BIBLE, FORMATION AND CANON.

(HOLMAN Illustrated Bible Dictionary)

The books that the Bible contains are backed by the canon.

"Bible" is derived from the Greek term "Byblos" (books), and refers to the OT and NT

The 39 books of the Old Testament and the 27 of the New Testament form the canon of the Holy Scriptures.

"Canon" originally meant "reed", and came to mean "ruler" or "measuring stick". In that sense, the Bible is the rule or pattern of authority for believers. The concept of "canon" and the process of "canonization" refer to the moment when books gained the status of "Holy Scripture," the standards of authority for faith and practice.

DEVELOPMENT OF THE OLD TESTAMENT CANON.

When God decided to reveal Himself to His people and establish a permanent relationship with them, He used the covenant principle, a concept known in ancient Near Eastern culture. The formation of a covenant commonly included the creation of a document. Moreover, the history of the covenant was naturally reflected in the updating of that document. Thus, along with the Mosaic covenant came the Mosaic document, and as each of the books of the Old Testament was written, its authority as the revealed word of God caused the emerging Israelite community to immediately adopt it as something sacred to which they had to submit. Moses, as a covenant mediator, wrote the Torah in divine guidance. The rest of the scriptures, the earlier and later prophets, the poetic and wisdom literature, and the post-Exilic books were accepted equally immediately as each of them was given to him in and received by the Israelite community. The conclusion of this process may have come about when the last authoritative and binding book (referred to as "defiling hands") was accepted. This book may have been Malachi (commonly recognized as the last prophet) or Chronicles (the last book of the Hebrew canonical order). Whatever the case, what the (evangelical) Reformers recognize as the 39 books of the Old Testament canon (equal to the 22 or 24 books of the Jewish community, for example: the minor prophets seconded as a single book; Jeremiah and lamentations as one; Ezra and Nehemiah as one, etc.) It was set very close to the time when the last book was written.

DEVELOPMENT OF THE NEW TESTAMENT CANON

The New Testament canonization process is easier to determine, although there are questions that cannot be fully answered. The Pauline epistles were collected and regarded as authoritative as early as the first half of the second century, as evidenced by the canon of Marcion (aptox. 140 AD) of the 10 Pauline and Luke epistles. The four gospels became canonical unity during the second half of the second century with Irenaeus (180 AD), who advocated the fourfold gospel canon. The essence of the New Testament canon was determined by the end of the second century including the four Gospels, Acts, 1 Peter, 1 John, and 13 Pauline Epistles, all accepted by the major churches as authoritative texts. The book of Revelation also enjoyed early acceptance but later, around the middle of the third century, it began to be questioned both in relation to its content and its authorship. Hebrews was debated in the same way because of doubts regarding its authorship. Many churches accepted James, 2 Peter, 2-3 John, and Jude during the latter part of the third century, but they were not considered fully canonical until the fourth century.

The bishop of Alexandria Athanasius was the first to mention the 27 books of the New Testament canon, and in his Easter letter of 367 he instructed the churches regarding the New Testament by listing exactly the 27 books that we possess. However, even at that time there were some groups, for example the Syriac churches, that used a New Testament canon of 22 books (without 2 Peter, 2-3 John, Jude and Revelation) or 26 books (without Revelation). However, as time went on, the 27 books of the New Testament canon prevailed in all churches.

It was also necessary to apply certain criteria to separate later works from those corresponding to the first century. The books had to date back to the apostolic era and be connected with some apostle, either in terms of authorship or a direct association (e.g., Mark and Luke were associated with Peter and Paul respectively). The books also had to prove beneficial to the churches that listened to their reading. This spiritual dimension was probably the most salient. Our New Testament books were included in the canon because they spoke to the people in such a powerful way that they could not be left out. Finally, books had to be considered appropriate for public reading in church. Because illiteracy was so great, most people's first contact with the text was when they were read during worship meetings. Those texts read during worship meetings were heard as in the authoritative word of God. These texts were on their way to full canonization.

A further stage of canonization took place during the Reformation. The Reformers, echoing Jerome's words, held that it was necessary to follow the Jewish canon of the Old Testament and so it was that they accepted only 39 books of the Hebrew Old Testament instead of the extended Old Testament found in the Septuagint (The Greek Bible, commonly called the Septuagint Bible or the Bible of the Septuagint,  and usually abbreviated simply LXX, is an ancient compilation in Koine Greek of the Hebrew and Aramaic books of the Tanakh or Hebrew Bible and other books, including some originally written in Greek.)

(Septuagint: translation of the Hebrew Bible (Old Testament) into Greek. The name Seventy is due to the fact that Jewish tradition, transmitted in the Epistle of Aristeas, attributes its translation to 72 Jewish sages (six from each tribe) in 72 days. According to this tradition, although the translators did the work independently, the versions of all of them coincided.) These additional books (Apocrypha) were also found in the Latin Vulgate, the foundational Bible of the Western church for more than 1000 years before the Reformation. Some Bibles of the Roman Catholic Church and the Orthodox churches generally still include the Apocrypha but, since the Second Vatican Council, they have a lower degree of canon and are called deuterocanonical. While Protestants do not deny that these books are useful, they reject them as part of the canonical Holy Scriptures.