Caravaggio, Saint Jerome Writing, 1605-1606. Public domain.
Luke 24:44 · Book · Featured Study
How We Got the Bible
The councils of Hippo and Carthage, at the close of the fourth century, listed the books the Latin West read as Scripture.
The Bible's sixty-six books were written across some fifteen centuries, and the churches came to recognize them as God's own voice.
Jesus said to them, “These are the words I spoke to you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about Me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms.”
- Date
- c. 1400s BC to AD 397, the writing to the councils of Hippo and Carthage (probable)
- Written by
- Josephus, the Muratorian list's unnamed compiler, Athanasius of Alexandria, the councils of Hippo and Carthage
- Occasion
- The churches needed to state in writing which books they read in worship as Scripture, against shortened lists such as Marcion's and longer ones carrying later books.
The Bible's sixty-six books were written across some fifteen centuries, and the churches came to recognize them as God's own voice.
Summary
The churches read these books in worship as Scripture long before anyone wrote down a list.
- Soon after AD 93 Josephus counts twenty-two Hebrew books as closed.
- No early source tells of a council at Jamnia that closed the Hebrew canon.
- The churches asked three things of a New Testament book: who wrote it, what it taught, and who read it.
- In AD 367 Athanasius was the first to list just the twenty-seven books of the New Testament.
- The churches still differ over books found in later copies of the Septuagint, the Greek translation.
Recognized as Scripture
The Hebrew Scriptures were already a received whole in the first century, in the words of Jesus and of Josephus.
Gustave Doré, Ezra Reads the Law to the People, 1866. Public domain.
Doré drew Ezra the scribe on a raised platform, reading the Law to the people of Jerusalem.
The three parts Jesus names are the three parts of the Hebrew Bible (Torah, Prophets, Writings), named some sixty years before Josephus counted its books.
Jesus said to them, “These are the words I spoke to you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about Me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms.”The risen Jesus says everything written about him in all three parts must be fulfilled, so he holds the whole collection as Scripture.
Josephus, a Jew writing against Greek critics of his people, says they hold twenty-two books, justly believed to be divine, from Moses to the reign of Artaxerxes. No one had dared add to them, take from them or change them, he says. The histories written after Artaxerxes carried less authority, because the exact succession of prophets had ceased.
He had no Christian stake in the question.
Gustave Doré, Ezra Reads the Law to the People, 1866. Public domain.
Doré drew Ezra the scribe on a raised platform, reading the Law to the people of Jerusalem.
The three parts Jesus names are the three parts of the Hebrew Bible (Torah, Prophets, Writings), named some sixty years before Josephus counted its books.
Josephus, a Jew writing against Greek critics of his people, says they hold twenty-two books, justly believed to be divine, from Moses to the reign of Artaxerxes. No one had dared add to them, take from them or change them, he says. The histories written after Artaxerxes carried less authority, because the exact succession of prophets had ceased.
He had no Christian stake in the question.
The confessional position1 verse, 1 paragraph
On the confessional answer the books carry their authority from God, and the councils recognized that authority and did not confer it. It is the Reformed position, taught by John Calvin in his Institutes. On this view the history below is the churches recognizing, over generations and unevenly, what was already true of the books.
All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for instruction, for conviction, for correction, and for training in righteousness,Paul ties the writings' use for instruction and correction to their source, and the confessional position rests on that tie.
How the twenty-two books are counted1 paragraph
Josephus's twenty-two are usually matched to the thirty-nine books of the Protestant Old Testament, though his translator William Whiston thought the count left out the Song of Songs. Athanasius, who also counts twenty-two books, reckons the twelve Minor Prophets as one book and the two books of Ezra as one.
The Timeline
Eleven stages run from the writing of the books to the Westminster Confession.
Four of the eleven stages fall after AD 300.
| When | Stage | What happened |
|---|---|---|
| c. 1400s to 400s BC | the writing | The Old Testament's books are written from Moses to Malachi, the last of the Twelve. |
| c. 250 to 100 BC | the Septuagint | Translators in Alexandria put the Scriptures into Greek; its later copies carry the books the Hebrew canon lacks. |
| c. AD 30 to 100 | the writing, again | The twenty-seven books are written; 2 Peter 3:15 to 16 sets Paul's letters beside the other Scriptures. |
| c. AD 90 (contested) | “Jamnia” | The rabbis' academy at Jamnia (Yavneh) is at work. |
| c. AD 93 to 94 | Josephus's witness | Josephus writes Against Apion. |
| c. AD 144 | Marcion | Marcion keeps an edited Luke and ten letters of Paul and drops the Old Testament. |
| c. AD 180 to 200 (or later, contested) | the Muratorian Fragment | A damaged Latin manuscript in the Ambrosian Library at Milan preserves the list. |
| AD 367 | Athanasius's 39th Festal Letter | Athanasius lists exactly the twenty-seven books of today's New Testament. |
| AD 393 and 397 | Hippo and Carthage | Their lists set Tobit, Judith and two books of Maccabees beside the twenty-seven. |
| AD 1546 | the Council of Trent | Trent declares anathema anyone who does not receive the books of its list as sacred and canonical. |
| AD 1647 | the Westminster Confession | The Church of Scotland adopts the Confession drawn up at Westminster. |
c. AD 180 to 200 (or later, contested), AD 367, AD 393 and 397, AD 1546, AD 1647
Where Marcion's collection came from1 paragraph
Marcion chose his shorter collection from the letters of Paul already in use in the churches.
The New Testament: Three Tests and Athanasius's Letter
Apostolicity, orthodoxy and catholicity were the churches' three tests.
A table of three rows, one for each test, with its question and what it meant.
| Test | The question | What it meant |
|---|---|---|
| Apostolicity | Did an apostle or his close companion write it? | Mark carries Peter's testimony, as Papias and Eusebius record; Luke, Paul's companion, wrote Luke and Acts. |
| Orthodoxy | Did it agree with the apostles' “rule of faith”? | The Gospels of Thomas and of Peter, old and read by some, were set aside for conflicting with it. |
| Catholicity | Did the wider church read it in worship? | Colossians 4:16 shows letters passed between churches; a text read in one region only did not pass. |
Athanasius was bishop of Alexandria, and his Easter letter calls the books it lists kanonizomena, the books included in the canon.
What the letter settled, and for whom1 paragraph
From the year of the letter, AD 367, the list stood fixed in the churches of Alexandria.
The Academy at Jamnia
Mishnah Yadayim 3:5 records the rabbis' ruling on the Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes, given on the day Elazar ben Azariah was made head of the academy.
A table of two accounts of Jamnia and what each says.
| Account | What it says |
|---|---|
| The popular version | Around AD 90 a rabbinic council at Jamnia (Yavneh) voted to close the Hebrew canon, settling Ecclesiastes, Song of Songs and Esther and excluding the Apocrypha. |
| What the sources support | The question was whether books already widely accepted “defile the hands” (a technical phrase marking sacred status). The academy met over many years and held no binding authority beyond its own circle. |
Where the council story came from1 paragraph
Jack P. Lewis's 1964 article "What Do We Mean by Jabneh?" traced the "Council of Jamnia" of popular retellings to Heinrich Graetz, who proposed it in his 1871 commentary on Ecclesiastes. Lewis argued that the discussions were narrower, later and less decisive than that story allows.
The Muratorian List and the Great Codices
Ludovico Antonio Muratori published the list in 1740.
What the list names
- Four Gospels and Acts.
- Thirteen letters of Paul.
- Jude, two letters of John, and Revelation.
- The Wisdom of Solomon, and the Apocalypse of Peter, which some would not have read in church.
- Set outside public reading: the Shepherd of Hermas.
The list is the earliest known record of the New Testament books treated as authoritative Scripture, and it names most of the twenty-seven. It gives its reason for the Shepherd of Hermas: the book was written recently, in the compiler's own time. It rejects letters to the Laodiceans and to the Alexandrians as forged in Paul's name, and other writings as heretical.
The date of the list, and the case for a later one1 paragraph
The traditional dating, held by Bruce M. Metzger (The Canon of the New Testament, 1987), places its writing in or near Rome about AD 180 to 200. Albert Sundberg (Canon Muratori: A Fourth-Century List, 1973) and Geoffrey Hahneman (The Muratorian Fragment and the Development of the Canon, 1992) argue on internal grounds for a fourth-century eastern origin. On the traditional date the list is older than the letter of Athanasius by more than a century and a half.
Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Alexandrinus differ in the books they bind after the twenty-seven, so those further books were not yet fixed.
| Codex | Date and how it is dated | What it holds |
|---|---|---|
| Codex Vaticanus | About AD 300 to 350, by its script | Most of the Greek Old Testament and most of the New; its end, from late Hebrews through Revelation, is lost. |
| Codex Sinaiticus | About AD 330 to 360, by its script | Part of the Septuagint, the whole New Testament, the Epistle of Barnabas and part of the Shepherd of Hermas. |
| Codex Alexandrinus | About AD 400 to 440, by its script | Most of both Testaments in Greek, with 1 and 2 Clement bound after Revelation. |
| The Aleppo Codex | About AD 920 to 930, by its script and its history | The Masoretic Hebrew text with its vowels, accents and notes, copied in Tiberias. |
| The Leningrad Codex | AD 1008, by its colophon, the scribe's dated note | The whole Hebrew Bible with the Masoretic notes, copied in Cairo by Samuel ben Jacob. |
Which Books Each Church Receives
Each communion states its list in its own documents.
The Eastern Orthodox churches receive the most books of the four.
| Who | Old Testament | The books beyond the Hebrew canon | Source document |
|---|---|---|---|
| Judaism | 24 books in three parts: the Law, the Prophets, the Writings | Outside the Tanakh | The Talmud, Bava Batra 14b, which lists the books in order |
| Protestant churches | 39 books, the same content as the 24 | Read for example of life and instruction of manners, never to establish doctrine (the Thirty-Nine Articles); of no authority in the church beyond other human writings (the Westminster Confession) | The Westminster Confession, chapter 1 (1647); the Thirty-Nine Articles, article 6 (1571) |
| The Roman Catholic Church | 46 books | Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, 1 and 2 Maccabees and the Greek parts of Esther and Daniel, called deuterocanonical | The Council of Trent, fourth session (1546) |
| The Eastern Orthodox churches | The Catholic list with further books, the count varying by church | Held as Scripture and called books to be read, with 1 Esdras, 3 Maccabees and the Prayer of Manasseh among them | The Synod of Jerusalem (1672) |
Westminster and Trent differ over the books beyond the Hebrew canon, yet they name the same twenty-seven New Testament books.
The Two Endings of the Old Testament
The printed Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament close on different books.
The Christian Old Testament follows the Greek arrangement of law, history, poetry and prophets.
The evidence for each order2 verses, 1 paragraph
Roger Beckwith reads Jesus's words in Matthew 23:35 as a survey of a canon that ended with Chronicles. The Aleppo and Leningrad codices place Chronicles first among the Writings, so the order of those books varied among Jewish copyists, as John Barton argues.
And so upon you will come all the righteous blood shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Berechiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar.Jesus's words about the blood of Abel and the blood of Zechariah run from the first martyr in Genesis to the last martyr named in Chronicles.
And he will go on before the Lord in the spirit and power of Elijah, to turn the hearts of the fathers to their children and the disobedient to the wisdom of the righteous—to make ready a people prepared for the Lord.”Gabriel takes up Malachi's last promise and applies it to John the Baptist.
Voices on the Canon
Irenaeus taught in the second century and John Wesley in the eighteenth.
died 202 · Irenaeus
“It is not possible that the Gospels can be either more or fewer in number than they are. For, since there are four zones of the world in which we live, and four principal winds, while the Church is scattered throughout all the world, and the ‘pillar and ground’ of the Church is the Gospel and the spirit of life; it is fitting that she should have four pillars, breathing out immortality on every side, and vivifying men afresh.”
Irenaeus · Against Heresies Book 3 · on Revelation 4:6 to 7Patristic
1703 to 1791 · John Wesley
“And he said - On the day of his ascension. In the law, and the prophets, and the Psalms - The prophecies as well as types, relating to the Messiah, are contained either in the books of Moses (usually called the law) in the Psalms, or in the writings of the prophets; little being said directly concerning him in the historical books.”
John Wesley · Explanatory Notes upon the New Testament · on Luke 24:44Evangelical
The Apocrypha
1 Enoch is a Jewish writing of the centuries before Christ, and the churches hold three positions on the books the Hebrew canon lacks.
1 Enoch, quoted by Jude1 verse, 1 paragraph
Judaism and the Protestant, Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox churches keep 1 Enoch outside the canon, and a New Testament writer can quote a book without making it Scripture.
Enoch, the seventh from Adam, also prophesied about them: “Behold, the Lord is coming with myriads of His holy ones to execute judgment on everyone, and to convict all the ungodly of every ungodly act of wickedness and every harsh word spoken against Him by ungodly sinners.”Jude says Enoch prophesied about the false teachers of his own day, so the quotation serves his warning to the churches.
The Hebrew canon alone is ScriptureProtestant churches · Tier A
Jerome held it and set the books outside the Hebrew canon apart in his Latin Bible, and Martin Luther held it and printed them between the Testaments in his 1534 Bible. The case rests on the Hebrew canon of the first century, which held none of these books. It rests also on the New Testament, which quotes none of the deuterocanonical books directly.
The strongest objection, in its holders' terms: the churches received these books and heard them in their services for centuries before the Reformation.
The deuterocanonical books are ScriptureThe Roman Catholic Church · Tier A
Augustine held it in On Christian Doctrine (book 2, chapter 8), and so did the councils of Hippo and Carthage and the Council of Trent. Its case is that the apostles quoted the Septuagint, the Bible these books came down in, and one authority settled both Testaments.
The strongest objection, in its holders' terms: Trent was the first council to bind them on a whole communion, more than eleven centuries after Carthage.
The wider Greek list is ScriptureThe Eastern Orthodox churches · Tier A
The Synod of Jerusalem (1672) held it and counted Wisdom, Judith, Tobit, the Maccabees and Sirach as genuine parts of Scripture. Its case is that the Church that delivered the Gospels delivered these books too.
The strongest objection, in its holders' terms: the churches that hold this view differ among themselves over the authority each book carries.
Books to Read Next
Three scholars of the canon published these studies between 1985 and 1987.
The Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church
Roger T. Beckwith · 1985
It makes the fullest modern case for an early, fixed Hebrew canon, and it argues from the Jewish sources.
In print: find it wherever books are sold.
Oracles of God
John Barton · 1986
It shows how Jews after the exile read their Scriptures as prophecy, and it takes the other side from Beckwith.
In print: find it wherever books are sold.
The Canon of the New Testament
Bruce M. Metzger · 1987
It traces the New Testament lists from the Fathers to the councils, and it remains the standard account.
In print: find it wherever books are sold.
The Books That Speak of Him
The question of the canon ends at the risen Jesus.
The Scriptures the risen Jesus named ask every reader to read them as his word and to find him in them.
Then He opened their minds to understand the Scriptures.Understanding the Scriptures came to the disciples as the risen Jesus's own gift, and every list of the books serves that understanding.
The Greek Behind Canon and Scripture
Paul uses all three: kanōn in Galatians 6:16, and graphē and theopneustos together in 2 Timothy 3:16.
A table of three Greek terms, each with its transliteration and sense.
| Greek | Transliteration | Sense |
|---|---|---|
| κανών | kanōn | a measuring rod, a rule, and the source of the word “canon” |
| γραφή | graphē | writing, scripture: the New Testament's usual word for the sacred writings |
| θεόπνευστος | theopneustos | God-breathed: Scripture's claim about its own origin |
Sources
Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.
- Babylonian Talmud, Bava Batra 14b to 15a, the list of the books in order.
- Flavius Josephus, Against Apion 1.8, tr. William Whiston (1737)
- Athanasius, Festal Letter 39 (367), Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, volume 4 (1892)
- Council of Trent, fourth session, Decree concerning the Canonical Scriptures (8 April 1546)
- The Westminster Confession of Faith (1647), chapter 1, sections 2 and 3.
- The Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion (1571), article 6.
- The Synod of Jerusalem (1672), the Confession of Dositheus, question 3.
- Roger T. Beckwith, The Old Testament Canon of the New Testament Church (Eerdmans, 1985)
- John Barton, Oracles of God (1986)
- Bruce M. Metzger, The Canon of the New Testament (Oxford, 1987)
- John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, book 1, chapter 7, tr. Henry Beveridge (Calvin Translation Society, 1845)
- Mishnah, Yadayim 3:5.
- Jack P. Lewis, What Do We Mean by Jabneh?, Journal of Bible and Religion 32 (1964)
- Catholic Encyclopedia (1908), Canon of the Old Testament, by George J. Reid.
- Catholic Encyclopedia (1908), Canon of the New Testament.
- Catholic Encyclopedia (1911), Muratorian Canon, by J. P. Kirsch.
- Catholic Encyclopedia (1912), Septuagint Version.
- The Muratorian Canon, Ante-Nicene Fathers, volume 5 (1886)
- Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, Second Series, volume 4 (1892), the introduction to the Festal Letters.
- J. N. W. B. Robertson, The Acts and Decrees of the Synod of Jerusalem (1899), question 3.
- R. H. Charles, The Book of Enoch (Oxford, 1912), the introduction.
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