Posted by jimB on 6/22/2009, 10:09 pm, in reply to "What is the manuscript evidence?"
66.167.68.38
In the first and second century these books were being written, Romans and Jewish persecutors were tracking down Christians and there were not a lot of scholarly books on authorship. By the forth century when the canon of the NT was formed, I suspect the authorship was attributed from tradition. I am not suggesting we are better people or even better scholars. We have better tools and more data.
The NT is a forth century compilation of various traditional texts that were in circulation, not a single work. As such we really do not have sources for the books. We do not for instance know how the letters to the Corinthians came into general circulation or how the letter to Philemen got from a person to a readership. Similarly we do not know how Luke's writings for Theophilus got into general circulation. No one knows who the John who wrote the Gospel was or what he did.
Here is what we do know in brief. By the forth century, a set of books were known that as Origen put it 'generally conformed to the Gospel' as it was in oral tradition known. Those books were collected and analyzed by Athanasius and others. In the councils of Nicea and Chalcedon the church fathers selected the books we now call the Bible. A fair number of others did not make the cut.
That is close to most of what we know. The writings of the fathers before and between the councils do shed some light on their thinking about some of the books.
I think the PBS book "The Story of the Bible" is available from public libraries and the shows may be available on CD. If you want to pursue the subject further that is a way (and English!) to start. One quickly finds if pursuing this that a study of Aramaic, German, Gebrew and Greek is needed. (No I do not read them all.) By the way, learning Latin might be a good idea too. 
FWIW
jimB
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