#244 Can You Prove The Bible From The Words of Jesus?

Shameless Popery

Catholic Answers

Christianity, Religion & Spirituality

4.9 • 658 Ratings

🗓️ 27 January 2026

⏱️ 17 minutes

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Summary

Joe looks at several ways Protestants try to justify their canon and Scripture, and how these standards contradict their canon. Transcript: Joe: Welcome back to Shameless Popery. I’m Joe Heschmeyer. How do we know which books belong in the Bible? After all, there are seven Old Testament books that are in Catholic and Orthodox bibles that aren’t in Protestant bibles. So how do we know which Bible is right? One solution I’ve heard goes something like this. We know which books belong in the Old Testament by looking at which books Jesus treated his scripture. In the New Testament...

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0:00.0	Welcome back to Shemis Popery. I'm Joe Heschmire. How do we know which books belong in the Bible?
0:04.9	After all, there are seven Old Testament books that are in Catholic and Orthodox Bibles that aren't in
0:09.7	Protestant Bibles. So how do we know which Bible is right? One solution I've heard goes something like this.
0:16.4	We know which books belong in the Old Testament by looking at which books Jesus treated as
0:21.3	scripture in the New Testament. We submit to the 39 books of the Old Testament because our Lord
0:26.6	Jesus affirmed the Old Testament and we submit to the 27 books of the New Testament because
0:33.9	our Lord Jesus authorized his apostles to write the New Testament.
0:40.9	Jesus determines the canon.
0:45.1	On his face, that seems to make total sense, but there are two problems he might have noticed.
0:49.5	First, are we really meant to start with the Old Testament and then work backwards?
0:55.1	Isn't that the opposite of the order in which God revealed his scriptures? And second, if we do start with the New Testament,
1:01.2	how do we know we've got the right New Testament books? I actually want you to leave both of those
1:05.9	problems to one side today. And I want to ask a different question. Assume this method is right, can we know
1:13.5	which books belong in the Old Testament by looking at the New Testament evidence? Or to put it
1:18.9	another way, is there a principle we can use reading the New Testament evidence that produces a Bible
1:25.1	that looks like the Bible used by any Christians today. Now, as we embark on
1:30.5	this, I think it's worth clarifying what standard it is we're going to use. For instance,
1:35.0	should we consider a book to be divinely inspired if Jesus or if the New Testament authors
1:39.3	reference it, even indirectly? If so, that's going to include quite a few books not ordinarily found
1:45.5	in Bibles. Or do we need the standard to be something higher? For instance, do they need to quote
1:50.9	from a particular book directly for us to consider it canonical? Or higher yet? Do they need to
1:56.2	explicitly invoke it as scripture with the formula like it is written. So for shorthand, I'm going to call
	...

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