http://www.westarinstitute.org/Periodicals/4R_Articles/canon.html
How did the church decide which books belong to the New Testament? When was the decision made? The answers to these questions constitute one of the most revealing yet least known aspects of early Christian history.
This question is traditionally referred to as the formation of the canon. The meaning of the Greek term canon is "norm" or "rule," the standard by which things can be measured. In designating the twenty-seven books of the New Testament as a canon, the church was declaring them to be its "rule" for faith and practice, its "normative" collection of writings.
The first list of "canonical" books that names the same twenty-seven writings found in our New Testament appears in the Easter letter of Athanasius , Bishop of Alexandria, Egypt, in 367 C.E. He names them in a different order, to be sure. Even so, the first list that agrees with ours was a long time in coming
(MEN chose what books and what order, and over 350 years after Christ)
http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/scopes/gen1st.htm
1. In the Beginning: Two Stories of Creation
by Doug Linder (2004)
In the beginning, about 3,000 years ago*, Jewish desert dwellers in what is present-day southern Israel told a story around campfires about the creation of the first man and first woman. The story they told, and passed on to generations of future desert dwellers, described a pre-creation scene much like the desert landscape in which they daily struggled for existence. From the dry desert dust the Creator forms a man and breaths life into him, and then places him in a beautiful oasis-like garden, abundant with fruits. The Creator takes a personal interest in this first man, and sets about trying to find him a suitable companion. When none of the creatures He first forms provides the man the comfort He had hoped, the Creator makes the first woman. Everything goes well for a spell, in the story told in the desert, but then the Creator is disobeyed and bad things start to happen.
Four or five centuries later, five-hundred-plus miles to the east in what is most likely present-day Iraq, a remarkable Jewish writer—whose name we do not know—set about the ambitious task of constructing a primary history of his people. Evil Merodach reigned in this dark time of Jewish exile, around 560 B.C., and the writer hoped that his history would help his people endure their many trials.
The writer was most likely a priest, and might have been assisted in his work by other priests and scribes. To accomplish his mission, he acquired at least two pre-existing writings on Jewish history. The prior writings came from different places and different times. One set of writings used the Canaanite term, “Elohim,” as the name of the creator god. A second set of writings, more ancient than the first, used a Judean term, “YHWH” (translated “Jehovah” in English), to describe its deity.
The priest wove the two texts together, trying to avoid repetition and altering them where necessary to avoid blatant inconsistencies. The priest confronted an additional problem: the two texts originally reflected views about two different gods in a time of polytheism, but by the time he compiled his history, belief in a single god had become prevalent among Jews. The priest, therefore, sought to remove passages supporting the polytheism of an earlier age—and, except for a few hints here and there, he succeeded. Finally, he added some writing of his own, or of his priestly contemporaries, that reflected the ideas of his own, more mature, period of Judaism.
(Written and edited by man)
The story the writer put together from the various texts is a compelling one. “The greatest story ever told,” it is now often called. Without question, it is the most significant history—if that term is appropriate for such a blend of real events and legends—ever written. Some of the events he described are consistent with other historical records, but many others—generally those before the time of Saul and David, or about 1000 B.C.—cannot be tested for accuracy, and are no doubt shaped to reflect the priest’s religious and political goals. The history includes dramatic accounts of persecution, escape, exile, sacrifice, and global devastation by a great flood. It tells of a creator god who watches over his people, tests his people, and promises them great things if only they honor his commandments. As any great story must, the history has villains and it has heroes. No figure plays a more heroic and central role in the priest’s work than a prophet by the name of Moses, born in Egypt in the 13th century B.C. Remarkably, memory of Moses survived in the writer’s people through seven centuries—and was, in fact, the inspiration for the task he gave himself.
The writer believed that his story would not be complete without an explanation of how things--the sun, the earth, the seas—and life--plants, animals, and humans--came to be. For good measure, the writer decided to include two such explanations. He did so even though the two stories contradicted each other on several points.
