Pardon my confusion on the councils...Can't get Council of Trent out of my mond since seeing "Back to School"....
Yet my point still remains...did certain human scholars make the decision on what should be in the Bible or not?
Your mentioning of those fulfilled prophecies are all well and dandy, but can you quantatively show that they were written before the fact?
And once more...where are the original writtings of the Disciples? What we have is oral history written down many many years after the fact.
Oldcats
Yeah, I get the coucil of Trent and the Council of Nicea confused myself, that's why I have to add the qualifier "I believe". Anyway, the prophecy given to Abraham is at least as old as Moses, at a tme when the Jews were few in number, the prophecy from Daniel (Selucids) is known to pre-date the event, even though there is some dispute concerning its exact date. And Jesus' prophecy concerning the temple was relatively contemporaneous to the event, that is w/i that generation, and was widely noted.
Of course human scolars codifed the text, the only known writing by God Himself would be the 10 commandments housed in the Arc of the Covenant. All other writing must necessarily be by human hands.
Concerning who wrote the actual text of the Gospel, there is much historic analysis and debate, however, I don't believe any of the 12 Disciples were involved. Peter, of course, wrote letters and James did as well.
The council itself was called to separate those tracts which were undeniably true and accurate from those which didn't meet high standards of authenticity. The scholars that took on this awesome responsibilty were some of the finest minds of the day and had extensive knowledge as to the source and history of the tracts under discussion.
You shouldn't wonder that this codification process followed the events recorded by a couple of centuries if you consider that the church was persecuted for all that time up until Constantine the Great, again in the 4th century.