Canons and Their Development

Living in Christ Series Document #: TX001001

The biblical canon is the set of books Christians hold as divinely inspired and thus make up the Sacred

Scriptures. The process of creating or choosing the canon is divinely inspired. However, the process of

determining the Roman Catholic, Protestant, and Orthodox Bibles has resulted in different Old Testament

canons. This is partly because the Old Testament and the New Testament canons have different

histories.

Development of the Old Testament Canon

For practical purposes the Old Testament has the same books as the Jewish Bible. For the Jewish

people, the development of their scriptures has a long history. The books went through centuries of oral

storytelling, then periods when various traditions telling the stories of the patriarchs and kings were

written, then periods when those traditions were edited and combined, and then periods when alternative

versions of those traditions (Deuteronomy and Chronicles, for example) developed. While all this was

happening, the sayings of the prophets were also written and collected, and the various forms of wisdom

literature developed.

By the time of Jesus, this work was complete. All Jews accepted the Torah (the first five books of the

Old Testament) as sacred Scripture. Many Jews (but not, for example, the Sadducees) also held another

collection of books called the Prophets to be sacred. This collection contained the historical books of

Joshua through Second Kings (not including Ruth) as well as the books we more typically consider to be

the writings of the prophets (Isaiah through Malachi). Many also considered a third collection called the

Writings to be sacred. The Writings contained the books of Ruth, Esther, Job, Psalms, Proverbs,

Ecclesiastes, the Song of Solomon, Lamentations, Daniel, Ezra, Nehemiah, and First and Second

Chronicles.

However, after Alexander the Great conquered the Middle East, Greek became the official language

of the area, and for most Jews, Greek became their primary tongue. Thus, in the three centuries before

Christ, new sacred books were written in Greek, not in Hebrew. And during this time, the sacred books

originally written in Hebrew were translated into Greek. Thus, by the first century AD, there was an

entirely Greek version of the Hebrew Scriptures called the Septuagint. This version included the books

written originally in Hebrew plus seven books written only in Greek (Tobit, Judith, First and Second

Maccabees, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch) and Greek additions to the Books of Esther and Daniel. Jews of

Jesus’ time disagreed about whether these Greek books should be part of their sacred Scriptures.

Because most of the early Christians spoke Greek, including Jews such as Paul, the Septuagint was

adopted by the Church as its Sacred Scriptures, which would become the Old Testament of the Christian

Bible. After the destruction of the Jerusalem Temple in AD 70, leading rabbis reorganized Jewish

worship. They reviewed the existing collections of their sacred writings and developed an official list of

twenty-four books. They rejected the books that were not originally written in Hebrew. Many centuries

later, leaders of the Protestant Reformation, such as Martin Luther and others, decided to use this Jewish

canon as the Old Testament of the Protestant Bible. He placed the seven additional books in a separate

section, calling them the Apocrypha (from the Greek for “hidden”). Part of the reason for the Apocrypha is

that the reformers rejected these books because they supported Christian traditions such as Purgatory

and praying for the dead—traditions the Protestant reformers rejected. The Catholic Church and the

Orthodox churches continue to use the Septuagint version as their Old Testament, as the Christian

Church has done since the first centuries. Many Orthodox Bibles include even more Old Testament books

first written in Greek.

Canons and Their Development Page | 2

Living in Christ Series Document #: TX001001

Canons of Scripture

Old Testament (Hebrew Scriptures)

JEWISH

ROMAN CATHOLIC

ORTHODOX

PROTESTANT

Torah (Law)

Genesis

Exodus

Leviticus

Numbers

Deuteronomy

Nevi’im (Prophets)

Early Prophets:

Joshua

Judges

1 and 2 Samuel

1 and 2 Kings

Later Prophets:

Isaiah

Jeremiah

Ezekiel

Hosea

Joel

Amos

Obadiah

Jonah

Micah

Nahum

Habakkuk

Zephaniah

Haggai

Zechariah

Malachi

Kethuvim (Writings)

Psalms

Proverbs

Job

Song of Solomon

Ruth

Lamentations

Ecclesiastes

Esther

Daniel

Ezra

Nehemiah

1 and 2 Chronicles

35–39 Books

(Some collections unite

Samuel, Kings, and

Chronicles)

Pentateuch

Genesis

Exodus

Leviticus

Numbers

Deuteronomy

Historical Books

Joshua

Judges

Ruth

1 and 2 Samuel

1 and 2 Kings

1 and 2 Chronicles

Ezra

Nehemiah

*Tobit

*Judith

Esther (*parts)

*1 and 2 Maccabees

Wisdom Books

Job

Psalms

Proverbs

Ecclesiastes

Song of Solomon

(Songs)

*Wisdom

*Sirach (Ecclesiasticus)

Prophets

Isaiah

Jeremiah

Lamentations

*Baruch

Ezekiel

Daniel (*parts)

Hosea

Joel

Amos

Obadiah

Jonah

Micah

Nahum

Habakkuk

Zephaniah

Haggai

Zechariah

Malachi

46 Books

i (Septuagint canon

includes seven books not

in the Hebrew canon)

Pentateuch

Genesis

Exodus

Leviticus

Numbers

Deuteronomy

Historical Books

Joshua

Judges

Ruth

1 and 2 Samuel

1 and 2 Kings

1 and 2 Chronicles

Ezra

Nehemiah

*Tobit

*Judith

Esther (*parts)

*1, 2 and 3 Maccabees

*4 Maccabees (as an

appendix)

*1 and 2 Esdras

Wisdom Books

Job

Psalms

Proverbs

Ecclesiastes

Song of Solomon

*Wisdom

*Sirach (Ecclesiasticus)

*Prayer of Manasseh

*Psalm 151

Prophets

Isaiah

Jeremiah

Lamentations

*Baruch

Ezekiel

Daniel (*parts)

Hosea

Joel

Amos

Obadiah

Jonah

Micah

Nahum

Habakkuk

Zephaniah

Haggai

Zechariah

Malachi

51 Books

(Orthodox canon

follows an expanded

Septuagint canon that

includes five or six

additional books)

Pentateuch

Genesis

Exodus

Leviticus

Numbers

Deuteronomy

Historical Books

Joshua

Judges

Ruth

1 and 2 Samuel

1 and 2 Kings

1 and 2 Chronicles

Ezra

Nehemiah

Esther

Wisdom Books

Job

Psalms

Proverbs

Ecclesiastes

Song of Solomon

Prophets

Isaiah

Jeremiah

Lamentations

Ezekiel

Daniel

Hosea

Joel

Amos

Obadiah

Jonah

Micah

Nahum

Habakkuk

Zephaniah

Haggai

Zechariah

Malachi

39 Books

(Protestant canon

follows the Hebrew

canon established in

the first century CE)

Canons and Their Development Page | 3

Living in Christ Series Document #: TX001001

The Protestant and Catholic Old Testaments are then, for the most part, identical with the Hebrew

Bible (also called the Tanak). The differences between the Hebrew Bible and the Protestant Old

Testament are minor, dealing only with the arrangement and number of the books. For example, although

the Hebrew Bible considers Kings to be a unified text, the Protestant Old Testament divides it into two

books. Similarly, Ezra and Nehemiah are considered to be one book in the Hebrew Bible. Many editions

of the Hebrew Bible also group the writings of the twelve minor prophets into one book. For these reasons

the Protestant Old Testament has thirty-nine books whereas the Hebrew Bible has twenty-four to thirty-

five books, but they are the same books. Because Catholic Bibles include the seven additional books also

found in the Septuagint, the Catholic Old Testament has forty-six books.

Development of the New Testament Canon

The development of the New Testament canon was, like that of the Old Testament, a gradual process,

although this process occurred over two or three hundred years rather than over more than a thousand

years. The first writings of the New Testament were the letters of Paul. The Pauline epistles were

circulating in collected form by the end of the first century AD. See Second Peter 3:15–16, which

mentions Paul’s letters as if they were common knowledge.

The four canonical Gospels were also recognized as holy and authoritative texts by the end of the

second century. Justin Martyr, in the early second century, mentions the “memoirs of the apostles,” which

Christians called gospels. A four-gospel canon (the Tetramorph) was asserted by Irenaeus (an early

Church Father credited for developing the first rationale for a Christian Bible) around AD 160. By the early

200s, Origen of Alexandria (one of the Church’s first great biblical scholars) appears to have used the

twenty-seven books found in modern New Testaments, though at this time there were still disagreements

over the canonicity of the books of Hebrews, James, Second Peter, Second and Third John, and

Revelation. Thus, though the early Church debated the New Testament canon, the twenty-seven books

and letters of the modern Bible were accepted by almost all Christians by the middle of the third century.

More could be said about the debates around the canonical books of the New Testament. But for all

practical intents and purposes, by the fourth century, the Western Church agreed about the twenty-seven

books and letters that made up the New Testament canon (as it is today). The Eastern churches

struggled with the canonicity of the Book of Revelation, but by the fifth century, they, with a few

exceptions, had come into harmony with the Western Church. However, the official declarations

describing the various Christian canons (which differ on which books are in the Old Testament but not in

the New Testament) were not made until much later: the Council of Trent of 1546 for Roman Catholicism,

the Thirty-Nine Articles of 1563 for the Church of England, the Westminster Confession of Faith of 1647

for Calvinism, and the Synod of Jerusalem of 1672 for Greek Orthodox.

Canons and Their Development Page | 4

Living in Christ Series Document #: TX001001

New Testament (Christian Scriptures)

ROMAN CATHOLIC

ORTHODOX

PROTESTANT

Gospels

Matthew

Mark

Luke

John

Acts of the Apostles

Epistles (Letters)

Romans

1 Corinthians

2 Corinthians

Galatians

+Ephesians

+Colossians

Philippians

1 Thessalonians

+2 Thessalonians

+1 Timothy

+2 Timothy

+Titus

Philemon

Catholic Epistles

Hebrews

James

1 Peter

2 Peter

1 John

2 John

3 John

Jude

Apocalyptic

Revelation

27 Books

Gospels

Matthew

Mark

Luke

John

Acts of the Apostles

Epistles (Letters)

Romans

1 Corinthians

2 Corinthians

Galatians

+Ephesians

+Colossians

Philippians

1 Thessalonians

+2 Thessalonians

+1 Timothy

+2 Timothy

+Titus

Philemon

Church Epistles

Hebrews

James

1 Peter

2 Peter

1 John

2 John

3 John

Jude

Apocalyptic

Revelation

27 Books

Gospels

Matthew

Mark

Luke

John

Acts of the Apostles

Epistles (Letters)

Romans

1 Corinthians

2 Corinthians

Galatians

+Ephesians

+Colossians

Philippians

1 Thessalonians

+2 Thessalonians

+1 Timothy

+2 Timothy

+Titus

Philemon

Church Epistles

Hebrews

James

1 Peter

2 Peter

1 John

2 John

3 John

Jude

Apocalyptic

Revelation

27 Books

Criteria for the Christian canon:

• Written by an Apostle or the scribe of an Apostle • Roman Catholics, Orthodox, and Protestants

• Agrees with the teachings and theology of the Apostle Tradition all have the same twenty-seven books within

• Widely known and used in the Christian the canon of the New Testament

Saint Mar

’s Pre

Living in

hrist

eries Document

i Septuagint Canon:

The Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures includes seven books (Deuterocanonical) not listed in the

Hebrew or Protestant canons. The Septuagint (meaning seventy) was translated by the rabbis of Alexandria in

300–280 BCE. The Septuagint canon was affirmed at the Synods of Hippo (393 CE) and Carthage (397 CE)

and adopted as the official list of Old Testament Books for the Roman Catholic canon at the Council of Trent

in 1545 CE. Three hundred of the three hundred and fifty Old Testament references in the New Testament

quote the Septuagint.

* Deuterocanonical Books:

After the fall of Jerusalem to the Romans (70 CE) the Deuterocanonical works were removed from the Hebrew

canon after the Jamnia Decision (100 CE). The Roman Catholic canon includes the Deuterocanonical books

and considers them inspired text. During the Reformation (1517–70 CE) the books were removed from the

Protestant canon and considered apocrypha (false writings). The Dead Sea scrolls, dating from 168 BCE–68

CE, include the Deuterocanonical books.

+ Indicates Deutero-Paulilne Epistles:

Letters attributed to Paul but probably written by his followers.

Canons and Their Development Page | 5

Living in Christ Series Document #: TX001001

Criteria for Canonicity

Along with the twenty-seven books and letters that make up the New Testament canon, many other

gospels and letters were written in the first centuries of the Church. So what were the criteria for deciding

which books and letters made it into the Bible? For the Old Testament, the criteria for the early Church

Fathers were pretty straightforward. They were guided by this question: Which books did Jesus and the

Apostles consider as sacred? There was common agreement among the Church Fathers that the

Apostles accepted the Septuagint as their Scriptures, and so those books became the Catholic Old

Testament.

For the New Testament books, it is difficult to find any standard criteria that were actually written. But

the common criteria assumed by the Church Fathers were these:

x Was the book or letter written by an Apostle or a disciple of an Apostle?

x Does the teaching and theology in the book or letter agree with the teaching and theology of the

Apostolic Tradition?

x Was the book or letter widely known and used in the early Christian community?

Although these criteria seem direct and straightforward, the actual decisions were not without

controversy. In fact, the creation of the New Testament canon was in many ways a response to

challenges presented by people such as Marcion. Marcion lived in the early second century, and he

proposed a canon composed only of the Gospel of Luke and ten of Paul’s letters (edited by himself).

Marcion believed that the God revealed by Jesus Christ was completely different from the God revealed

in the Hebrew Scriptures, and thus, he rejected the Old Testament completely. Marcion’s views were

rejected as heretical, and as a result, the formation of the official Christian canon was accelerated.

(The charts in this article are from Saint Mary's Press

College Study Bible (2006), pages c4 and c5.)