Starting today August 7th, 2024, in order to post in the Married Couples, Courting Couples, or Singles forums, you will not be allowed to post if you have your Marital status designated as private. Announcements will be made in the respective forums as well but please note that if yours is currently listed as Private, you will need to submit a ticket in the Support Area to have yours changed.
As soon as the books of the apostles were received, they were treated as Scripture. It is quite possible, if not likely, that all bar Revelation were written by c. 65, and it can be said that the Scripture was complete by then, excepting Revelation, of course.
After Revelation was written. When that was, I don't know, and even informed, sensible opinions (and there are many that are not) vary quite a lot, but a date around 75-85 seems reasonable. Certainly, the whole Scripture was likely to have been written within 60 years of the crucifixion, which puts it in the 1st century.
It seems to me that there is a denominational assumption here that is out of place in this particular forum.
A gradual process doesn't really work like that - you can try to draw a line in the sand, but it will always be artificial. Most if not all of the N.T. books were written by end of the 1st century and were widely used worship. Part of how the canon was worked out in practice was to look at whether a given book was being widely used in worship - in many ways canonisation was at least a much about recognising what had already happened in practice as it was about actually deciding anythng. Orthopraxy often leads orthodoxy.
they would have come into existence as they were being written by the apostles!
But not recognised as Scripture by the church, and probably not even in the possession of the church.
The answer is not going to change. The recipients knew the writers, knew them to be apostles, and accepted their writings as if they were speech heard from them in person. Those other books were not received, were not from apostles, and were no more apposite and acceptable than... the emperor's laundry list!
They were instantly identifiable- not in a single handy volume, but then neither was any other written work. The practice of the time, until the bards, troubadors and minstrels of much later times, was memorisation and oral transmission, and written copies were less important than they are today, when few can recite even a short poem without fumbling.
They have never been formally identified.
I wouldn't say a wide spectrum of texts - most of the texts that "made it" were being widely used, and few of the texts that didn't were being widely used. Only over a very small number each way was there much serious debate.
Whether one is going to differentiate the apostolic writings from those of later authors isn't a question one has to face at first. It's only in the second century when the original apostles have all be succeeded by second and third generation overseers writing further texts, and as an increasing number of fringe views begin to emerge, that the question arises. That resolving that question is done largely organically and by concensus, with a degree of ambiguity to it, is uncomfortable for those who want precise, clear-cut, certainty - but God seems to consistantly work in that sort of way. Personally I've got a lot more faith in the Holy Spirit working ambiguously through the whole church (including those on the fringe) than in the Holy Spirit working though a somewhat artificial council of bishops handing down an unambiguous answer.
