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But then, you Catholics have your own Bible with uninspired books and don't consider it a one authority.

Q: How many books of the Old Testament are found in Guttenberg's printed Bible?

A: The same number that are in any Catholic Bible today -- 46 Old Testament books plus the 27 New Testament ones, for a total of 73 books (a much more spiritual number than the Protestant canon of 66 books ;-). The Guttenberg Bible -- the first Bible ever printed -- was a Catholic Bible (in fact, the Protestant Reformation had not even happened yet), and the number of books in Catholic Bibles has been the same ever since the Bible was first canonized at the Council of Rome in A.D. 382 under Pope Damasus I.

Here's the link to this info

Oops ... sorry 'bout the double post. Don't know what happened.

"In many and various ways God spoke of old to our fathers by the prophets; but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son...". [Heb. 1:1-2]

God's speaking to us by his Son is the _culmination_ of his speaking to mankind and is _his greatest and final revelation_ to mankind.

(The exceptional greatness of the revelation that comes through the Son, far exceeds any revelation in the Old Covenant as noted over and over again in the first and second chapters of Hebrews.)

Once the writings of the New Testament apostles and their authorized companions were completed, we have everything that God wants us to know about the life, death, & resurrection of Christ, and its meaning for the lives of believers _for all time_. In this way Hebrews 1 & 2 shows us why no more writings can be added to the Bible after the time of the New Testament. The canon is now closed.

It is not accidental that the apostle John wrote that warning (about adding or subtracting to the words of Scripture) in the very last chapter of the very last book of the Bible. [Rev.22:18-19]

For many books, their placement in the canon is of little consequence. But just as Genesis must be placed first (because it tells us of creation), so Revelation must be placed last (because its focus is to tell us of the future and God's new creation). ...

Thus, it is not appropriate for us to understand this exceptionally strong warning at the end of Revelation as applying in a secondary way to the whole of Scripture.

Placed here, where it must be placed, the warning forms an appropriate conclusion to the entire canon of Scripture. Along with Heb.1 & 2 and the history-of-redemption perspective implicit in those verses, this broader application of Rev.23:18-19 also suggests to us that we should expect no more Scripture to be added beyond what we already have.

The warning God gave through John in Rev.22 shows that God himself places supreme value on our having a correct collection of God-breathed writings, no more, no less. He's quite able to see to it that we have them. The closed canon we have today is God's doing. What we have didn't depend on men.

In fact, some of the earliest writers CLEARLY distinguished the difference between what they wrote and the writings of the apostles. In A.D.110, Ignatius said, "I do not order you as did Peter and Paul; THEY WERE APOSTLES, I am a convict; they were free, I am even until now, a slave".

Jesus promised that the Holy Spirit would see to it that the disciples would be able to remember and record without error all that he had said to them when he was with them. [John 14:26; 16:13. See also: 2 Pet.3:2; 1 Cor.2:13; 1 Thess.4:15; and Rev. 22:18-19].

So in compiling the canon of Scripture, the work of the early church was not to bestow divine authority or even ecclesiastical authority upon some merely human writings --- but to RECOGNIZE the divinely authored characteristics of writings that already had such a quality.

This is because the ultimate criterion of canonicity is divine authorship --- (as Jesus promised) --- NOT human or ecclesiastical approval.

In A.D. 367 the Thirty-ninth Paschal Letter of Athanasius contained an exact list of the twenty-seven New Testament books we have today.

The Apocrypha is not divinely authoritive.

If the sovereign God thought that the Apocrypha should have been included in the canon of Scripture, it would be there.

Even though Jerome included those books in his Latin Vulgate translation of the Bible (A.D. 404) he specifically said himself that they were not "books of the canon" but merely "books of the church" that were helpful and useful to believers.

The Roman Catholic Church didn't even declare the Apocrypha to be a part of the canon until 1546. In affirming the Apocrypha as within the canon, RC's held that the RCC had the authority to constitute a literary work as "Scripture".

The Apocrypha CONTRADICTS the Scriptures, but they do serve to support Rome's teachings -- such as prayers for the dead and justification by faith _PLUS_ works, not by faith alone.

REFORMERS deny that Rome can make something to be Scripture that God hasn't already caused to be written as his own words. The Apocrypha are not "God-breathed" words, and they weren't even considered to be Scripture by Jesus or the NT authors.

Roger Beckwith writes: "On the question of the canonicity of the Apocrypha and the Pseudepigrapha the truly primitive Christian evidence is negative."

(The Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church and Its Background in Early Judaism - London: SPCK, 1985, and Grand Rapids: Eerdman's, 1986 - esp. pp 436-437)

The preservation and correct assembling of the canon of Scripture was an integral part of the history of redemption itself. Just as God was at work in creation, calling his people Isreal, in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, and in the early work and writings of the apostles, so God was at work in the preservation and assembling together of the books of Scripture for the benefit of his people for the entire church age.

God's greatest revelation to mankind was written down by the apostles. We have everything we need to know about the life, death and resurrection of Christ, and its meaning for the lives of believers for all time.

No more writings can be added to the Bible after the time of the New Testament.[Heb 1:1-2 Rev.22:18-19]

Only those who don't believe that God is sovereign would doubt his faithfulness to his people and think that he would allow something to be missing from Scripture for almost 2,000 years that he thinks we need to know for obeying him and trusting him fully. The canon of Scripture today is exactly what God wanted it to be, and it will stay that way until Christ returns.

The apostle Paul: "The man without the Spirit does not accept the things that come from the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness to him, and he cannot understand them, because they are spiritually discerned. The spiritual man (one of "the brethren" in whom is the Holy Spirit) makes judgements about all things, but he, himself is not subject to __ANY__ man's judgement". [1 Cor.2:14]

CAVEAT reiteration: Unless one has "the mind of Christ" he will consider the infallible Word of God (Scripture) as "foolishness" and won't be able to discern spiritual truth from error, so what I wrote above is only for those who have "ears to hear".