I write on the feast day of St. Jerome, who, at the request of Pope St Damasus I, St. comprised the entire Bible in the late 4th century. The Bible is the fruit and work of the Church. Christ commanded his apostles to do seven explicit works: Proclaim the Good News, expel demons, cure the sick, baptize, celebrate the Eucharist, forgive sins, and shepherd the flock. these holy actions formed the Church. Along with the prophets, the letters of St. Paul and the "memoirs" (Gospel) of the Apostles were being read in the Eucharistic liturgies. (St. Justin Martyr +155; Catechism 1345). In 367, St. Athanasius compiled a list of 27 books of the New Testament. The first complete Biblical canon was promulgated at the Synod of Rome in AD 382. This was affirmed or supported at later councils of Hippo AD 393 and the 3rd Council of Carthage in AD 397.
How did a book or letter get into the New Testament? 1) Authorship: Written by an apostle or the disciple of an apostle. 2) Liturgy: was the text read in the sacred liturgies. 3) Content: did the document conform to apostolic tradition. There were many different books and letters, and each had to meet these criteria. Some writings denied the Incarnation, or the resurrection. Others were never read in the liturgies.
In the first century AD the canon, list, of books for the Old Testament was not closed. Essentially, there was no agreement in the Jewish world as to which books should be accepted beyond the Torah. There were different rabbinical schools who put forth different numbers of books in the OT. It took centuries after the destruction of the temple in AD 70, for the Jewish Rabbis to come to an agreement, and there was definitely no canon of scripture in the 1st century. We can detect interesting clues of this in the words of Jesus. Mt 5: 17 "I have not come to abolish the law and the prophets, but to fulfill them." Jesus refers to the first two parts of the Bible, the Torah and some history books and prophets. In Luke we see a third part. Lk 24: 44 "These are my words which I spoke to you, while I was still with you, that everything written about me in the law of Moses and the prophets and the Psalms must be fulfilled." The Psalms represent the Wisdom books. A Jewish historian who wrote in the first century, says: "It follows that we do not possess myriads of inconsistent books, conflicting with each other. Our books, those which are justly accredited, are but two and twenty, and contain the record of all time. " Against Apion, 1.37-43. There were various collections of the Hebrew scriptures but there was not one agreed upon collection. An example is that Sirach, Ecclesiasticus, which is not in the Protestant Bible, was quoted by some rabbis as Scripture and others as not being Scripture. It is the Church which brings the writings together to form the Bible.
We recently celebrated the beatification of Fulton Sheen. When he received his Emmy award for his television series, Life is Worth Living, Bl Fulton Sheen thanked his writers, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. Scripture, the Bible, is absolutely critical for us. It is the greatest spiritual reading. The Psalms are the backbone of all prayer. Christ Jesus and Scripture are given for the sake of our salvation. (On the Word of God, Dei Verbum 11 in Vatican II.) "We cannot conceive of one without the other: the Bible without Jesus, or Jesus without the Bible. Each is the interpretive key to the other. And because Christ is the subject of all the Scriptures, St. Jerome insists, "Ignorance of Scriptures is Ignorance of Christ." "(Hahn, 15).
(Scott Hahn, Introduction to the Ignatius Study Bible.)
Sirach, Ecclesiasticus. Rabbis often quoted from this book as if it were accepted as Scripture.
