"Not until the Third Council of Carthage, in A.D.397, do we have the first conciliar decision on the canon." - Henry Clarence Theissen, Introduction to the New Testament (Wm. B. Eerdmans, 1943)p.26.
What in the WORLD did Christians do if they didn't know what books were in the NT, and therefore couldn't use them? Isn't that what the RCC claims? That without Her, no one knew which was what?
Want to know some history that PROVES that the books of the NT were known AND accepted by Christians and were ALSO in wide circulation and use AT LEAST 300 years before Carthage listed them?
"The Gospels and epistles were circulating in Asia, Syria, and Alexandria (less certainly in ROme), and being read and discussed in the Christian synogogues there by about 100 A.D. In Polycarp's short letter there is an astonishing amount of direct and indirect quotation from the New Testament: Matthew, Luke, and John, Acts, the letters to the Galatians, Thessalonians, Corinthians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, Romans, the Pastorals, 1 Peter particularly, and 1 and 2 John are all used...The Christian Scriptures were quoted so familiarly as to suggest that they had been in regular use a long time."-W.H.C. Frend, noted historian, The Rise of Christianity (Philadelphia, 1984), p.135.
So much for Rome giving us the Bible. I think you are confusing "collecting the Scriptures" with "corrupting the Scriptures", conservativguy99.
You and your 15000 other protestant sects should finally wake up. Why do you always scream against the Church founded by Jesus? Protest-—ant. Your sects come and go, they have for almost 2000 years. Look at the Presbyterians or the methodists..... fill in the blank. There will always be the truth of the Catholic Church.
The Catholic Church will always be there until Jesus returns.
Since being Christian was a capital offense throughout the Roman Empire there were very few "Christian synagogues". It is ironic that St. Polycarp, one who was actually a student of the Apostle John and is one of the biggest proponents of Apostolic tradition is cited as an authority by those who reject much of his writings.