You have a more exalted view of logic than research suggests is valid. Logic is a construct, describing one way our minds interpret reality. Logic alone doesn’t allow you to drive a car. Excellent computers can’t recognize a tank in the trees with the success an 8 year old would have.
“Nothing logically justifies a “leap of faith”...” - yet you engage in leaps of faith every time you drive or walk.
As for the canon, there are a lot of good links here:
http://www.bible-researcher.com/canon.html
There is a good summary table here:
http://www.bible-researcher.com/canon5.html
“Luther’s criticism of these books will perhaps be found disgraceful and even shocking to modern Christians, but it should be pointed out that his attitude was not so shocking in the context of the late Middle Ages. Erasmus had also called into question these four books in the Annotationes to his 1516 Greek New Testament, and their canonicity was doubted by the Roman Catholic Cardinal Cajetan (Luther’s opponent at Augsburg. See Reu, Luther’s German Bible, pp. 175-176). The sad fact is, the Roman Catholic Church had never precisely drawn the boundaries of the biblical canon. It was not necessary to do so under the Roman system, in which the authority of the Scriptures was not much higher than that of tradition, popes, and councils. It was not until the Protestant Reformers began to insist upon the supreme authority of Scripture alone that a decision on the ‘disputed books’ became necessary.” - http://www.bible-researcher.com/antilegomena.html
The Gospels and Pauline epistles were accepted as scripture within years of their writing, and used in worship and for study. Consider: “15Bear in mind that our Lord’s patience means salvation, just as our dear brother Paul also wrote you with the wisdom that God gave him. 16He writes the same way in all his letters, speaking in them of these matters. His letters contain some things that are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the other Scriptures, to their own destruction.”
If Peter can accept Paul’s letters as scripture, in spite of their differences, do you really think they were in dispute for 400 years?
Whose research? Some exalted person who depends on leaps of faith and such solipsistic oxymoronic assumptions as inconceivable but knowable deity?
Logic alone doesn’t allow you to drive a car.
Logic tells you that you can't drive a car by sitting on your living room sofa. Logic tells you that you have to be in the car. No leap of faith will get you form point A to point B.
Excellent computers can’t recognize a tank in the trees with the success an 8 year old would have
How do you recognize God who is invisible, inconceivable and "beyond everything" and not of this world, ontologically a different reality? How do you know that what you are "experiencing" is God or from God and not insanity in the making, or a brain tumor?
“Nothing logically justifies a “leap of faith”...” - yet you engage in leaps of faith every time you drive or walk.
What are you talking about? Where is the leap of faith? How can you compare that to biblical tales of a man living in a fish for three days or a talking donkey? Or pink unicorns on Jupiter if you will? You are grasping at straws at this point, trying to pin everyday life to a "leap of faith" so as to make creating God in our heads as something ordinary and even "logical."
As for Erasmus, his sources were really not much to brag about. He used latter-day (12th and 14th century) corrupt copies of the Greek Codex Alexandrinus. They were only corrupt copies of copies of copies, but they also missed some material so much so that he had to retrotranslate from Latin into Greek (and his Greek was very poor) from one of the most unreliably sources, the Vulgate (the fact that Rome considered it the Bible says a lot about the Magisterium, doesn't it?).
As for the early Church 'canon' the only thing that is sure is that every one quoted whatever they felt was true. Thus, according to Ignatius (born 60 AD) the following books were 'canon:'
We know that because that's what he quotes from. If you want specific quotes I'd be happy to give them to you, but I am trying to keep this short. he leaves out John and Mark. Two Gospels, Acts and only five books of Paul.
Polycarp, on the other ( born 70 AD), apparently had a bigger selection:
Three Gospels. No John, but I and III John are included! No Romans or Revelation either! So, we know that at about the turn of the century these books were not read "everywhere and always." he also has the so-called Letter to Philippians which betrays other New Testament texts.
Justin Martyr, c 150 AD quotes only from these
attesting to the late date of John's Gospel as well as Revelation.
Of course, none of the quotes identify the Gospels by name because the copies are anonymous. Justin refers to them as "memoirs" of the Apostles. The names were not added until Irenaeus c. 180-190 AD, who quotes form all the books of the Christian canon as we know it except
he also considered the following books, rejected by the Church two centuries later, as inspired(!):
On the other hand, his contemporary, Clement of Alexandria, lists all the books of the Bible except:
But he also lists the following now rejected books as of value:
Tertullian, also a contemporary of Clement and Irenaeus, leaves out
but lists the apocryphal Sheopherd of Hermas as valuable.
Origen leaves out
And includes the following as "divinely inspired"
The oldest Bible (Codex Sinaiticus, c. 350 AD) has Shepherd of Hermas and Epistle of Barnabas as part of the canon.
It is clear, then, that canon fluctuated form person to person, and that even those who recognized pretty much the same books as we have today, still considered many others as either of value or outright canonical (inspired).
The canonization of the Hebrew Bible (under Pharisiacial rabbis) continued well into the 3rd century AD by all accounts. It is clear, then, that God had very little to do with the Bible. It is a collection of men who shared more or less the same a priori beliefs and leap of faith assumptions. It took centuries for Christendom to argue one way or another as to what constituted the canon and what was it that the Church believed in (theology). The theology part was codified in the early 4th century and pretty much set in stone by the end of the century, at which time the Bible was canonized as well.
If Peter can accept Paul’s letters as scripture, in spite of their differences, do you really think they were in dispute for 400 years?
First, I and II Peter were not written by Peter. There is enough historical evidence to show that this is so, as the events that are mentioned in that books took place past Peter's death c 65 AD. Second, the purpose for I Peter was badly needed unity, as the Petrine and Pauline camps did not see eye to eye despite what's written in Acts as an attempt to smooth things over. That's when I Peter comes in. II Peter was obviously a latter-day addition that nobody wanted to touch because it dealt with the late second coming, contrary to the early Church belief that it would be within one's lifetime. (and, yes, I am familiar withe the broadly accepted rationalization that Jesus didn't really mean what he was saying [hmm, was he speaking in metaphors!?] about coming back real soon).