My reaction too. It was a no-brainer, though. Of course someone had to write the books of the New Testament, and of course someone had to choose which ones went into the Canon. The Holy Spirit didn't dictate the Scriptures, nor the list of the Canon, but they reasoned, prayed, and allowed the Holy Spirit to work through them to do so.
The other thing to note is that the Jews didn't have a set Canon, despite what Protestants want to believe. The Sadducees only had the Pentateuch, the Pharisees had the Torah (which I think is smaller than our Canon), and IIRC the Essenes had a much larger Canon (possibly all that was found in the Dead Sea Scrolls). The Church had to determine for Herself what was to go into the Church's Canon.
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Interesting I didn’t know the Jewish part.
This all, for me, destroyed solo scriptura.
If the Church birthed the scriptures, then it can’t be solo scriptura. In fact the word is in some ways secondary. The Word became flesh. The very presence of God, now sacramental, is the fount of the Church. The Eucharist is the “source and summit” as JP the Great stated.
So knowing the writers of the New Testament were either priests consecrating at mass or at least attending mass, it makes you look
at John 6, and all the other Eucharistic passages, in a much clearer light.
The Church is Christs continued presence on earth, the Incarnation continued in a way.
This is another reason I don't like calling Holy Scripture the 'Word of God' in that exact phraseology. Holy Scripture doesn't call itself the Word of God. Rather, it says the Son is the Word, and the Word became Flesh. The Holy Scriptures written by the Church are witness to the Author and Perfecter of the Faith, the Source and Summit of our Faith, the Word made Flesh, Jesus Christ Himself.
We do worship the Word, which was with God, was God, and became flesh. We however do not worship Scripture, the witness of the Word.
It is interesting that bringing our cannon in line with the Jews much later canon was Luther’s excuse for dropping 7 books from the Old Testament which were problematic for him.
Of course he also wanted to heavily redact the New Testament too, which is rarely mentioned.
Yep. The protestants don't want to admit that's what happened. Martin Luther was a bad dude with daddy issues and a tendency to despair. Only way to cope was to remove the parts that made him feel bad and convince a third of Europe to apostatize with him.
