How can Protestants know what books are part of the New Testament?

Question

Since there is no list of what books make up the New Testament in either of those books.


Who made this list?

I mean Protestants only believe what's in the Bible right well, what books are in the bible is not in the bible. see?

Answer 1

Kathy posted:
The Council of Nicea made up that list. Since that event happened hundreds of years before the Protestant Church was formed, why wouldn't they know which books are a part of the New Testament?

I reply:
The council of Nicea was to categorically agree that Jesus was indeed both human and divine. Nothing about the correct list of books to be in the Bible. This was decided upon at the councils of Hippo, Carthage and Rome in the late 300's. The list of books approved by those councils is the exact same group of books found in the Catholic Bibles of today. The Protestants at the foundation of the Reformation decided on another list of OT books that the Jews at the end of the first century chose. This jewish council chose that particular collection of books (which contain 7 fewer books that the Cahtolic one) to distance themselves from the Christians who were using a collection of books that were accepted previously.

God Bless
Robin

Answer 2

The Council of Nicea made up that list. Since that event happened hundreds of years before the Protestant Church was formed, why wouldn't they know which books are a part of the New Testament?

Answer 3

Well, you open up any copy of the Bible to the Contents page, look down to the sub-heading The New Testament, and there's the list! The publisher got the printer to do it. Very helpful.

Answer 4

If you open The Bible and about half way back it says :The New Testament. All of the books in it are in it. The books that are not in it are left out, mainly by the Council of Nicea, who had a lot of stuff thrown at them. If you favorite (probably the Testament of Mary Magdalene) was left out, sorry. Just be glad the Testament of Igmash, the town drunk who fell down a well and was saved by the soldiers who were pretty nice but a bit annoyed but hauled his *** out anyway because of divine intervention wasn't admitted.

Answer 5

Because what was the first acoount of Jesus' coming after the book of Malichi and from Matthews account. While all the 4 gospels are the same they are different accounts from 4 different disciples.
But if we have a clear account of Jesus' coming that stayed pure to books and was translated right then we must believe and trust this is how God intended it to be.

Answer 6

I suppose you believe it was the Roman Catholic Church.
It was the consensus of Christians throughout the known world, including the Eastern Orthodox Church and other Churches, that these books were inspired by the Holy Spirit. They were first listed at the Council of Carthage in 397AD, which was a gathering of many Churches, not just the RCC. Individual books were accepted as Scripture before this time (2 Peter 3:16, 1 Tim 5:17) and most where accepted by the majority of Christians in the time period just after the apostles.

Something to consider... is it possible that the smug and pious attitudes of many Catholics toward other Christians is showing a lack of love and understanding of their fellow man? It is a sad reflection of religious justification, not the reality of the Spiritual sanctification which all Christians have found in Christ.

Answer 7

After going through a long & thorough process of sifting out many Apocrypha & pseudopigraphic books, the Canon had been closed.

Amazingly, the 66 books in the Old & New Testament correspond scripturally to the 66 chapters of Isaiah.

Anything that is left out of the Bible should remain left out - I am sure you don't need fairy-tale stories of Jesus' childhood included in the Bible, do you?

Answer 8

Protestants dispute the authenticity of the few books that they do not include in their NT, just as the original Church debated the authenticity of which books went in and which were not.

Answer 9

I asked them almost the same question, but they told me that it's not important to know what's supposed to be in the Bible and what's supposed to be not, the most important thing is that it made them feel good. talk about avoiding the issue. protestants are good at that. actually, I am mainly talking about the fundies.

here's the link to the question I asked them: http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index;_ylt=AluOYNxWLDQdiPyfa8ynKErty6IX;_ylv=3?qid=20071017071755AAJQT2b

if you like, you can read their answers.

Answer 10

Shh! Catholics did, but don't let the Protestants know, ok?