1)You would not have a Bible if it was not for the many struggles and martyrdom of the early Christians fighting against the heretics to preserve the faith, and against the non-Christian Emperors who wanted to destroy all Christians. The churches (the Orthodox, The Church of Rome, and the Protestant churches) as we know them today would not exist and no one would have the New Testament if these struggles had failed.
- The Scripture: when the New Testament refers to Scripture it is the Septuagint Greek Old Testament which is the only Bible that most Jews read in synagogues and the only Scripture that the earliest Christians had.
2a) There was no New Testament yet and the Scripture that they did have as referenced in quotes in the New Testament, as quoted by the Apostles and Christ, over 300 (out of about 350 total references) of these quotations are from the Septuagint which has many differences from the many centuries newer and incorrect Masoretic texts. - The New Testament was written by the Apostles but they were not around to preserve it past 100 A.D. They ordained their successors, whom they trusted such as St. Ignatius of Antioch who faithfully passed down the Holy Scripture from generation to generation.
They are the very ones who believed in the Real Presence of Christ in the Eucharist, the same ones who wrote the Liturgies of the early Church that were and still are the services of the Roman Mass and the Divine Liturgy of the Orthodox Church, the ones who made the decisions against the heretics at the Ecumenical Councils.
- They are the same ones, not one of which, not one single one of which believed in double predestination, or taught against praying to the Saints, or believed that the sacraments were just remembrances or that Holy baptism was just a seal of a decision having been made and not for the remission of sins, and all of whom believed in the ever-virginity of Mary. They are the same ones who clarified the important doctrines about the person of Christ and the true teaching about the Holy Trinity.
Some of you observed a heretic this afternoon trying to teach Modalism and another a similar Unitarian variation of non-Trinitarian theology and several recently have tried without success to defend Nestorianism. These are non-Christian heresies! And if you paid close attention this afternoon you may have noticed that only those who knew about the teachings of the first three Ecumenical Councils had enough knowledge to defend the true doctrine of the Trinity. - The Old Testament of the Church was and still is the Septuagint for almost 20 centuries now in the East and contains all the books of the so-called deuterocanon although no one called it that or "Apocrypha" until some began to be influenced by Jews who had changed their Hebrew scripture to water down or outright remove entire passages and books that were the most messianic prophetic parts of the Old Testament.
Why would you want to follow the revisionist Jews who chopped out parts of the Old Testament? Why would you want to accept the Bible, both Old and New Testaments as delivered to you by the Church but reject the Saints, Martyrs and true theologians who are the very ones who preserved and handed down the Bible to you? Why would you want to insist that you alone can interpret scripture when you see the consequences of that in the 1000s of denominations and non-denominations (and non-Trinitarian heretics even) with their many strange and indefensible doctrines?