He removed Bible bits he didn't like

One of the earliest challenges to the commonly recognized collection of books that the churches used as Scripture came from a man named Marcion. He was a wealthy and prominent church leader who lived in the early second century AD in a coastal in of northern Asia Minor (today this is in the country of Turkey).

He was passionate about the writings of the apostle Paul but had a very skewed idea of what they taught. Ultimately, he advocated that only ten letters of the apostle Paul should be accepted as Scripture as well as the Gospel of Luke; all other Scriptures should be rejected (including the Old Testament). Because of his wealth and influence, the churches of the Mediterranean world had to respond. This challenge became a huge motivation for the churches to declare formally and publicly what books they had already been using as Scripture.


The Early Church’s Recognition of God’s Word

So, as early as the second century AD, the church began developing the concept of the canon of Scripture to distinguish those books that were regarded as inspired by God and thus carried divine authority. The term comes from Greek where it commonly meant a “rule” or a “standard” and came to be applied to the standard books that made up the Bible. The eminent Princeton scholar Bruce Metzger noted that Marcion’s challenge was “accelerating the process of fixing the Church’s canon, a process that had already begun in the first half of the second century.”

By the time of Jesus, the thirty-nine books that constituted the Hebrew Bible (what we call the Old Testament) were widely recognized within Judaism as the Bible. Because of that, Jesus could cite from various books of the Old Testament by simply referring to them as a coherent and unified whole called “the Scriptures” (see, for example, Matt. 21:42; 22:29; 26:54, 56).

As for the twenty-seven books that we know as the New Testament, these were formally recognized as the canon of Scripture in the second through the fourth centuries. The apostle Peter himself referred to the letters of Paul as “Scripture” (2 Pet. 3:15–16). In one of the earliest church documents written after the final New Testament book was completed, the Gospel of Mark is cited as “Scripture” (2 Clement 2:4). The earliest church leaders regularly quote passages from the various New Testament documents, giving them authority as a divine revelation in a way that distinguishes them from any other writings.

It is important to realize, though, that from the moment the four Gospels (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John) were written, they were copied and circulated throughout the extent of the world where churches had been planted—Israel, Syria, Asia Minor, Egypt, Greece, Italy, and elsewhere. They began to be used regularly by the churches for teaching, worship, and devotion.

The same can be said about the collection of the letters of Paul, Peter, James, Jude, and John as well as the Letter to the Hebrews and the book of Revelation. They were rapidly copied, distributed to the churches, and in constant use as documents that were inspired by God and essential for the growth and nurture of believers. Wherever churches had been planted, believers were reading and using these documents as the revealed Word of God.

What this means is that there was no one individual who privately made a decision regarding what should be in the Bible. Or, similarly, there was no group of individuals who made such a decision and then imposed their decree upon all of the churches.

In fact, the process happened in precisely the opposite manner. The gatherings of church leaders who produced official lists of New Testament books were formally recognizing what the churches all over the world had already recognized and were using as the inspired and authoritative Scriptures. As Metzger notes, “The Church did not create the canon, but came to recognize, accept, and confirm the self-authenticating quality of certain documents.”3


Arnold, C. E., Arnold, J., & Packer, J. I. (2015). Short answers to big questions about God, the Bible, and Christianity (pp. 55–57). Grand Rapids, MI: Baker.