A biblical canon is a set of texts (also called "books") which a particular Jewish or Christian religious community regards as part of the Bible.
The English word canon comes from the Greek , meaning 'rule' or 'measuring stick'. The word has been used to mean "the collection or list of books of the Bible accepted by the Christian Church as genuine and inspired" since the 14th century.Oxford English Dictionary, 'canon', 2.4: 1382, "In the bigynnyng of canon, that is, of the bok of Genesis." Bible (Wycliffite, early version) Apocalypse Prologue.
Various biblical canons have developed through debate and agreement on the part of the religious authorities of their respective faiths and denominations. Some books, such as the Jewish–Christian gospels, have been excluded from various canons altogether, but many disputed books are considered to be biblical apocrypha or deuterocanonical by many, while some denominations may consider them fully canonical. Differences exist between the Hebrew Bible and Christian biblical canons, although the majority of manuscripts are shared in common.
Different religious groups include different books in their biblical canons, in varying orders, and sometimes divide or combine books. The Jewish Tanakh (sometimes called the Hebrew Bible) contains 24 books divided into three parts: the five books of the Torah ('teaching'); the eight books of the Nevi'im ('prophets'); and the eleven books of Ketuvim ('writings'). It is composed mainly in Biblical Hebrew, with portions in Aramaic. The Septuagint (in Koine Greek), which closely resembles the Hebrew Bible but includes additional texts, is used as the Christian Greek Old Testament, at least in some liturgical contexts. The first part of Christian Bibles is the Old Testament, which contains, at minimum, the 24 books of the Hebrew Bible divided into 39 (Protestant) or 46 (Catholic [including deuterocanonical works]) books that are ordered differently. The second part is the New Testament, almost always containing 27 books: the four canonical gospels, Acts of the Apostles, 21 Epistles or letters and the Book of Revelation. The Catholic Church and Eastern Christian churches hold that certain deuterocanonical books and passages are part of the Old Testament canon. The Eastern Orthodox, Oriental Orthodox, Ethiopian Orthodox tewahdo and Assyrian churches may have differences in their lists of accepted books.
Some Christian groups have other canonical books (open canon) which are considered holy scripture but not part of the Bible.
Jewish canons
Rabbinic Judaism
Rabbinic Judaism () recognizes the twenty-four books of the Masoretic Text, commonly called the Tanakh () or Hebrew Bible.For the number of books of the Hebrew Bible see: Evidence suggests that the process of canonization occurred between 200 BC and 200 AD, and a popular position is that the Torah was canonized , the Prophets , and the Writings perhaps at a hypothetical Council of Jamnia—however, this position is increasingly criticised by modern scholars.Cited are Neusner's Judaism and Christianity in the Age of Constantine, pp. 128–145, and Midrash in Context: Exegesis in Formative Judaism, pp. 1–22. According to Marc Zvi Brettler, the Jewish scriptures outside the Torah and the Prophets were fluid, with different groups seeing authority in different books.
The Book of Deuteronomy includes a prohibition against adding or subtracting (, ) which might apply to the book itself (i.e. a "closed book", a prohibition against future scribal editing) or to the instruction received by Moses on Mount Sinai. The book of 2 Maccabees, itself not a part of the Jewish canon, describes Nehemiah () as having "founded a library and collected books about the kings and prophets, and the writings of David, and letters of kings about votive offerings" ().
The Book of Nehemiah suggests that the priest-scribe Ezra brought the Torah back from Babylon to Jerusalem and the Second Temple () around the same time period. Both 1 and 2 Maccabees suggest that Judas Maccabeus () likewise collected sacred books (, , ), indeed some scholars argue that the Hasmonean dynasty (140–37 BC) fixed the Jewish canon.
Samaritan canon
Another version of the Torah, in the Samaritan alphabet, also exists. This text is associated with Samaritanism and its adherents, the Samaritans (; ), a people whose emergence as a distinct ethno-religious group began with the Assyrian conquest of Samaria in 722 BC.
The Samaritan Pentateuch's relationship to the Masoretic Text is still disputed. Some differences are minor, such as the ages of different people mentioned in genealogy, while others are major, such as a commandment to be monogamous, which appears only in the Samaritan version. More importantly, the Samaritan text also diverges from the Masoretic in stating that Moses received the Ten Commandments on Mount Gerizim—not Mount Sinai—and that it is upon Mount Gerizim that sacrifices to God should be made—not in Jerusalem. Scholars nonetheless consult the Samaritan version when trying to determine the meaning of text of the original Pentateuch, as well as to trace the development of text-families. Some scrolls among the Dead Sea Scrolls have been identified as proto-Samaritan Pentateuch text-type. Citing private communication with Emanuel Tov on biblical manuscripts: Qumran scribe type c. 25%, proto-Masoretic Text c. 40%, pre-Samaritan texts c. 5%, texts close to the Hebrew model for the Septuagint c. 5% and nonaligned c. 25%.
Samaritans consider the Torah to be inspired scripture, but do not accept any other parts of the Bible—probably a position also held by the Sadducees. They did not expand their canon by adding any Samaritan compositions. There is a Samaritan Book of Joshua; however, while it is held in high regard, it is not considered to be scripture. Other non-canonical Samaritan religious texts include the Memar Markah ('Teaching of Markah') and the Defter (Prayerbook)—both from the 4th century or later.
The people of the remnants of the Samaritans in modern-day Israel and Palestine retain their version of the Torah as fully and authoritatively canonical. They regard themselves as the true "guardians of the Law". This assertion is only reinforced by the claim of the Samaritan community in Nablus (an area traditionally associated with the ancient city of Shechem) to possess the oldest existing copy of the Torah—one that they believe to have been penned by Abisha, a grandson of Aaron.Crown, Alan D. (October 1991). "The Abisha Scroll – 3,000 Years Old?". Bible Review.
Christian canons
The Council of Trent (1545–1563) was an ecumenical council that explicitly laid out the 73-book canon for the Catholic Church, consisting of 46 books in the Old Testament and 27 books in the New Testament. Prior to that council, the collection of scriptures was affirmed by such regional councils as the Council of Rome (382), Synod of Hippo (393), two of the Councils of Carthage (397 and 419 respectively), and the Council of Florence (1431–1449).
The canons of the Church of England and English Presbyterians were conclusively decided by the Thirty-Nine Articles (1563) and the Westminster Confession of Faith (1647), respectively. The Synod of Jerusalem (1672) established additional canons that are widely accepted throughout the Eastern Orthodox Church.
Various forms of Jewish Christianity persisted until around the fifth century, and canonized very different sets of books, including Jewish–Christian gospels which have been lost to history. These and many other works are classified as New Testament apocrypha by scholars.
The Old and New Testament canons did not develop independently of each other and most primary sources for the canon specify both Old and New Testament books. For the biblical scripture for both Testaments, canonically accepted in major traditions of Christendom, see § Canons of various traditions.
Purpose of canon For churches which espouse sola scriptura it is necessary and critical to have a clear and complete list of the canonical books. For churches which espouse sacred Tradition or Magisterium as well as Scripture, the issue can be more organic, as the Bible is an artifact of the church rather than vice versa.
Theologian William J. Abraham has suggested that in the primitive church and patristic period the "primary purpose in canonizing Scripture was to provide an authorized list of books for use in worship. The primary setting envisaged for the use of Scripture was not that of the science of theology, or that of the debates of scholars, but the spiritual nourishment of the people of God...the factor which ultimately carried the day (for what was in the canon) was actual usage in the Church."
Early Church Earliest Christian communities The Early Church used the Old Testament, namely the Septuagint (LXX) Attributed to Albert Sundberg's 1964 Harvard dissertation. among Greek speakers, with a canon perhaps as found in the Bryennios List or Melito's canon. The Apostles did not otherwise leave a defined set of new scriptures; instead, the New Testament developed over time.
Writings attributed to the apostles circulated among the earliest Christian communities. Possible apostolicity was a strong argument used to suggest the canonical status of a book.
The author of the Second Epistle of Peter implies that Pauline epistles were part of the scriptures that the early church knew and read: "... So also our beloved brother Paul wrote to you... There are some things in them hard to understand, which the ignorant and unstable twist to their own destruction, as they do the other scriptures" (2 Peter 3:15-16)
The Pauline epistles were circulating in collected forms by the end of the 1st century AD. Justin Martyr, in the early 2nd century, mentions the "memoirs of the Apostles", which Christians (Greek: Χριστιανός) called "gospels", and which were considered to be authoritatively equal to the Old Testament.; cf. Justin Martyr. First Apology. 67.3.
Marcion's list Marcion of Sinope was the first Christian leader in recorded history (though later considered heretical) to propose and delineate a uniquely Christian canon (c. 140). This included 10 epistles from Paul, as well as an edited version of the Gospel of Luke, which today is known as the Gospel of Marcion. By doing this, he established a particular way of looking at religious texts that persists in Christian thought today.
After Marcion, Christians began to divide texts into those that aligned well with the canon (meaning 'measuring line', 'rule', or 'principle') of accepted theological thought and those that promoted heresy. This played a major role in finalizing the structure of the collection of works called the Bible. It has been proposed that the initial impetus for the proto-orthodox Christian project of canonization flowed from opposition to the list produced by Marcion.
Apostolic Fathers A four-gospel canon (the Tetramorph) was asserted by Irenaeus () in the following quote:; cf. Irenaeus. Adversus Haereses. 3.11.8.
Irenaeus additionally quotes from passages of all the books that would later be put in the New Testament canon except the Letter to Philemon, II Peter, III John, and the Epistle of Jude in Against Heresies, refers to the Shepherd of Hermas as "scripture" and appears to regard I Clement as authoritative.