Politics...
"There is simply no historical document of any kind that has a more pristine pedigree than the Bible.".
- It depends on who you ask. What do you say about the Vedas for example? Not saying the information contained on the Bible is false, but the way it is presented and interpreted to the mass as well as the way these books were put together makes it look clear it was handpicked. Not to mention the major discrepancy between the old and new testaments, where God seems to change of personality. There is even research saying that such discrepancy could be due to the fact of humans gaining introspection (the ability to think about your own thoughts) in between. There are even disagreements regarding the Bible between Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants.
Definitely! As I said, the books were hand picked based on the requirement that they be traceable back to the apostles. What other possible criteria could there be?
The Protestants were protesting the Pope's inventions that they couldn't find in the Bible. So in the "counter reformation of the 1500's the Catholics went out and got the rejected books of the Apocrypha and put them back in so they could use them to justify non-biblical things like Purgatory and indulgences.
God is unchanging. The same in both Testaments. Jesus said in John 5, "If you believe Moses you should believe Me, for he wrote about me. If you don't believe what he wrote, how can you believe what I say?"
What changed is the dispensation - periods of time when God deals with mankind in different ways, each meant to show that no matter what information he has or what system of governance, man will fail to rule his own affairs.
Here's a nice diagram of how Clarence Larkin' drew it all out a hundred years ago...
Note that we are living in the Age of Grace, the church age, ushered in by the giving of the Holy Spirit to us after Jesus ascended. Today we are right where the chart says "apostasy" the great "falling away" that Paul talked about just before Christ returns.
Anybody out there been falling away?
What the heck, here's one more, no extra charge...
