Canon - Facts

Facts for Newbies

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The Canon of the New Testament

The Books of the Bible that belong in the official Canon

What is meant by the term "Canon" ?

The term canon simply means the "established rule". When asking about the books within the New Testament that belong in the "canon", it refers to the difference between the 27 books that belong in the New Testament, and all other books - that sound religious, but were rejected by the Early Church Christians - as authentically belonging in the Bible

So Who decided the Cannon of the New Testament ? The short answer is: the Apostles and other Disciples of Christ who worked with the Apostles.

As Disciples wrote to one another, and wrote to the churches, their letters would be evaluated according to its contents. Some of the letters that the Disciples/Apostles wrote are no longer around. Does that prove that God did not know what was going on, or that he forgot to preserve those texts ?

Not at all. It simply means that those letters were not intended to be part of the Bible. As the various churches accepted the teachings of the Apostles of Jesus, they also accepted their teachings on the Cannon of Scripture, and which books were to be considered part of the actual Bible.

However, not all of the books of the Bible were written at the same time. There were years when nothing new was written. But John, the Apostle of Jesus was the last living apostle, and the one who wrote the book of Revelation [called Apocalypse in Catholic Bibles], and until that point, the Cannon of the New Testament was not closed. When John died and had finished writing Revelation, the Canon became a closed canon.

The Apostles had been faithful to their task. They had trained local Pastors, established independent Bible believing congregations. Each of these churches had copies of the parchments, scrolls and papyri that are the passages of the Greek New Testament, that today we continue to find all over the world.

So The Apostles & Disciples of Jesus Christ are the ones who had control over the books of the Bible and that cannon, and they are the ones who made the decision of what to omit and what to include.

God did not forget anything. There are no books of the Bible waiting to be discovered. His Sovereignty rules and overrules so that His will is done.

It is important to recognize that the Apostles and Disciples were on the road throughout the Roman Empire (& further) almost all of the time for almost all of their lives. They could have included a book in the Bible that said "Oh Yes, Peter will be the head guy and he will establish a line of succession". But that is not at all what took place.

Peter was rebuked by Paul for erring in the beginning of his ministry. Yet, Peter continued to be faithful to the Lord in many ways - as 1 Peter and 2 Peter testify to. But the center of the Church was originally in Jerusalem not Rome.

The Reason why Rome had prominence was because it was the chief city of the Roman Empire. Those that wanted Spiritual power and authority (to do valid work of ministry and evangelism) worked with the disciples & apostles and traveled with. Those who instead wanted political power and influence went to Rome.

It was only when the Bishop of Rome, much later (around 280 AD) realized that he could gain even more power by alliances with the Emperor, that he realized that he could have a monopoly - through political influence - that most other bishops...in time...would not be able to compete with (if this is being measured by Political power).

But even in his continued first attempts to exert his so called influence, the Bishop of Rome was constantly rebuked by other Bishops.

So to recap, Peter was not the first Pope, Peter was not in charge of the Church (the 12 Disciples of Christ and Paul were), and the Bishop of Rome even hundreds of years later was rebuked time and again for attempting to assert the claim that his bishopric (or "see") was of authority any greater than any one of the other Bishops.

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As time went on, Various Pastors and Bishops (which was the same title as "pastor") began to write down the list of the books of the Bible used in their areas and in their churches.

Now was that list always the same ? Much of the time, the list of the 27 books was identical, so that we know that it is those books that were a) spread all over the known world and b) recognized as being scripture.

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But we should keep in mind 2 things:

1. the list of books that these various Pastors from all parts of the Roman world wrote down almost always included the 27 books of the New Testament.

2. even when some of the N.T. Apocryphal books were mentioned, they were NOT mentioned as being part of scripture, only that some of the apocryphal books were sometimes read.

In other words, the presence of a few apocryphal books in some of the Churches did NOT affect the Cannon of the N.T. Those who had the N.T. Cannon knew what they had.