Who chose the books of the Bible?
The Bible is considered to be the inspired word of God by the faithful. However, with all the writings floating around the ancient world, who decided which ones were sacred enough to be scripture?
This question is technically one of canonicity. “Canon” means norm or standard. The term was first applied by St. Athanasius to a collection of Jewish and Christian writings around the year 350, a fourth-century bishop of Alexandria, Egypt. He would later be named “Doctor of Orthodoxy” for his strong defense against the heresies of his time.
Athanasius attended the all-important Council of Nicaea, from which we get our Nicene Creed. He was a zealous advocate for the divinity of Jesus in an age before the nature of Jesus was uniformly accepted. For all of these reasons, Athanasius was invested in settling the canon of scripture: which books might be counted as the “Word of God”—and which, at best, were just good words.
It would have been helpful if the apostles had taken the time in the first century to sit down and decided for themselves: “Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John are in. Gospels of Thomas and Judas are out!” Then again this would have been impossible since many of the New Testament texts were not written until after that first generation of church leaders had died. Also, even the Hebrew Scriptures that we call the Old Testament had yet to be defined by the Jewish community.
What hastened the need to settle the biblical canon was simple practicality. As the Christian community gradually separated from its Jewish roots, it was vital to determine which of the many instructive texts scattered around the Mediterranean region would be binding for each group. The rabbis of Judaism fought their own canon skirmishes around the year 100. Some books written before the time of Jesus did not make the final Hebrew list despite proven useful to Jewish Christians.
Notable ancient theologians, such as Origen, Athanasius, and Jerome, argued for a shorter canon than Augustine. However, Augustine insisted that all Hebrew Scriptures taught by Jesus be included. And in deciding on what books to include for the New Testament, it was the 27 books proposed by Athanasius that had wide support and remain the standard today.
It took the Council of Trent (1545-63) to define the Old Testament canon inclusive of the books that Protestant Reformers removed, including Tobit, Judith, Sirach, Wisdom, the Maccabees, and others. Today’s Bible owes a debt to these many ancient debates.
Author Bio:
Deacon Dan Vaughn