Seven letters are accepted by virtually all textual scholars as written by Paul himself in the 50s CE: Romans, 1 and 2 Corinthians, Galatians, Philippians, 1 Thessalonians and Philemon. These are the earliest Christian documents in existence, predating the gospels. Six more bearing his name are disputed. Ephesians, Colossians and 2 Thessalonians are argued over, with scholars divided on whether they are Paul's, a secretary's, or a disciple's work in his name. The pastoral epistles, 1 and 2 Timothy and Titus, are judged by most critical scholars to be later, on grounds of vocabulary, style and the developed church offices they assume; traditional and conservative scholarship maintains Paul's authorship of all thirteen. Hebrews carries no author's name and is not now ascribed to Paul by anyone; Origen said in the third century that only God knew who wrote it.
The oldest surviving fragment of any New Testament book is Papyrus 52, a scrap of John's gospel in the John Rylands Library, usually dated to the first half of the second century, though Brent Nongbri has shown the palaeographic method allows a range extending later. Complete Bibles survive from the fourth century in Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus.
The canon formed under pressure. Around 144 Marcion rejected the Hebrew scriptures and proposed a Christian collection of one gospel and ten Pauline letters, forcing the wider church to say what it accepted. The Muratorian fragment, a Latin canon list usually dated to the late second century though Albert Sundberg and Geoffrey Hahneman argued for the fourth, names most of the 27. Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Jude and Revelation were disputed longest. The first surviving list of exactly the 27 books is the 39th festal letter of Athanasius of Alexandria in 367. No council imposed it; the churches had largely converged on it already through what they read aloud.