117
Q.
Who got to decide which books would be included?
- Dale T. Irvin and Scott W. Sunquist, History of the World Christian
Movement: Volume 1—Earliest Christianity to 1453 (Orbis Books, 2001). - Luke Timothy Johnson, The Writings of the New Testament: An Interpretation
(Fortress Press, 2002). - Neil R. Lightfoot, How We Got the Bible (Baker Books, 2010).
- Lee Martin McDonald, The Biblical Canon: Its Origin, Transmission, and
Authority (Hendrickson, 2007). - Jaroslav Pelikan, Whose Bible Is It? A Short History of the Scriptures
(Penguin, 2005). - Pheme Perkins and Marc Z. Brettler, “The Canons of the Bible,” in The
New Oxford Annotated Bible, NRSV (Oxford Univ. Press, 2001).
Suggested Questions for Further Discussion/Thought
- What are the books of the Bible you gravitate toward? Why?
- What do you think of the principles that church leaders used in their
process of discernment? Did they leave out any important principles? Did
they include any that you would have omitted? - Why do you think the authenticity of the book of Revelation was
questioned?