How We Got the Bible

The documents existed and were being circulated before anyone drew up a list. What the letters say about their own reading, and where books cite other books.

The generation after the apostles used the writings without arguing for them, which is stronger evidence than argument. Who quoted what, book by book.

The first fixed list of Christian Scripture was drawn up by a man the church excommunicated. What Marcion cut, why it mattered, and how he forced the question.

Irenaeus argued from the four winds and the four corners of the earth. The reasoning is weak and the fact behind it is not. What the argument was really doing.

A stable core of twenty books and a long argument about seven. What Origen and Eusebius each sorted where, and why Revelation got listed in two categories.

Not a council and not an emperor. The first list of exactly twenty-seven books appears in a bishop's Easter letter, and the councils came thirty years after it.