Encyclopedia › How the Bible came to be
How the Bible came to be
Which books are in the Bible
Greek kanōn, “measuring rod, rule” · Hebrew Bible: 24 books, counted as 39 by Protestants
The Jewish Bible, the Tanakh, has three parts, the Law, the Prophets and the Writings, and counts 24 books, which Protestant Bibles count as 39. When the collection was closed is not known. By one view rabbis at Jamnia (Yavneh) settled it about AD 90; by another they only discussed a few books. The oldest Christian list of Old Testament books, by Melito of Sardis about AD 170, lacks Esther.
The Septuagint and the Vulgate also had Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, 1 and 2 Maccabees and additions to Esther and Daniel. The Catholic Church calls them deuterocanonical and confirmed them at the Council of Trent in 1546. Orthodox Bibles include them and a few more, such as 3 Maccabees and the Prayer of Manasseh; the Synod of Jerusalem named several in 1672. Protestants call them the Apocrypha: Luther printed them separately in 1534, as “useful and good to read”. The earliest known list of exactly the 27 New Testament books is Athanasius’s Easter letter of 367; a council at Carthage in 397 gave the same. Hebrews, James, 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Jude and Revelation were long disputed, and some Eastern churches still have a shorter New Testament.
Key verses
Jesus said to them, “These are the words I spoke to you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about Me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets, and the Psalms.”“Take this Book of the Law and place it beside the ark of the covenant of the LORD your God, so that it may remain there as a witness against you.Then Hilkiah the high priest said to Shaphan the scribe, “I have found the Book of the Law in the house of the LORD!” And he gave it to Shaphan, who read it.After the reading from the Law and the Prophets, the synagogue leaders sent word to them: “Brothers, if you have a word of encouragement for the people, please speak.”He writes this way in all his letters, speaking in them about such matters. Some parts of his letters are hard to understand, which ignorant and unstable people distort, as they do the rest of the Scriptures, to their own destruction.Sources
Adapted and shortened from the Tyndale Open Bible Dictionary · CC BY-SA 4.0
Tyndale Open Bible Dictionary © 2023 Tyndale House Publishers · CC BY-SA 4.0 — Bible*, Canon of the; Bible*, Canon of the: Canon of the Old Testament; Bible*, Canon of the: Period Three: Second Half of Second Century; Bible*, Canon of the: Period Four: Third Century; Bible*, Canon of the: Period Five: Fourth Century; Daniel, Additions to: Prayer of Azariah and the Song of the Three Young Men; Bible*, Versions of the (Ancient): Syriac Versions
Adapted from Tyndale Open Bible Dictionary: articles chosen, shortened and retold in our own words (history, nature and daily life only) and, in languages other than English, machine-translated. The original work by Tyndale House Publishers is available for free at tyndaleopenresources.com.
