Who decided which books are in the Bible?

The Hebrew Bible took shape in three parts

The Hebrew Bible is arranged in three divisions: the Law (Torah), the Prophets (Nevi'im), and the Writings (Ketuvim). The Catholic Encyclopedia of 1908 notes that this threefold arrangement is ancient and is already attested in the Mishnah, around AD 200 [1]. When the whole collection was closed is a question scholars have long debated.

For about a century, many scholars gave a tidy answer. In 1871 Heinrich Graetz proposed that a gathering of rabbis at Jamnia, around AD 90, fixed the boundaries of the Jewish canon, and his theory became the widely accepted view [2]. Since the 1960s it has been questioned by scholars including Jack P. Lewis, Lee M. McDonald, James A. Sanders, and Sid Z. Leiman [2]. The sages at Jamnia did discuss books such as Ecclesiastes, but many scholars now doubt that any synod there was devoted to settling the canon, or that its discussions settled those books' status [2].

Early Christians listed the New Testament books over several centuries

The New Testament canon also grew from use before it was written down as a list. The Muratorian Fragment, an early Latin list of New Testament books, is a key witness, and its date is disputed [3]. The traditional view places it in the late second century, because it says the Shepherd of Hermas was written recently, while Pius was bishop of Rome, around AD 140 to 154 [3]. In 1973 A. C. Sundberg argued for a fourth-century date, and Geoffrey Hahneman defended that view in a 1992 monograph [3]. Reviewing Hahneman, Peter Head of Tyndale House, Cambridge, doubted that a fourth-century date had been established [3].

Athanasius, bishop of Alexandria, named exactly the 27 books of today's New Testament in his Festal Letter 39, written for AD 367 [4]. He listed the four Gospels, Acts, seven general epistles, 14 letters of Paul (counting Hebrews), and Revelation, and described these books as sources of salvation, to which no one should add and from which no one should take away [4]. He also named books outside the canon, "appointed by the Fathers to be read by those who newly join us," among them the Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, Esther, Judith, Tobit, the Teaching of the Apostles, and the Shepherd [4]. His Old Testament is also worth noticing. He counted 22 books, joined Baruch and the letter of Jeremiah to Jeremiah, and left Esther among the books to be read rather than the canon [4]. A bishop of the fourth century could hold a settled New Testament and still draw the Old Testament line in his own place.

Not every church settled on the same New Testament. The Syriac Peshitta, the Bible of the Church of the East and the Syriac churches, has a New Testament of 22 books, without 2 Peter, 2 and 3 John, Jude, and Revelation [11].

In North Africa, the Synod of Hippo in 393 and the Council of Carthage in 397 drew up lists of the Old and New Testament books. The Catholic Encyclopedia describes them as identical lists, drawn from tradition and from the books read in the liturgy, and including the books now called deuterocanonical [1].

The deuterocanonical books and the Catholic position

Catholic and Orthodox Bibles contain books that are not in the Hebrew Bible: Tobit, Judith, 1 and 2 Maccabees, Wisdom, Sirach, and Baruch, along with additions to Esther and Daniel [8]. Catholics call these books deuterocanonical, a term introduced in the sixteenth century [1]. In the Catholic Encyclopedia's definitions, protocanonical books are those always received without dispute, and deuterocanonical books are those whose standing was contested in some quarters before they gained a secure footing [1].

The Catholic Encyclopedia gives several reasons for including them. They came to the Church in the Septuagint, the Greek Old Testament used by Greek-speaking Jews; Fathers such as Irenaeus, Tertullian, Cyprian, and Augustine used them as Scripture; and councils such as Hippo and Carthage affirmed them [1]. It also points to New Testament passages, such as Hebrews 11, that appear to echo 2 Maccabees 6 and 7 [1].

The Council of Trent defined this canon in its fourth session, on 8 April 1546. Its decree listed the books one by one, including Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, and 1 and 2 Maccabees, and declared anathema anyone who did not receive them in full as sacred and canonical [5]. The Catholic Encyclopedia, writing from a Catholic standpoint in 1908, regards this as the first infallible and effectually promulgated decree on the canon, though the Council of Florence had already listed the same books in 1442, and notes that Trent grounded its decision in tradition and in the books long read in the liturgy, rather than in a historical review of how the canon developed [1].

The Protestant Reformers and the Apocrypha

The Protestant Reformers returned to the shorter Hebrew canon for the Old Testament. Martin Luther's German Bible, used by Lutherans for centuries, still included these books, introduced with his note that they are "not held equal to the Scriptures, but are useful and good to read" [6]. The Lutheran Church Missouri Synod notes that Lutheran theologians from Luther to C. F. W. Walther used and referred to them, and that they served as the basis for some hymns [6].

Reformed churches took a firmer line. The Westminster Confession of Faith lists 39 Old Testament and 27 New Testament books as given by inspiration of God [7]. It calls the remaining books "the Apocrypha" and states that, not being divinely inspired, they are no part of the canon and are to be used only as other human writings [7]. The Confession also treats the Old Testament in Hebrew and the New Testament in Greek, as originally given, as the final court of appeal in religious controversies [7]. Together these make the 66 books of the Protestant Bible [7].

Orthodox and Ethiopian canons include further books

The Orthodox churches hold a longer Old Testament, received with the Septuagint. The Orthodox Church in America describes the books Protestants call the Apocrypha as fully part of the Old Testament, because the early Church accepted the longer canon from the beginning [9]. It notes that these books survive in the Septuagint rather than in the Hebrew texts the rabbis kept, and that the Roman Catholic Church uses a similar expanded canon [9]. The Orthodox Study Bible's comparison of canons lists, alongside the books in Catholic Bibles, 1 Esdras, 3 Maccabees, the Prayer of Manasseh, and a Psalter of 151 psalms [8]. Psalm 151 and 3 Maccabees do not appear in the Catholic or Protestant lists, and the Orthodox churches do not all print exactly the same Old Testament [8].

The Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church holds the largest canon. Its own published list counts 46 books in the Old Testament and 35 in the New Testament, 81 in all [10]. The Old Testament includes Enoch and Jubilees, and the New Testament includes books such as Sirate Tsion (the Book of Order), the Book of Clement, and the Didascalia, with the Sinodos also classed as part of the Ethiopic New Testament [10]. Its Old Testament list also includes 2 and 3 Maccabees and a book attributed to Joseph ben Gorion, and the church notes that its Ethiopic version contains Baruch and 3 and 4 Esdras [10]. The church describes its canon as differing in both Testaments from that of any other church [10]. Totals like 81 also depend on how books are grouped and counted, so lists from different sources can reach the same number in different ways.

What this means for the reader

No single council handed down the Bible. Each tradition understands its canon as the books the Church, or for Jews the community of Israel, received and read as Scripture, and the differences between Bibles today reflect those long histories of reception.