“This “process of selection” was authoritatively conducted by the Catholic Church and by none other.”
Based on history, I will choose to hold a differing opinion
than you here. The inspiration of God’s Word - and it’s
recognition as God’s Word - began thousands of years before
the Church.
Christ recognized this when He picked up and
read from the scrolls in the Temple.
For this reason alone, your statement that the Church selected the books alone is demonstrably false. God started
the process before the birth of Christ. Christ Himself
picked up and validated the prior selection by reading
and quoting the scriptures that were already selected.
Both happened before the Church came into existence.
“Does one need to provide a recorded statement of a son calling a parent his mother to demonstrate conclusive proof of motherhood?
No, except that you tried to provide as statement initially,
which did not call her the Mother of God, so I asked for
you to complete the task you set for yourself and find a
specific verse. I knew when I asked you to do so that your
task was impossible. I think your statement is now confirming
that realization.
As I said up-thread, protestants make too little of Mary,
catholics too much. Neither is correct.
“Let each be convinced in his own heart.”
best,
ampu
Your train of logic proves too much. It confirms that the Church was in fact correct in acting on “the inspiration of God’s Word” to make the right call on what books should be included and what should be left out in making this authoritative selection, we call the Bible. In short, you prove the point the Church in making this particular incorporation of books, was and is Divinely inspired. The Church is the Church established by Christ and what we call the Petrine Authority and so the query “what happened before the Church came into existence” answers itself.
After having provided you with scriptural references to Mary being properly understood as the “Mother of God” you require more in the form of a something superfluous. Such a statement is not needed and hence why seek one except for purely pedantic reasons.
The old testament selection was performed by the council of Rabbis after the Christians did their selection of authoritive books of the New Testament. The Catholic Church had some theological things that they could not justify in the rabbinically selected old testament, and so added what are known as the apocrapha. Tobit, Maccabees, ect. Various branches of Protestantism rejected the revisions of the Catholic church. The Septugent (LXX) greek version of the old testament has passages not written in the Hebrew texts, and so rejected by the Council of Rabbis (most famously the Susannah, Bel and Dragon narratives in Daniel, but many others) I like the New American translation because it brings out some of the alternatives (Freer logion in Mark) which give some variation of how much variation was available in the early church. The lost ‘Gospel of Peter’ has been recovered, and is available at your barnes and noble.