Hi River,
The '07 Mobile Conference 'How We got The Bible' explains this in great detail. Here are a few excerpts.
http://forums.bible-truths.com/index.php/topic,5815.0.html ---------
Canonization - a book or writing has to be recognized, approved, or officially used or read or marked or stamped by the highest servants of God, as genuine and inspired of God.
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Our Lord is, of course the most credible witness as to what should be Scripture and what should be in your Bible that there is.
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Luke 24:44 And He said to them, These are the words which I spoke to you while I was still with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in THE LAW OF MOSES and in THE PROPHETS and in THE PSALMS about Me.
There it is. That is called the Tripartite Division of the Old Testament, the Law - the Prophets - the Psalms. The Psalms are also known as ‘the Writings.’ So Christ is telling us there is 3 divisions of Scripture that prophesy and talk about Him; the Law, the Prophets and the Psalms.
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All you had to do was go to the Temple or go to any Synagogue and you could see what the Scripture are. But these were not the Synagogues of the Gentiles.
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So everybody knew what these were, except maybe the Gentiles. Luke is a Gentile, writing to the Gentiles and that’s 'us' people. Now we know whatever constitutes the Laws, the Prophets and the Writings to the ancient Jews, that’s the Old Testament. So by the time of Christ, the Old Testament had to be completed
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So obviously the Apostles had all the Scriptures. They had the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the writings, they had it all. It (Old Testament) was in the synagogues and the Temple until 70 AD, but they also had them.
General epistles James, Peter, John and Jude should come before Paul's epistles. They were first to teach, first in authority (Acts 15) and first in teaching the milk of God's Word, followed by Paul's strong meat of God's Word.
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Paul knew that he was writing Scripture, he says…
Rom 16:25 Now to Him that is of power to establish you according to my gospel and the preaching of Jesus Christ, according to the revelation of the mystery which hath been kept secret since the world began,
v. 26 but NOW is made manifest, and by the scriptures of the prophets, according to the commandment of the everlasting God, made known unto all nations for the obedience of faith:
Was that manifest back during Isaiah’s prophecy? No. Back during David’s Psalms? No. “Now” he says.
II Cor. 12:7 And lest I should be exalted above measure by the abundance of the revelations, a thorn in the flesh was given to me,
Paul makes no bones about it, he says, I was given a lot of revelations from God. Well these revelations weren’t given to him just for his pride and vanity. So he knew all this stuff and this was going to be written down as Scripture
Eph 3:3-7 how that by revelation He made known to me the mystery (as I have briefly written already, by which, when you read, you may understand my knowledge in the mystery of Christ), which in other ages was not made known to the sons of men, as it has now been revealed by the Spirit to His holy apostles and prophets: that the Gentiles should be fellow heirs, of the same body, and partakers of His promise in Christ through the gospel, of which I was made a minister according to the gift of the grace of God given to me by the effective working of His power.
So in other ages, in the Old Testament this stuff was not known. They did not know what Paul was telling them. This is new revelation from God, “as it has now been revealed by the Spirit.” So there are apostles and prophets at the time of Paul. He was an Apostle and anybody who speaks, sings or writes inspired writing from God is a prophet.
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Because there was apostasy coming in the church. There is crime and corruption entering in; false prophets, antichrists, strong delusions. It says men shall be lovers of themselves, disobedient, proud, vain, booster, lovers of pleasure (II Tim. 3) and all of these things are coming into the church. So they need to be sure that everybody knows what is the Truth. Now they are going to set aside the books for the final canonization, as what are the Scriptures.
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SEVEN CANONIZATION PERIODS
1. Moses
2. David and Solomon
3. Isaiah and Hezekiah
4. Jeremiah and Josiah
5. Ezra and Nehemiah
6. Peter
7. John
So the canonization fell to Peter and John.
We read of John, He instructs him in Revelation 1:1 “What you see, write in a book…” So somehow that book (Revelation) had to join up with all the other books, as did I, II and III John and the Gospel of John. So John wrote 5 books; I John, II John, III John, The Gospel of John and Revelation.
I said there was 22 books written by 66 AD and by the end of John’s ministry, he added 5 more.
22 +5 = 27 + 22 OT books, all total 49.
7 x 7 = 49 = total completion.
That’s how many books there are suppose to be, that’s how many we have. So we’ve got the complete Bible.
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Audios
http://bible-truths.com/audio/Nashville07_1.mp3http://bible-truths.com/audio/Nashville07_2.mp3http://bible-truths.com/audio/Nashville07_3.mp3http://bible-truths.com/audio/Nashville07_4.mp3http://bible-truths.com/audio/Nashville07_5.mp3http://bible-truths.com/audio/Nashville07_6.mp3http://bible-truths.com/audio/Nashville07_7A.mp3http://bible-truths.com/audio/Nashville07_7B.mp3http://bible-truths.com/audio/Nashville07_8.mp3mercy, peace3 and love
Kat