How the Bible Was Chosen

Many Christians picture the Bible arriving whole: sixty-six books, bound in one cover, its table of contents as fixed as its words. Churches call themselves "Bible-believing," as if the book itself were the thing believed. Jesus never saw that book. Its list took shape over three centuries, and Christians still do not agree on all of it.

You're not imagining it: the Bible did not fall from the sky as one book. People gathered it, argued over it for centuries, and drew the edges differently in different churches. Yet many Christians defend the collection more fiercely than they follow the person at its center, and use "the Bible says" to end arguments he never had.

Measured against the center