How did the old and new testements of the Bible go from two separate holy texts (a Jewish one and the Christian one) to being taken as one unified Christian Bible?
by 
Mr. Meaulnes
ANSWERS: 2
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The earliest Christians were converted Jews who still held to their Jewish roots to a large degree. They really had no other scriptures than what was already available to them (we might call this the Old Testament today). As time went on and the church grew to include "gentile" believers, the apostles dealt with new schisms and ideas that were being brought into the church from the backgrounds of those new cultures and past religious roots. Letters or epistles were written to encourage and instruct new believers as well as to deal with dangerous errors. A good part of the New Testament was written to address specific problems the church was facing in that day. Much later, different church "councils" were called to decide doctrine and to adopt a complete canon of the Bible, which would include Old and New testament books. You can read about these different councils and the different theories used to answer how the Bible came to be at the following links: http://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Biblical_Studies/Christianity/The_Bible/Origin_of_the_Bible/Bible_canonization or, http://www.tertullian.org/rpearse/nicaea.html
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the combination of Hebrew Scripture (known to Christians as the "Old Testament" or "First" Testament, the Apocrypha/Deuterocanon (various writings important in the Second-Temple period of Judaism), and the "New Testament," describing the life and message of Jesus. For Jews, it refers to the Hebrew Bible. Many Christian English speakers refer to the Bible as "the good book." Christianity and Judaism regard the Bible as the revealed word of God, with widespread variation on what this means or to what extent (or what books) it applies.
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