The formative stage of a canonical collection of Paul's writings had already taken place.Īt an even earlier date other Christians had made collections of Jesus' sayings and stories about him. Such evidence is clear: by the turn of the first century a number of churches had already acquired copies of Paul's letters for their use. In his letters he uses language that clearly shows his familiarity with the letters of Paul. 2 Peter was written early in the second century C.E.Īlso in the early second century, Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, wrote letters to seven churches while he was en route to Rome, where he was martyred. The author of 2 Peter also knows about a collection of Paul's letters (3:15–16) and assumes that his readers do as well.

It indicates that the Christians in Rome owned a copy of it, and that the church in Corinth still had a copy in its possession, half a century after Paul wrote it. This is a reference to Paul's first letter to the Corinthians. What did he write to you at first, when he was just beginning to proclaim the gospel?' In a letter sent from the church at Rome to the church at Corinth, the author writes (1 Clement 47:1): 'Examine the letter of the blessed Paul the Apostle. There is evidence that Paul's letters had been collected by churches in several geographical locations by the end of the first century C.E. The process of forming a canon had begun even earlier. In fact, agreement on much of the list had been reached more than a century earlier. Even so, the first list that agrees with ours was a long time in coming.īy the time of Athanasius, or shortly before, the church had reached an informal consensus about most of the writings to be included in the 'New' Testament. He names them in a different order, to be sure.

The first list of 'canonical' books that names the same twenty-seven writings found in our New Testament appears in the Easter letter of Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, Egypt, in 367 C.E. In designating the twenty-seven books of the New Testament as a canon, the church was declaring them to be its 'rule' for faith and practice, its 'normative' collection of writings. The meaning of the Greek term canon is 'norm' or 'rule,' the standard by which things can be measured. This question is traditionally referred to as the formation of the canon. How did the church decide which books belong to the New Testament? When was the decision made? The answers to these questions constitute one of the most revealing yet least known aspects of early Christian history. 294, with the data on Origen updated based on more recent research.From The Fourth R Volume 5-1 January–February 1992 This chart is taken from A General Introduction to the Bible, revised and expanded, by Norman Geisler and William E. The New Testament canon during the first four centuries

Bible canonization timeline