How We Got the Bible

Who decided what books belong in the Bible? The formation of the biblical canon was not a single event but a process that unfolded over centuries. Different communities preserved, used, and transmitted texts that they regarded as authoritative. How those texts came to be collected into a relatively stable corpus is a historical question with observable evidence.

The Hebrew Bible (Tanakh) was assembled over roughly a thousand years, from the time of Moses (c. 1400 BC) to the post-exilic period (c. 400 BC). Jewish tradition organized it into three divisions: Torah (Law — the five books of Moses), Nevi'im (Prophets), and Ketuvim (Writings). Jesus refers to this threefold division:

The Torah was recognized as authoritative earliest — from the time of Moses onward, with formal public recognition under Ezra (c. 450 BC). The Prophets were collected and recognized by the 2nd century BC. The Writings (including Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Daniel, Esther, and others) were the last to be definitively bounded. By the time of Jesus, the Jewish canon was functionally settled — though its exact boundaries were still debated at the margins.

The Council of Jamnia (c. AD 90), long thought to have "closed" the Jewish canon, is now understood as more of an academic discussion than a formal decree. The rabbis at Jamnia discussed the status of books like Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, and Esther — but this was fine-tuning, not wholesale selection. The core had been stable for centuries.