How Did We Get the Bible? 2 Timothy 3:16-17;2 Peter 1:20-21The Bible is inspired by God. The bible is made up of 66 different books written over 1600 years from around 1500 BC to AD 100 by more than 40 kings, prophets, leaders, and followers of the apostles of Jesus. Traditionally the Pentateuch or first five books of the OT were considered to have been dictated to Moses by God himself. Since the 17th century, scholars have viewed the original sources as being the product of multiple anonymous authors while also allowing the possibility that Moses first assembled the separate sources. The books of the bible were collected, arranged and recognized as inspired sacred authority by councils of rabbis and councils of Church leaders based on careful guidelines. Canonization is the process by which the books of the Bible were discovered as authoritative. Men did not canonize Scripture; men simply recognized the authority of the books that God inspired by original writings of papyrus codex, vellum copies, Vatican, sinaitic codex and Greek manuscripts from the NT. A canonical book is one that measures up to the standard of Holy Scripture. Thus, the canon of Scripture refers to the books that are considered the authoritative Word of God. The study of the origin, transmission, and recognition of the books that comprise the Bibles of Judaism and Christianity. Three principal criteria seemed to emerge which the early church used in recognizing books that had been God inspired and thus canonical: apostolic origin, recognition by the churches, and apostolic content.