Starting in the 1st century CE, there was an explosion of Christian literature — dozens of gospels, letters, apocalypses and more — but only a fraction of those texts made it into the New Testament canon. Who decided which books were in and which books were out?

For this episode, Helen and Dave welcome New Testament scholar Francis Watson, who introduces us to important figures like Athanasius of Alexandria and Eusebius of Caesarea, some of the earliest influential Christian writers to weigh in on which texts were authoritative and which were "spurious."

Check out Francis's excellent books on the making of the NT canon: Gospel Writing: A Canonical Perspective and The Fourfold Gospel: A Theological Reading of the New Testament Portraits of Jesus .

To learn more about how the NT canon came together, here are some great articles from Bible Odyssey:

• Noncanonical Gospels
• The New Testament Canon
• Why Does the Bible Look the Way It Does?

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Theme music written and performed by Dave Roos, creator of Biblical Time Machine. Season 4 produced by John Nelson.