Posted: Jun 12, 2018 1:05 am
duvduv wrote:Can we get back to the substance of this thread??
It's been dealt with. In case you had not read along, here's the summary again:
The answer to the question "Who established the canon of the New Testament??" from wikisource.org:
The idea of a complete and clear-cut canon of the New Testament existing from the beginning, that is from Apostolic times, has no foundation in history. The Canon of the New Testament, like that of the Old, is the result of a development, of a process at once stimulated by disputes with doubters, both within and without the Church, and retarded by certain obscurities and natural hesitations, and which did not reach its final term until the dogmatic definition of the Tridentine Council.
The dogmatic definition of the Tridentine Council (1545 -1563) of course only applies to the Catholic Church. Prior to that the Orthodox and the Protestant Churches had already arrived at different dogmatic definitions, which is why the Bibles of each regard different numbers of books in the Bible as canonical. Different authorities, different outcomes.
In short, what is canonical has never been established. It has been asserted and revised many times by more or less self-appointed authoritative bodies and therefore the first instance of such is no more authoritative as the latest. All instances are outcomes determined by whose power prevailed at the time rather than what was THE TRUTH™.