Who decided what books would be in the New Testament?
The formation of the biblical canon is a huge subject, with entire books written about it. The Old Testament as we know it was accepted and widely known by Jesus’ time, but the New Testament took centuries more to compile. To ascribe the process to a single person or committee is a tremendous over-simplification. And crediting the task to Constantine, as The Da Vinci Code does, seems to have no support among historians. The process seems to have started long before his time and not reached a conclusion until after his death, and there is no evidence that Constantine had any input into it at any stage. A brief summary of the process starts in the years after Jesus’ death when his followers began passing along oral accounts of his sayings and works. As the movement spread and churches were founded farther away from the original center in Jerusalem, church leaders such as the apostle Paul began writing letters, or espistles, to other Christians with reminders about doctrine and practice.
