How the Biblical Canon Was Formed

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Where did the Bible come from, and how can we know that it's truly authoritative in our lives today?

Today, the Bible is viewed as one big book, but for most of history, the various “books” of the Bible were kept on separate scrolls. They didn’t have chapter listings or verse numbers, either, so it was a real job to find a passage of scripture. The Bibles we have today are the collection of books that Jewish and Christian communities around the world have accepted as uniquely authoritative – and they thankfully have chapters and verses.

The Jewish Bible – what Christians call the “Old Testament” (OT) – is called the “Tanakh.” This is a portmanteau made up of the three Hebrew words that organize the books of the Jewish OT. These words are “torah,” meaning “law,” “nevi’im,” (pronounced nevee-eem) meaning “prophets,” and “ketuveem,” meaning “writings.” The Jewish Bible differs substantially from the Christian Bible.

Christian Bibles and Jewish Bibles Have One Major Difference

In addition to the Jewish OT, the Christian Bible contains the New Testament (NT) which narrates the ministry, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ. It tells the story of the early Christian church and shows what the earliest Christians believed and practiced.

The three major Christian traditions today (Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Protestantism) agree that the NT contains twenty-seven books. However, these traditions are not in agreement about the contents of the OT.

The Protestant OT matches the Jewish Tanakh in content, but some of the books are organized differently (the last book of the Protestant OT is Malachi; the last book of the Tanakh is Chronicles). The Roman Catholic matches the Protestant in its organization but contains additional books. The Eastern Orthodox OT contains even more books than the Catholic OT.

Why Do Different Christian Traditions Have the Same NT but Different OTs?

The answer to this question is timing. Each book of the Bible went through three basic stages:

Original composition on a scroll.

Circulation and use (i.e., passed around to differnt people and groups). They were also collected and kept together with related scrolls.

Confirmation as part of a closed canon (meaning “measuring line”).

“Confirmation” occurred when the majority of the communities that used the scrolls (“books”) agreed that the books made up a closed collection (canon) that was not to be added to or subtracted from. By the time of Jesus, this process was all but complete for the Jewish OT and was agreed upon by the early Christian church. The debates came later, during the Great Schism of 1054 and the Council of Trent, which was a Catholic gathering largely responsive to the Protestant Reformation. (See excursus 1 below for more.)

For the NT, this process took place between the first and fourth centuries A.D. Different Christian communities used the Pauline Epistles and the gospel accounts in their churches, and some even used additional writings because there was not yet total agreement about the “closed canon” for the NT. (See excursus 2 below for more.) Formal agreement was established in the late 300s A.D.

The biblical canon shows that one of the ways God “breathes out” his true word is through human history. Don’t forget that the Bible was written down by people!

Talk About It

What is your initial reaction to this topic? What jumped out at you?
What is your interest in the topic of the biblical canon? Explain.
The Bible is a very ancient book. How or why do you think it has survived for so long and yet still maintains a major presence across the world?
Why do you think it is important to understand what is – and is not – canonical?
Read 2 Timothy 3:16. How does the statement that the Bible is “God-breathed” mesh with the fact that it was written down by human beings using human language?
Write a personal action step based on this conversation.

Excursus 1

Some historians would argue that the Roman Catholic Church altered its canon in order to reaffirm its own authority during a time of great disagreement and strife. Because Protestant churches have always been largely independent, there was never an arbitrating, overarching Protestant authority that had the supreme power to add or remove books from the Bible. The OT canon most Protestants use is based upon the canon the Catholic Church used prior to the Council of Trent (1545-1563).

Eastern Orthodoxy claims that it accepts the apocryphal books (what they call the “longer canon”) because they were included in the Greek translation of the OT, called the Septuagint, which was an ancient, widely-dispersed translation of the OT that the NT authors quote from.

PursueGOD.org adheres to the Protestant canon.

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Excursus 2

This does not mean there was no agreement. Paul’s letters and the gospels were never questioned to our knowledge because their significance and origin were clear. Hebrews, however, was questioned by some Christian churches because it does not name its author. Questioning of books was a good thing because it showed that the early Christians were critical and not willing to accept a religious document without verifying its credibility.