Let's see if I have anything to add. We talked about this recently, too, so I checked with a friend to make sure I remembered what we went over.

The five points that unipeg states are accurate, but they apply more to the old testament. It is best to look at the origins of the OT and NT canons separately because they arose differently. Because it is so ancient, the OT canon is harder to piece together. One thing to remember is that they were written as completely separate books, so you can do comparisons between them without it being circular reasoning.

The NT canon is a little easier because we have more documentation. The group that put together the final canon looked at a few things when deciding, such as who wrote it, was it consistent, and was it embraced and benificial to an active church of the time. If an apostle had written it, that was a definite plus, but not a guarantee. The writings needed to be consistent with current and past Jewish/Christian teachings and history, not a random tangent. Also, some books that were embraced by current churches that were consistent and seemed to be beneficial were also included.

So, a group was formed that presented and debated books based on these factors and voted for what should be included. This opens up another can of worms if you think that human error comes into play, but if you believe the scriptures are "God breathed," then He can obviously be present in this process, too.

I hope this helps some.

Fer"I wish I knew more"rick

> > 1) Was it written by a prophet of God?
> >
> > 2) Was he confirmed by an act of God?
> >
> > 3) Does the writing tell the truth about God?
> >
>
> How do you tell if someone is a prophet of God or not, without using the Bible as a source? Or is it if enough independant portions of scripture confirm each other? I'm trying to understand why certain writings are included in the Bible and others are not, and it doesn't quite work if you can use the Bible as a sole reference for deciding it's validity.
>
> > 4) Does it have the power of God?
>
> This point is the most interesting to me. How do you determine if something has the power of God?
>
> >
> > 5) Was it accepted by the people of God?
>
> Who are the people of God? Since different sects (is this even the right term?) of Christianity offer different writings as cannon, how can you say which is correct and which is not?
>
> > >Furthermore, how does one determine on an individual level that what you are getting is the authentic word of God?
> >
> > um.... I guess if it's consistent with biblical teaching. That's really the only way to know for sure, as far as I know
>
> This was sort of a personal question that I phrased poorly. What I want to know is how do you, personally, know that what you consider to be God's word is indeed that? I do think you answered it in the first part of your post...
>
> Stephen