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The canon of the New Testament was confirmed as far back as the 16th century by various church councils. It contains books that were long accepted by believers and churches as writings inspired by the Holy Spirit. There were of course, many others but almost universally throughout the centuries, only the 27 books that we have today were considered to be the inspired Word of God. In other words, there was a long and careful process (and I believe strongly, guided by God) in determining which ones are or are not.

From a purely secular or humanistic standpoint, the process of selection appears to be leaning toward a particular bias. But lest we forget, God is alive and if His Word is to be gathered and passed on from generation to generation of believers, then make no mistake about it, He will be involved in the process. That is where His guiding hand comes in, leading fallible humans in ways beyond our understanding to truths He has revealed. As such, the entire selection process of the biblical material is not based on human whims and fancies, but on God who, despite human frailty, acted through finite vessels to uphold His own truths and standards and miraculously brought forth the Bible as we know it today. It carries God’s message to mankind for all ages regardless of human approval or disapproval. This makes sense because Scripture is, after all, God’s Word, not man’s. God is the author and just as Peter says in 2 Peter 1:20-21, the human vessel is merely His chosen messenger:

20 Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation of things. 21 For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.

When considering the entire selection process, we cannot take God out of the equation, or we would end up looking at the messenger instead of the Author.

regards,
Biblical Correspondence
RBC Ministries

why they didn’t insert the writing or letters? i hears that it can change our look in christian. is that true?

Does this apply, do you think, to the gospel writers’ direct reporting of the exact words spoken by various people?

I have in mind how often our gospels’ writers “quote” other people. Besides Jesus’ the gospels also record words of the disciples, Herod, angels, demons, Satan, tax collectors, and crowds of people all saying the same words all together. The gospels even record long speeches spoken in dreams, and verbatim accounts of inner thoughts that were never spoken, but that Jesus knew because He could read minds.

Here’s our Bible reliability question : How’d they do that? How are the gospel writers able to quote the incidental ephemeral speech of all those bit players exactly ?

How did the gospel writers know exactly,
word for word what the angel said in Joseph’s dream, [Mt 1, MT 2]
word for word what Herod said in his secret meeting, [Mt 2]
word for word what the centurion said [Mt 8]
word for word what the man with leprosy said [Mt 8]
word for word what the demons said [Mt 8]
word for word what the Pharisees thought in their private thoughts but never spoke? [Lk 5]
Word for word the things said by the woman at the well? [Jn 4]

What possible method could our gospel writers have used to come up with all the various verbatim quotations they claim to give?

Or did the gospel writers get all those “quotations” by just making them up? Is it more likely that “Matthew” knew the words Herod spoke in a secret meeting, or did “Matthew” probably, like everyone else back then, just make up quotes because that was the standard way to tell a story?

And if the only reasonable non-magical explanation is that the gospel writers got their “quotations” by making them up, then …. our gospel writers made stuff up. Just made it up. And it is not true the gospels are historical, not in the sense that the sayings and events we read about in them actually happened.

Bino Bolumai

/ In Bino Veritas /