Many people question whether the right books were added to the Bible during its canonization (compilation), and if God  did indeed inspire all of them? Concerns also arise about books discovered post-canonization that were not included.

So is the Bible we have today complete and authorized by God?

Bruce Metzger, a renowned scholar from Princeton University, insightfully stated that, “the canon is a list of authoritative books more than it is an authoritative list of books.” What he implied is that the early Christians did not determine what should be in the Bible rather they discovered what books were ‘inspired’ by God and only put those in the Bible. They did so by asking the following questions:

• • • Was it written by an acclaimed prophet of God?
    • Was the writing confirmed by the acts of God or by someone who was an established eyewitness? For example, Paul, who witnessed the resurrected Jesus and performed miracles, worked closely with Luke, who carefully investigated and interviewed multiple eyewitnesses to write his account.Was it widely accepted by the people of God?

Further, the approved 66 books that were canonized also met the following criteria:

• • • They were recorded during the lives of the apostles’.
    • They were acknowledged by the early church fathers as authoritative.
    • They were collected in a single volume, not as scattered manuscripts.
    • They were publicly read and explained, not hidden or exclusive to a few people.
    • They were commentaries written on these books, which means they had to be thoroughly studied.
    • They were acknowledged by opponents who admitted that that the gospels were written by the disciples.

In some way, all of the 66 books of the Bible we have today meet one or more of these criteria.

In addition, people question the inclusion of certain Apocryphal books (covered in the next question)  and  recent discoveries like the “Gospel of Thomas” and “Gospel of Judas.” However these were later found to be forgeries, not written during the apostles’ lifetimes (written during the second century), failing to meet the early church’s criteria for canonicity.

The rigorous and spiritually guided process of canonization assures us that the Bible we have today is complete and authoritative. The 66 books of the Bible meet the stringent criteria set by early Christian Church, affirming their divine inspiration and historical reliability.