There are solid reasons for trusting in today's list of New Testament books. The church accepted the New Testament books almost as soon as they were written. Their authors were associates of Jesus or his immediate followers, men to whom Jesus had entrusted the leadership of the early church. The Gospel writers Matthew and John were some of Jesus' closest followers. Mark and Luke were companions of the apostles, having access to the apostles' account of Jesus' life.
The other New Testament authors had immediate access to Jesus as well: James and Jude were half-brothers of Jesus who initially did not believe in him. Peter was one of the 12 apostles. Paul started out as a hater of Christianity, but he became an apostle after he had a vision of Christ. He was also in communication with the other apostles.
The content of the New Testament books lined up with what thousands of eyewitnesses had seen for themselves. When other books were written hundreds of years later (e.g. the Gospel of Judas, written by the Gnostic sect around 130-170 A.D., long after Judas' death), it wasn't difficult for the church to spot them as forgeries. The Gospel of Thomas, written around 140 A.D., is another example of a counterfeit writing erroneously bearing an apostles' name. These and other Gnostic gospels conflicted with the known teachings of Jesus and the Old Testament, and often contained numerous historical and geographical errors.13
In A.D. 367, Athanasius formally listed the 27 New Testament books (the same list that we have today). Soon after, Jerome and Augustine circulated this same list. These lists, however, were not necessary for the majority of Christians. By and large the whole church had recognized and used the same list of books since the first century after Christ. As the church grew beyond the Greek-speaking lands and needed to translate the Scriptures, and as splinter sects continued to pop up with their own competing holy books, it became more important to have a definitive lis
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