NOW THAT’S A GOOD QUESTION! Many Christians find themselves speechless when their skeptic friend ask this insinuating wrong books have been put into the Bible and the right books have been left out. Since this is one of the most common arguments against Christianity today, Christians need to be prepared graciously to help their friend see the trustworthiness of the Bible. Over at Bible.org (the world’s largest Bible study website), Sid Litke has written a great series of articles to help. He answers this question in the easy-to-read article found here. The term for this issue is, “canonicity”. Canon means list or standard rule. So “canonicity” is the study of the proper list of books included in the Bible and how it came to be. The bottom line is this. There has been no conspiracy by shady characters in a smoke-filled back room to keep the right books out of the Bible, suppressing the truth about God, controlling the minds of the masses of Christianity. The writings which actually came from God have been accurately preserved for us in modern translations of the Bible. You can read the entire series of articles from Litke here: Introduction Revelation Inspiration Inerrancy Transmission Canonicity Translations Interpretation, Illumination, and Application
