Formation of the Canon

The Term and Biblical Clues

Canon comes from the Greek word kanōn, which originally meant a measuring rod or a rule. Neither the word "canon" nor a list of books appears in the Bible. Some passages, however, are read as clues.

• In Luke 24:44, Jesus speaks of things written "in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms." Many interpreters take this as a reference to the three divisions of the Jewish scriptures (Law, Prophets, and Writings).
• 2 Peter 3:16 places Paul's letters alongside "the other scriptures."

The Old Testament Canon

The Jewish scriptures are divided into the Law (Torah), the Prophets, and the Writings. Of these, the Pentateuch is thought to have been the first to be recognized as authoritative. A long-standing account held that rabbis at Yavneh (Jamnia) fixed the Old Testament canon in the late first century. Many scholars today, however, question whether this was a formal council that settled the canon. Manuscripts of the Septuagint, the Greek translation, also contain books not found in the Hebrew scriptures, and this became the background for later differences among Christian traditions.

The New Testament Canon

The early church read the Gospels and the apostolic letters in worship. In the second century, Marcion promoted a list containing only an edited Gospel of Luke and the Pauline Epistles. A widely accepted view holds that this prompted the church to define the scope of its Scriptures more clearly.

For a time, Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, 2 John, 3 John, Jude, and Revelation were received to varying degrees in different regions. In 367, Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, listed exactly the present twenty-seven books in his Easter (Festal) Letter. The councils of Hippo and Carthage in North Africa in the late fourth century are also known to have endorsed the same list.

Three criteria are commonly cited as having guided judgments about canonicity:

• Apostolicity: Is the book connected with an apostle?
• Orthodoxy: Does it agree with the rule of faith?
• Catholicity: Was it widely used among the churches?

Understandings by Tradition

• Protestantism recognizes sixty-six books as canonical: thirty-nine in the Old Testament and twenty-seven in the New. It explains that the church did not "create" the canon but "recognized and acknowledged" books that were already authoritative. In his translation, Martin Luther moved Hebrews, James, Jude, and Revelation to the end of the New Testament. Chapter 1 of the Westminster Confession of Faith lists the sixty-six books and states that the Apocrypha are not of divine inspiration.
• The Catholic Church recognizes seventy-three books as canonical, including the so-called deuterocanonical books such as Tobit, Judith, and Wisdom, and it affirmed this canon at the Council of Trent in 1546. It holds that the teaching authority of the church played a role in determining the canon.
• The Orthodox Church follows the Septuagint tradition, so its canon is somewhat broader, and it varies among the local churches.

In the Korean Church

The New Korean Revised Version, widely used by Korean Protestants, contains only the sixty-six books. The Common Translation, produced jointly by Protestants and Catholics, has an edition that includes the deuterocanonical books. Protestants commonly call these books the "Apocrypha," while Catholics call them the "deuterocanonical books." In the Korean church, the understanding that the canon is closed is frequently invoked as grounds for criticizing teachings that claim new revelation outside the Bible.