There is periodic discussion here concerning the selection of the books that make up the New Testament.  What process and criteria were used for the selection, and rejection, of books for inclusion into what we today call the New Testament?  This discussion will not attempt to address the authorship and dating of the books included in the New Testament since I have done that elsewhere and it really adds nothing to this discussion.  Nor will this address whether or not the story told in the New Testament is actually true.  Instead it will be limited solely to the selection process.

The process used for New Testament canonization was not well defined or directed and took a long time.  There are a number of factors that served to drive the selection of authoritative writings for the Christian churches.  These include a response to those deemed as heretics, persecution and the need to know which writings to hide from destruction, and the need to identify orthodoxy.  Some writings were accepted at a fairly early date, others were accepted much later, some were considered but later rejected, and there are others that have recently been discovered for which there seems to be no early discussion, indicating they had only a very narrow following.  Contrary to the perception of many, there is no recorded attempt at developing and mandating a standard canon from a centralized authority.  By the time the Councils met to discuss this topic, the canon was largely in place and at most was only ratified or tweaked by the Councils.

The criteria used for selection of these writings were not defined well before the process started.  The most important criteria seemed to be orthodoxy, authorship and familiarity.  Orthodoxy seemed to be the most important of these.  If the writings disagreed with the beliefs of the person defining the list, it was not included.  And yet, across the Roman Empire the churches all developed fairly similar lists.  The four gospels accepted today, along with Acts and Paul’s letters had widespread acceptance fairly early.  The only real dispute concerned the Catholic Epistles and Revelation along with a small handful of other writings including, the Letter of Clement to the Corinthians, the Epistle of Barnabas and the Shepherd of Hermas.  I can find no evidence that the Gospels of Thomas, Judas or Mary were ever considered for inclusion into the canon by any branch of the church.  Nor were they specifically rejected.  They actually appeared to be unknown to church authorities in the first few centuries

Other than the heretic Marcion, who accepted a watered down version of Luke and 10 of Paul’s letters, the earliest known list of writings identified as acceptable for the church is found in what is called “The Muratorian Fragment”.  This is generally believed to be from about 170 AD and is similar to the New Testament of today with the following exceptions.  The beginning is missing but lists Luke and John as the third and fourth gospels, the order they have today.  The list includes the Wisdom of Solomon and the Apocalypse of Peter but does not include Hebrews, James, 1^st and 2^nd Peter or 3^rd John.  The Shepherd of Hermas was authorized for reading but not considered scripture.

For the next few centuries various individuals across the Roman world defined lists of authorized scriptures for the churches in their area.  These lists generally only varied concerning the inclusion or exclusion of the same books as the Muratorian Fragment, although the latter lists generally included all but 2 or 3 of them.  In 367 A.D., Athanasius, the Bishop of Alexandria included in a letter what he considered to be the authoritative books of the New Testament, a list identical to what most Christians accept today.  This was not the end of the issue though.  Many continued for quite some time, actually up until today, either accepting or rejecting a handful of books.  A number of councils, or synods, met in the following centuries to ‘officially’ ratify the contents of the New Testament, but by that time, for all practical purposes, the decision had already been made.

It is clear that the New Testament of today was not available to the church of the first few centuries, at least in its finished form.  The four gospels and Paul’s writings were the two earliest collections and appear to have received near universal acceptance by the middle of the 2^nd century.  While there were many writings that came out of the early years of Christianity, there is little to indicate that more than about three dozen of them ever had anything like wide spread acceptance.  Of these, half were accepted by just about everyone leaving a written opinion and half of the remaining writings were accepted by enough to eventually be included into the canon.  From what I have been able to find there is no evidence of a conspiracy to reshape the beliefs of Christianity through the development of the canon.  Quite the opposite is actually suggested, that the canon was shaped by the beliefs of the early church.

The following links provide a more detailed discussion of this topic

-         The Formation of the New Testament Canon - http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/NTcanon.html.  Richard Carrier provides a detailed review of the canonization process from the prospective of an atheist.  This article is based to some extent on Bruce Metzger’s “The Canon of the New Testament: Its Origin, Development and Significance”

-         Ancient Canon Lists - http://www.bible-researcher.com/canon8.html.  This provides a collection of the older canon lists as well as quotes from the early centuries concerning opinions of the writings available to the church.

-         The New Testament Documents by FF Bruce, Chapter 3 - http://www.worldinvisible.com/library/ffbruce/ntdocrli/ntdocc03.htm. This is a brief description of the canonization process from the perspective of a well respected Christian scholar.