How Did We Get the Bible? The Canon of Scripture Explained (And What That Disputed Passage Really Means)
Dial In with Jonny Ardavanis
Jonny Ardavanis
4.9 • 902 Ratings
🗓️ 21 April 2026
⏱️ 42 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Is the Bible trustworthy? In this episode, we tackle one of the most important questions a Christian can ask — how did we get the Bible, and can we actually trust it?
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We start with the famous story of the woman caught in adultery (John 7:53–8:11) and the asterisk in your Bible saying it's "not in the earliest manuscripts" — and use that as a jumping-off point to explore the full story of how Scripture was formed and preserved.
Topics covered:
- What is the biblical canon — and who decided what's in it?
- What is textual criticism, and why does the 1% manuscript variance actually STRENGTHEN our confidence?
- The Apocrypha — why it's not in your Protestant Bible
- How the New Testament was recognized (not chosen) by the early church
- Why the apostles knew they were writing Scripture
- Constantine, the Council of Nicaea, and what the Da Vinci Code gets wrong
- 25,000+ manuscripts — why the Bible has more historical evidence than any ancient document
- The difference between inspiration and illumination
- Why being a Bible-believing Christian isn't enough — you need to be Bible-loving
Whether you're a lifelong Christian, a skeptic, or a college student whose professor is throwing haymakers at Scripture, this episode will bolster and buttress your confidence in God's Word.
Resources mentioned in this episode:
- Michael Kruger — Canon Revisited: https://a.co/d/0d0mmwrp
- D.A. Carson — The Gospel According to John
- Leon Morris — The Gospel of John
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Maybe one of the greatest one-liners in all of Scripture. |
| 0:03.0 | Yeah, he who is without sin, what? |
| 0:05.3 | Cast the first stone. |
| 0:06.2 | Cast the first stone. |
| 0:07.4 | However, when you get to the passage in many Bibles, there's like an asterix of sorts, |
| 0:12.8 | and it says this section of scripture was not included in the earliest manuscripts of the Bible. |
| 0:19.5 | If this passage isn't originally in the canon of Scripture, well, then how do we know about everything else in the Bible? Is everything up for grabs? How did we get the Bible in the first place? And this question regarding the canonicity of the Scripture or what's included in the Bible, the collection of writings that makes up the Bible is a very, very important question because if you can't trust the Bible, then you can't trust what the Bible says about God, sin, man, salvation, and so forth. |
| 0:48.0 | Hank, how are we doing? |
| 0:49.1 | Doing great, Johnny. How are you doing? |
| 0:50.5 | Good. Well, actually, not that great. |
| 0:52.6 | I got a Band-Aid. |
| 0:53.9 | Why do you have a Band-Aid? I leaned on the engine of the power washer. That took a wild left turn. Turns out it was really hot. Mentally imaging? You, like, working on a car hood popped. No. Nope. Just outboard an engine. I don't know why that's your mental imaging of me. |
| 1:12.6 | Can I tell you I did the most, maybe the most nerve-wracking thing I've done in probably |
| 1:16.6 | 10 years this week. |
| 1:17.6 | What was that? |
| 1:19.6 | Okay, so public speaking, like, it makes you nervous, but not super nervous, right? |
| 1:24.6 | So like, we'll come in here. |
| 1:26.6 | I feel like we're just having a conversation. |
| 1:29.1 | I'll speak in front of community group, no issue. |
| 1:31.6 | I'll speak to youth group, no issue. |
| 1:33.6 | I'll host a webinar for work, no issue. |
| 1:36.3 | You want to know what that makes me nervous? |
... |
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