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Renewing Your Mind

How Did We Get the Bible?

Renewing Your Mind

Ligonier Ministries

Christianity, Religion & Spirituality

4.85.3K Ratings

🗓️ 17 September 2022

⏱️ 28 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Why does the New Testament contain four Gospels--Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John--but not the so-called gospel of Thomas? Today, Michael Kruger explains how we know that all the right books--and only the right books--made it into the Bible.

Get 'Everyone's a Theologian' by R.C. Sproul for Your Gift of Any Amount: https://gift.renewingyourmind.org/2330/everyones-a-theologian

Don't forget to make RenewingYourMind.org your home for daily in-depth Bible study and Christian resources.

Transcript

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0:00.0

There are 27 books in the New Testament, but there's a misconception about how they came together.

0:05.7

The 27 books we have in our New Testament were the arbitrary choice of those in power,

0:11.2

and the whole narrative is that, well, Constantine basically picked the books himself and forced them

0:15.6

on the church and then banished all others. That all sounds really interesting and good. The problem

0:20.0

is it just doesn't fit with the facts of history.

0:22.0

So what are the facts? How can we know if all the right books and only the right books made it

0:34.0

into the new and old testament? Today on renewing your mind, we're bringing you a seminar from the

0:39.2

2022 Ligonier National Conference. Our host, Barry Cooper, asked Dr. Michael Krueger to address the

0:46.2

question, how did we get the Bible? Dr. Krueger, you will know is a world-class scholar on this

0:56.0

question that we want to talk about, which is how did we get our Bible? He's also president

1:04.5

and Samuel C. Patterson, professor of New Testament and early Christianity at Reformed Theological

1:10.4

Seminary in Charlotte. Something I didn't know about you until recently was that you studied

1:17.3

under Bart Ehrman as an undergraduate. Now, for those people who don't know that name and are

1:23.4

unfamiliar, maybe could you explain a little bit about who he is and maybe how you got to be so

1:28.3

interested in this subject? Well, that's a great opening question. Let me just say welcome to

1:33.2

everybody. Glad you're here. Just so you know, as a humorous side note, I didn't know there was

1:37.7

going to even be a crowd at this interview. So I thought it was in a studio and so it's great

1:42.3

to see all these live faces here. Yeah, it was mentioned that when I was an undergraduate

1:46.4

University of North Carolina in Chapel Hill, I had Bart Ehrman as a professor. I was a freshman.

1:52.8

I had shown up to my college years as a committed believer and there I was in a classroom and

1:58.1

at the time Bart Ehrman wasn't even famous, but he proceeded to attack the New Testament, tell me

2:03.6

why it was filled with fabricated stories and pseudonymous authors and how it wasn't transmitted

...

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