The process of compiling the current version of the bible, the one you would find, say, in the bedside table of a hotel room, was guided by the need for a unified version of Christianity. In the wake of Christ, there were many “Christianities,” there were many communities with varying ideas about what or who had just walked the earth.
And beyond the metaphysics of what Christ’s existence might subsequently mean, there was also the more practical issue of authority.
Who would have the authority to tell the story?
A “master story,” or a linear story of Jesus, is captured in the canon. However, according to Dr. Karen King, it’s poor history: “First of all, the story is incomplete and noticeably slanted. The roles of women, for example, are almost completely submerged from view.” In what has become the “master story” that the canon in the bible relates, the male Jesus selects male disciples who pass on the tradition, and authority to male bishops. Yet, King argues, “We know that in the early centuries and throughout Christian history, women played prominent roles as apostles, deacons, preachers, and prophets.”
In 325, Constantine called for the Council of Nicaea, where it was decided which scripture would become a part of the canon and which would then become suppressed (and subsequently destroyed). This is also when the church hammered out it’s official creed, the Nicene Creed, which goes something like this: “We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of all things visible and invisible. And in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, begotten of the Father, before all worlds, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance of the Father, by whom all things were made; who for us men, and for our salvation came down and was incarnate and was made man . . .” - Meggan Watterson
The idea that the Bible is the literal word of God was perpetuated by men of great power and is perpetuated today by individuals of a similar mindset.