Biblical Canon

Definition and Meaning

The canon (Korean jeonggyeong, 正經) refers to the list of books that the church has recognized as the standard for faith and life, or to the books included in that list. The English word canon comes from the Greek kanōn, meaning "measuring rod" or "rule."

Some of the books not included in the canon are called the Apocrypha. The Catholic Church accepts many of these books as canonical and calls them the "deuterocanonical" books. Books that no church accepts as canonical, such as the Book of Enoch or the Gospel of Thomas, are commonly classified separately by Protestants as the Pseudepigrapha (books written under the borrowed name of a famous figure).

Biblical and Historical Background

The list of the twenty-seven books of the New Testament became settled in the fourth century. An early known instance is the Festal Letter of 367 by Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, which enumerated the present twenty-seven books. Church councils in North Africa later confirmed similar lists.

The scope of the Old Testament has been a matter of differing views among the churches.

• Protestant: Only the thirty-nine books contained in the Hebrew Bible are regarded as canonical. In his German Bible, Martin Luther grouped the Apocrypha separately between the Old and New Testaments and introduced them as books "not held equal to Holy Scripture, yet profitable and good to read." Chapter 1 of the Westminster Confession of Faith states that the Apocrypha, not being of divine inspiration, are no part of the canon.
• Catholic: The Council of Trent (1546) fixed a list that includes Tobit, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees, Wisdom, Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), Baruch, and the additions to Esther and Daniel.
• Orthodox: The Orthodox Church accepts an even broader range of books, with variation among local churches.

Practice in the Korean Church

Most denominations of Korean Protestantism recognize sixty-six books (thirty-nine in the Old Testament and twenty-seven in the New Testament) as canonical. The New Korean Revised Version, the translation chiefly used in worship, likewise consists of sixty-six books. Presbyterian denominations, following the Westminster Confession of Faith, exclude the Apocrypha from the canon.

The Anglican Church of Korea follows Article VI of the Thirty-Nine Articles of Religion, which describes the Apocrypha as books that the church reads "for example of life and instruction of manners" but does not apply "to establish any doctrine."

The Common Translation Bible, published in 1977 by the Korean Bible Society jointly with the Catholic Church, has an edition that includes the Apocrypha (deuterocanonical books). The Anglican Church of Korea is reported to have used this translation in worship. The Catholic Church uses a Bible of seventy-three books, including the deuterocanonical books.

In Protestant seminaries, the Apocrypha are read not as canonical Scripture but as sources for understanding the history and Judaism of the period between the Old and New Testaments.