How do we know which books belong in the Bible, and why do Catholic and Protestant Bibles differ in the Old Testament?
22 verses are cited on this page. Each one links to its chapter in the Greek text.
As also in all his epistles... in which are certain things hard to be understood, which the unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures.2 Peter 3:16
Peter ranks Paul's letters with "the other scriptures," showing recognition already under way, yet he lists nothing. This is the closest the New Testament comes to identifying its own contents.
All scripture, inspired of God, is profitable...2 Timothy 3:16
The verse affirms that Scripture is inspired without telling us which writings are Scripture, and the writings Timothy knew from infancy were the Old Testament.
But there are also many other things which Jesus did; which, if they were written every one, the world itself, I think, would not be able to contain the books.John 21:25
The written record is not exhaustive, and the Gospels do not claim to be a closed set.
Have you never read in the Scriptures: The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner?Matthew 21:42
Christ settles a dispute by appeal to what is written, and the formula assumes a body of text both parties already accept. What it does not do is tell us where that body ends.
No prophecy of scripture is made by private interpretation. For prophecy came not by the will of man at any time: but the holy men of God spoke, inspired by the Holy Ghost.2 Peter 1:20-21
Cited for Scripture authenticating itself, and the first half says something else: prophecy is not a matter of private reading. The same letter goes on to warn that the unlearned distort what Paul wrote.
And let all the angels of God adore him.Hebrews 1:6
Quoted as Scripture, this line stands in the Greek Old Testament (Deuteronomy 32:43 in the Septuagint) but not in the Hebrew Masoretic text of that verse.
Behold a virgin shall be with child, and bring forth a son.Matthew 1:23
Matthew follows the Greek of Isaiah 7:14, which reads parthenos, virgin, where the Hebrew has the broader almah, young woman. The apostolic argument here depends on the Greek text.
That the residue of men may seek after the Lord...Acts 15:17
James at the council quotes Amos 9:12 in a form that follows the Septuagint rather than the Hebrew. The New Testament quotes the Old some hundreds of times, and the majority of those quotations follow the Greek Septuagint, whose collection included the deuterocanonical books. Honest counterpoint: no deuterocanonical book is quoted with an explicit "it is written," and allusion is not citation. The argument is about which collection the apostles used, not a claim of formal quotation.
Sacrifice and oblation thou wouldst not: but a body thou hast fitted to me.Hebrews 10:5
The Hebrew of the psalm reads ears thou hast dug for me. A body thou hast fitted to me is the Greek. The letter builds its argument on the Septuagint reading, which is the version the apostles carried.
Women received their dead raised to life again. But others were racked, not accepting deliverance, that they might find a better resurrection.Hebrews 11:35
The racked who refused deliverance are the mother and her sons in 2 Maccabees 7. The letter recounts that account as part of the faith it is praising, and no book of the shorter canon supplies it.
He trusted in God; let him now deliver him if he will have him; for he said: I am the Son of God.Matthew 27:43
The mockery follows Wisdom 2:18 closely, where the wicked test the just man who calls himself a son of God. Matthew writes the taunt in the words of a book the shorter canon excludes.
Much every way. First indeed, because the words of God were committed to them.Romans 3:2
The argument that the Jewish people were given custody of the Old Testament, so their canon settles it. The verse says they were entrusted with the words. It does not say which list, at a time when Greek speaking Jews read a wider one.
All things must needs be fulfilled, which are written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me.Luke 24:44
The threefold division is real and it is the shape of the Hebrew Bible. What it does not do is enumerate. Christ names the sections he fulfils, not a table of contents, and the same Gospel quotes the Greek text elsewhere.
No book of the Bible contains a list of the books of the Bible. Whoever picks up a Bible receives a collection that someone had to discern, and the discernment was made by the Church over the first four centuries, guided by the Holy Spirit and tested by apostolic origin, orthodoxy, and use in worship. The apostles themselves generally used the Greek Old Testament, which carried the disputed books, and the New Testament alludes to them (Hebrews 11:35 to 2 Maccabees 7; Matthew 27:43 to Wisdom 2). The councils of Rome, Hippo, and Carthage listed the canon in the fourth century, including those books, and Trent in 1546 defined against denial what those councils had already received. Honesty requires granting the difficulties: no deuterocanonical book is quoted with a formal "it is written," and Jerome himself held reservations. But the deeper point stands. The same fourth-century discernment that produced the list of New Testament books produced the Old Testament list too, so a Christian who receives the twenty-seven while rejecting the rest is applying two standards to one decision. The same authority by which any Christian holds that Matthew is Scripture and the Gospel of Thomas is not is the authority of the Church that discerned the list. The New Testament has no word for the canon. Kanon in Paul means a measuring rule and apokryphos means hidden, not disputed. The vocabulary of canon formation is later than the apostles, which is itself part of the answer: the list came from the Church that received the books, not from a table of contents inside them. Scripture did not fall from heaven bound. It was gathered, and the Church that gathered it is the one Paul called the pillar and ground of the truth.