[BipolarBob]

Protestants follow the Bible the Catholic Church thoughtfully created for them

There doesn't appear to be much credit given to God for us having Gods Word being as how Catholics are sopping up all the glory. I coulda' swore the Hebrews had something to do with first parts, though.

[CynicalBear]

>>There doesn't appear to be much credit given to God for us having Gods Word being as how Catholics are sopping up all the glory.<<

That Catholic Church and Catholics do all they can to take credit from God and give it to man. Whether it's Mary or one of their so called saints or the magisterium.

[Jack Black]

There is a lot of Hebrew scripture that isn't in the Bible. You get this, right? There is a great deal of New Testament-era scripture that was rejected for inclusion in the Bible. You get this too, right?

The Bible is, therefore, an anthology. Here is the Wikipedia intro on the article on "anthology":

An anthology is a collection of literary works chosen by the compiler. It may be a collection of poems, short stories, plays, songs, or excerpts. In genre fiction anthology is used to categorize collections of shorter works such as short stories and short novels, usually collected into a single volume for publication.

The complete collections of works are often called Complete Works or Opera Omnia (Latin language equivalent).

In any anthology the "compiler", or editor as we more typically call them, is usually credited as the creator of the anthology. Or, in simple terms the person who the anthology is "by". Most modern anthologies either have the word "anthology" in the title, or are called "the book of" and are credited to the editor/complier. It is implied in this that the editor wrote little or no material in the anthology.

For instance:

John Wain is the editor of the anthology.

The Bible, if titled using today's nomenclature would be called something like:
"An Anthology of Ancient Hebrew Sacred Writings and Other Stories about Jesus of Nazarath"
- by The Synods of the early Church, circa 390 AD.

(Hippo being usually considered the most important in terms of fixing the inclusion of works).

From an immense number of writings an anthology was created, which many hold sacred, while holding the writings of the same era outside of the anthology less than sacred.

Therefore a lot of important judgements were made in determining this, judgements (that with the exceptions of a few deletions) have been accepted by all Christians since, including especially the Protestant sects. Even educated fundamentalist Christians accept this history of the bible: it is an anthology of works written by men, and edited by a later group of based on thier religious knoweldge. Those editing decisions were made by the Bishops of the early Church and approved the Bishop of Rome (aka the Pope). That was Pope Siricius.

The "sciptura" that the Protestant sects believe are "sola" needed for their religion were selected, organized and published based on the insights, preferences and knowledge of the early Catholic Church.