What books made it into the cannon and why, and what the heck is a cannon?
The cannon of scripture is simply a list of books that are authoritative, trust worthy and reliable depiction of who God is. The Bible is made up of 66 smaller books, letters, poems, and lists that created our bible. The process of putting them all together has been one of great debate, however the complete and accepted list of books in the Bible has been set since around 170 A.D.
So the books were selected by a council of religious scholars during that time period and they chose which books they felt met a certain criteria. That criteria could be summed up below:
1) Was the author an apostle or close to one? Was the author reliable and authoritative?
2) Is the book being accepted by many different churches?
3) Did the book contradict other books or other well established teachings of Jesus?
At this point some of you may feel uneasy about the idea of men choosing what books went into the bible. This here is were a large part comes down to faith. If God is sovereign and ruling over the earth, you know He must have hand a huge role influencing what books made it into our modern day bible. Also we must remember that certain books were left out because they were clearly teaching falsehood (the Gospel of Thomas, etc). Ultimately the church did not decide what books to put in - God did. If God inspired these men to write the books of the bible then he also inspired those church leaders to choose the correct books to be put in his Bible.
In regards to the Old Testament and what parts were accepted there is little debate.
When it came to the Old Testament, three important facts were considered: 1) The New Testament quotes from or alludes to every Old Testament book but two. 2) Jesus effectively endorsed the Hebrew canon in Matthew 23:35 when He cited one of the first narratives and one of the last in the Scriptures of His day. 3) The Jews were meticulous in preserving the Old Testament Scriptures, and they had few controversies over what parts belong or do not belong. source: http://www.gotquestions.org/canon-of-Scripture.html
Further reading:
The Canon of Scripture by F.F. Bruce.
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