Contrary to common belief, there was never a one-time, truly universal decision as to which books should be included in the Bible. It took over a century of the proliferation of numerous writings before anyone even bothered to start picking and choosing, and then it was largely a cumulative, individual and happenstance event, guided by chance and prejudice more than objective and scholarly research, until priests and academics began pronouncing what was authoritative and holy, and even they were not unanimous.
Astonishingly, the story isn't even that simple: for the Catholic church centered in Rome never had any extensive control over the Eastern churches, which were in turn divided even among themselves, with Ethiopian and Coptic and Syrian and Byzantine and Armenian canons all riding side-by-side with each other and with the Western Catholic canon, which itself was never perfectly settled until the 15th century at the earliest, although it was essentially established by the middle of the 4th century. Indeed, the current Catholic Bible is largely accepted as canonical from fatigue: the details are so ancient and convoluted that it is easier to simply accept an ancient and enduring tradition than to bother actually questioning its merit.
V. The Gnostics Make the First Move
Around 135 the Gnostic Basilides composed a mighty treatise called the Exigetica which, judging from quotes by critics, contained lengthy exegesis on Gospel stories like the Sermon on the Mount and the Rich Man and Lazarus (M 78-9). We do not know if he was drawing on any actual Gospels, or oral tradition. Nevertheless, the attack was underway: whoever disagreed with him had to respond in kind, with their own texts, and somehow win the resulting propaganda war. For this purpose the New Testament was all but born. And in addition to this was the political need for a scapegoat: pressure against Christians by the Roman authorities prompted many to criticise other Christian sects with the general theme "they are the bad Christians, but we are the good ones, so you should punish them instead."
In 144, Marcion proposed a reform of Christianity for which the church leaders expelled him merely for suggesting: that the OT was contradictory and barbaric and that the true Gospel was not at all Jewish, but that Jewish ideas had been imported into NT texts by interpolators, and only Paul's teachings are true. Moreover, he rejected the idea that Jesus was flesh, and the idea of Hell. But what is significant for us is that this implies a recognition of "texts" as being authoritative (M 90-4).
Marcion's canon influenced the final canon of the Church. His prefaces to the letters of Paul that he thought authentic were even retained in several versions of the Latin Vulgate Bible, and many of his proposed emendations of these letters and the Gospel of Luke have turned up in numerous surviving manuscripts, showing that his legacy was intimately integrated at various levels throughout the surviving Church, affecting the transmission as well as the selection of the final canonical texts (M 94-9).
What is significant is that it is shortly after Tatian and Justin's contributions that we discover the first instance of organized action against authors of new Christian source-texts. Although such action is necessary for there to be any hope of control over a reliable textual tradition in a milieu of wanton invention and combative propaganda, the fact that it only begins at such a late date is another blow against those who set their hopes on having complete confidence in the present canon.
XI. Dionysius, Athenagoras and Irenaeus
In this same period we know these books were being doctored and battles were being fought over authenticity along ideological lines.
It is not possible that the Gospels can be either more or fewer in number than they are, since there are four directions of the world in which we are, and four principal winds...the four living creatures [of Revelation 4.9] symbolize the four Gospels...and there were four principal covenants made with humanity, through Noah, Abraham, Moses, and Christ. (Against All Heresies 3.11.8; cf. M 263)
Clearly, less than scholarly reasoning was affecting the canonization process
XV. Tertullian, Cyprian, and the Century of Chaos
Tertullian, a highly-educated lawyer, converted to Christianity in 195 A.D., and was an avid proponent of orthodoxy in Carthage, until 206 when, he became a leader of the Montanist sect of Christianity. Tertullian generally accepts the traditional canon, including Hermas, until his conversion to Montanism, at which point he declares it false
The first organized Imperial persecutions of Christianity (under Decius and Valentinian, and then Diocletian and Galerius) took place in this period, and by the beginning of the 4th century involved the outlawing and destruction of Christian literature. Even more than combating heresy, this became an important factor in compelling decisions of canonicity by forcing Christians to decide which books could be surrendered to authorities and burned without committing a sin, in contrast with those that were worth dying for (M 106-8).
XVI. Eusebius, the First History of the Church, and the Earliest Complete Bibles
Eusebius of Caesarea, reveals the embarrassing complexity of the development of the Christian canon
Even in 327 A.D., when Eusebius published the final draft of his Church History, two years after the great Council of Nicea, which set out to establish a decisive orthodox creed that would be enforced by law throughout the world, there was no official Bible.
Finally, we have another anonymous list (in Latin) of the books included in the Bible, found in a 6th century manuscript, which confirms the state of confusion met by Eusebius, as well as the esteem still reserved for certain books no longer in the Bible today (cf. M 310-11). The list includes the four Gospels and Acts, as well as the Acts of Paul , only ten of Paul's Epistles (it excludes Hebrews, Philippians, and 1 and 2 Thessalonians), 1 and 2 Peter , James, Jude, 1, 2, and 3 John, Barnabas, Hermas, and the Apocalypses of John and Peter. Metzger suggests likely scribal errors here (230), but clearly, before the late 4th century, the contents of the Bible were neither entirely settled, nor quite like what they are today.
