There are hints in the New Testament itself that, while the apostles were yet living, and under their own supervision, collections of their writings began to be made for the churches and placed with the Old Testament as the Word of God.
(If you want the Scripture to this I'll give it to you)
The apostles, it seems, wrote many letters with the immediate needs of the churches in mind. As to which of those letters were to be preserved for future ages, we believe that God Himself watched over the matter and made His own choice.
The New Testament books were written in widely seperated countries.
Palestine
Asia Minor
Greece
Crete
Rome
...Moreover, beginning with Emperor Nero in A.D. 64, it was an age of persecution, when precious Christian writinigs had to be kept hidden. And there were as yet no church councils or conferences, where Christians from distant parts could come together and compare notes on what writings they had, until the days of Emperor Constantine (A.D. 306-37). So, naturally, the earliest collections of New Testament books would vary in different regions; and the process of reaching unanimity as to what books properly belonged in the New Testament was slow.
Besides the books that would ultimately be accepted as canonical New Testament books, there were many others that ranged from good to silly to fraudulent. Some of these were so fine and valuable that they were for a while, in some areas, regarded as Scripture. Ultimately, the one criterion by which a book was judged before acceptance into the canon was whether it was of genuine apostolic origin, written either by an apostle, or under the auspices of an apostle, It was not always easy to determine this, especially in the cases of lesser-known books from a distant region.
Henry H Halley (edited by me)
