not invent it, only identified it by traits it already had. The Christians who recognized the books of the Bible did something similar. The history below shows how that recognition happened.

Who fixed the Old Testament?

Christians received the Old Testament from the Jews, who were entrusted with the oracles of God (Romans 3:2). Jesus himself speaks of the Scripture of Israel as a collection in three parts. After his resurrection he said that everything written about him in the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms had to be fulfilled (Luke 24:44). That arrangement recalls the three parts of the Hebrew canon, Law, Prophets, and Writings; in that verse “Psalms” is the name of the last block or of its first book, and the text does not say that the limits of the collection were already closed.

On another occasion Jesus spoke of the blood of all the prophets, from Abel to Zechariah (Luke 11:50-51; cf. Matthew 23:35). Many scholars see in this a sweep from the first book to the last in the Hebrew order, Genesis to Chronicles, but that is an inference, and the text does not say so. Outside the Bible, the Jewish historian Josephus, at the end of the first century, speaks of 22 books recognized as divine, which scholars usually understand as the content of our 39 books counted another way (Josephus does not list the titles). Scholars debate how firmly the edges of the third block were drawn by then; what the text supports is that Jesus and the apostles cite this collection as Scripture with authority.

The books called the Apocrypha or deuterocanonical books stayed outside the Hebrew canon; the subject has its own answer on Midvash.

How did the churches recognize the books of the New Testament?

In the New Testament, recognition was gradual, and it begins inside the New Testament itself. Peter places Paul's letters alongside the other Scriptures (2 Peter 3:15-16), and Paul instructs that his letter be read in another church as well (Colossians 4:16). Jesus had promised that the Spirit would bring to the apostles' memory what he had said and guide them into all the truth (John 14:26; John 16:13), and the church was built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets (Ephesians 2:20).

Scholars usually sum up in three questions the tests the churches applied when doubts arose:

• Apostolic origin: does the book come from an apostle or someone in his circle, as Mark and Luke were?
• Faithfulness to the faith: does it agree with the teaching the churches had received from the beginning?
• Wide use: did churches in many regions read it as Scripture, and with spiritual benefit?

Two pressures are commonly cited as having sped the process up in the second century. Around 140, Marcion, in Rome, proposed a slimmed-down Bible with no Old Testament, an edited Gospel of Luke, and ten letters of Paul. In the same century, texts bearing apostles' names circulated, used by Gnostic groups, such as the Gospel of Thomas. Around 180, Irenaeus argued in Against Heresies that there are four Gospels, and the so-called Muratorian fragment, traditionally dated to the late second century, is one of the earliest catalogs of New Testament books.

In 367, Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, sent the churches of Egypt an Easter letter with the earliest known list that gives exactly the 27 books of the New Testament we have today. The regional synods of Hippo (393) and Carthage (397), in North Africa, recorded the same New Testament list. These were regional gatherings, not decisions of all Christendom, and they confirmed, in essence, what the churches already used. One point of honesty: for the Old Testament, the lists of those synods include books that Protestants do not count, and evangelical churches keep the Old Testament of the Hebrew canon.

Constantine, Nicaea, and the “hidden” gospels: what is myth?

A popular idea says the emperor Constantine and the Council of Nicaea, in 325, chose the books of the Bible. What is known about Nicaea points to other business: the deity of Christ, against Arius, and the date of Easter. No surviving source from Nicaea records a vote on a list of books. By the time Nicaea met, most of the New Testament had been read in the churches for generations.

Another idea says the church hid “true” gospels, such as those of Thomas and Judas. Most scholars date these texts from the second century onward; they were written after the time of the apostles, and many teach a secret knowledge that contradicts the Old Testament and the earlier Gospels. There was no conspiracy: churches that already used the four Gospels weighed those texts and set them aside.

There is also the objection that if the church listed the books, then authority belongs to the church. To recognize is not to confer. The early Christians were the human instrument of that recognition, which deserves gratitude, but they themselves submitted to the books they recognized. Final authority remains the word of God, not the assembly that cataloged it.

What does this change about how you read the Bible?

It changes your confidence. The list did not come from a political vote or from chance, but from centuries of use, testing, and prayer in the churches, and anyone with doubts can investigate it without fear, because the history is documented. It also changes your posture toward new messages. Jude 1:3 speaks of the faith delivered once for all to the saints, and Hebrews 1:1-2 says that in these last days God has spoken by his Son. Evangelical churches conclude from these texts that revelation was completed in Christ; that is an inference, since Jude speaks of the faith delivered, not of a list of books. The Spirit is active today, but whatever anyone says in his name must be examined by Scripture, as the Bereans did (Acts 17:11; 1 Thessalonians 5:21). On that conviction, evangelical churches do not add books to Scripture.

Finally, it changes how you read in practice. Because the 66 books together make up one Scripture, it is worth reading the whole, not only the best-known passages. It is the same God who speaks in all of them: Jesus shows that the Scriptures of Israel speak of him (Luke 24:27), and the New Testament bears witness to that same Christ.