How the Bible came together

The main Bibles today

Churches differ over the Old Testament. Nearly all of them have the same 27 books in the New Testament.

The story, in order

What each church decided, and the reasons it gave, in its own words where they survive. Where scholars disagree, it says so.

1. Before AD 100

   The Hebrew Bible

   The Jewish Scriptures come in three parts: the Law, the Prophets and the Writings. Jews count them as 24 books. They are the same writings that Protestant Bibles count as 39: Samuel, Kings, Chronicles and Ezra–Nehemiah are each one book, and so are the twelve shorter prophets. The Talmud (Bava Batra 14b) gives their order.

   Writing about AD 95, the Jewish historian Josephus counted 22. Three centuries later Jerome explained how both counts could hold the same books: some joined Ruth to Judges and Lamentations to Jeremiah, and some counted them apart, making 24.

   For we have not an innumerable multitude of books among us, disagreeing from and contradicting one another, [as the Greeks have,] but only twenty-two books, which contain the records of all the past times; which are justly believed to be divine; …

   2 Esdras, at its core a Jewish book from about AD 100 (its first and last chapters were added later by Christians), which some Bibles print in their Apocrypha, tells of ninety-four books written down in forty days. Ezra is told to publish the first ones for everyone and keep the last seventy for the wise: that leaves twenty-four (2 Esdras 14:44–46).

   When the list was settled is debated. Some scholars think it was fixed before Jesus’ time; others think it settled slowly over the next centuries. The Mishnah, written down about AD 200, records the rabbis’ debates over the Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes (Yadayim 3:5).

   Many books say a “Council of Jamnia” closed the Jewish list about AD 90. That idea was put forward in 1871, and most scholars no longer hold it: no decree about a list is recorded from the rabbis at Jamnia (Yavneh), and the debates recorded there were about a few of the Writings, not about the books in Greek.

2. From the 200s BC

   The Greek Bible

   Jews in Alexandria, in Egypt, began translating the Law into Greek in the 200s BC, and the other books followed. The Letter of Aristeas tells of seventy-two translators sent from Jerusalem; historians doubt its details. This Greek Old Testament, the Septuagint, is the one the New Testament writers often quote.

   The Greek Bibles that survive, all copied by Christians, carry more books than the Hebrew, among them Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach and Maccabees. But they have no single fixed list. The three great Greek Bibles, codices (books with pages, not scrolls) from the 300s and 400s, don’t agree: Codex Vaticanus has no books of Maccabees, Codex Sinaiticus has 1 and 4 Maccabees, and Codex Alexandrinus has all four.

   The New Testament doesn’t quote any of these books by name, though readers have long heard echoes of them: Hebrews 11:35 is often read as recalling the martyrs of 2 Maccabees 7. The Letter of Jude does quote 1 Enoch (Jude 14–15), a book that, among churches, only the Ethiopian and Eritrean count as Scripture.

3. About 170 to 420

   The early church’s lists

   The first Christians had no single list. As questions came up about which books should be read in church, bishops and councils began writing lists down. They don’t all agree, and the main difference between them is the one that still divides churches today.

   Melito of Sardis, about 170

   Melito, a bishop in what is now Turkey, sent a friend a list of the Old Testament books, which Eusebius kept. It has the books of the Hebrew Bible without Esther.

   Accordingly when I went East and came to the place where these things were preached and done, I learned accurately the books of the Old Testament, and send them to thee as written below.

   Origen, about 230

   The great scholar of Alexandria gave the Hebrew count, then added a line about the Maccabees.

   It should be stated that the canonical books, as the Hebrews have handed them down, are twenty-two; corresponding with the number of their letters. … And besides these there are the Maccabees.

   Eusebius, about 325

   In his Church History, Eusebius sorted the New Testament books into those accepted, those disputed and those rejected. He wasn’t sure where Revelation belonged, and put it with the accepted books “if it really seem proper”.

   Among the disputed writings, which are nevertheless recognized by many, are extant the so-called epistle of James and that of Jude, also the second epistle of Peter, and those that are called the second and third of John, whether they belong to the evangelist or to another person of the same name.

   Cyril of Jerusalem, about 350

   Teaching people preparing for baptism, Cyril listed 22 Old Testament books, with Baruch, Lamentations and the Letter counted as part of Jeremiah, and a New Testament without Revelation.

   Of these read the two and twenty books, but have nothing to do with the apocryphal writings. … But let all the rest be put aside in a secondary rank.

   Athanasius, 367

   Each year the bishop of Alexandria wrote to the churches to announce the date of Easter. In his letter for 367, Athanasius listed the 27 books of the New Testament: the earliest list known to name exactly those 27. His Old Testament has 22 books, with Baruch and the Letter of Jeremiah but without Esther. Wisdom, Sirach, Esther, Judith and Tobit he put in a group to be read, with two other early Christian books, the Teaching of the Apostles and the Shepherd.

   Let no man add to these, neither let him take ought from these. …

   But for greater exactness I add this also, writing of necessity; that there are other books besides these not indeed included in the Canon, but appointed by the Fathers to be read by those who newly join us, and who wish for instruction in the word of godliness.

   Jerome, in the 390s

   Jerome translated the Old Testament into Latin from the Hebrew, and in his prefaces said where he drew the line.

   … what is not found in our list must be placed amongst the Apocryphal writings.

   As, then, the Church reads Judith, Tobit, and the books of Maccabees, but does not admit them among the canonical Scriptures, so let it read these two volumes for the edification of the people, not to give authority to doctrines of the Church.

   He translated Tobit and Judith all the same, at friends’ request, and gave a reason for Judith. He left Baruch out. Latin Bibles went on to carry his work beside older Latin versions of Wisdom, Sirach and Maccabees, and later of Baruch too.

   But since the Nicene Council is considered to have counted this book among the number of sacred Scriptures, I have acquiesced to your request.

   Augustine, about 397

   In On Christian Doctrine, Augustine listed 44 Old Testament books, Tobit, Judith, two books of Maccabees, Wisdom and Sirach among them. He told readers to prefer books “received by all the catholic churches to those which some do not receive”, and said of Wisdom and Sirach that they belong “since they have attained recognition as being authoritative”.

   The authority of the Old Testament is contained within the limits of these forty-four books.

   Hippo, 393, and Carthage, 397 and 419

   Councils of bishops in North Africa, where Augustine was a bishop, made a list with the same books. In 419 they asked that it be sent to the bishop of Rome to confirm.

   Item, that besides the Canonical Scriptures nothing be read in church under the name of divine Scripture. …

   Let this be sent to our brother and fellow bishop, Boniface, and to the other bishops of those parts, that they may confirm this canon, for these are the things which we have received from our fathers to be read in church.

   Innocent I, 405

   Asked by Bishop Exsuperius of Toulouse, the bishop of Rome sent him a list with the same books: five of Solomon, Tobit, Judith and two of Maccabees among them.

   Which books are received in the canon, the short list attached shows.

   Two lists with debated dates

   The Muratorian fragment, a Latin list of New Testament books, is dated by most scholars to the late 100s and by some to the 300s. The Decretum Gelasianum, a list later credited to a council at Rome in 382, has the longer Old Testament without naming Baruch; scholars disagree about whether it goes back to 382 or was put together in the 500s.

   By about 400, then, two ways of counting stood side by side: the shorter list of the Hebrew Bible, with the other books read but ranked lower (Athanasius, Cyril, Jerome), and the longer list of North Africa and Rome (Augustine, the African councils, Innocent).

4. 590 to 1500

   The Middle Ages

   Bibles copied in the West kept the longer list, in Latin, and many writers kept Jerome’s caution too. Gregory the Great, bishop of Rome from 590, quoted 1 Maccabees in his commentary on Job and introduced it this way:

   … we are not acting irregularly, if from the books, though not Canonical, yet brought out for the edifying of the Church, we bring forward testimony.

   Scholars disagree about what he meant by “Canonical” there.

   In 1442 the Council of Florence, in a decree for union with the Coptic Church of Egypt, set out what the Roman Church believes, with a list of books: the longer list, Baruch included. Its list of books doesn’t use the word “canon”, and historians disagree about whether it was meant to settle the question.

   It professes one and the same God as the author of the Old and the New Testament, that is, of the Law and the Prophets and the Gospel, since the saints of both Testaments spoke by the inspiration of the same Holy Spirit. It accepts and venerates their books, which are listed under the following titles.

5. 1517 to 1534

   What Luther did

   Martin Luther, a German monk and professor, began the Reformation in 1517. In a debate at Leipzig in 1519, when 2 Maccabees 12 was cited in support of purgatory, he answered that the book was outside the canon.

   His German New Testament came out in September 1522. Its table of contents numbers 23 books; then come Hebrews, James, Jude and Revelation, set apart at the end without numbers. His preface to Hebrews begins:

   Up to here we have had the true and certain chief books of the New Testament. But these four that follow have had a different standing in times past.

   The famous “epistle of straw” is not in his preface to James. It ends his general preface to the New Testament, after he names the books he thought showed Christ most clearly: John’s Gospel and first letter, Paul’s letters (Romans, Galatians and Ephesians above all) and 1 Peter. The line was dropped from later editions.

   Therefore Saint James’s epistle is a right strawy epistle compared with them, for it has nothing of the nature of the gospel about it.

   In the preface to James itself he wrote:

   Though the epistle of Saint James was rejected by the ancients, I praise it and hold it to be good, because it sets up no human teaching and drives hard at God’s law. But to give my own opinion, without prejudice to anyone, I do not hold it to be the writing of any apostle, and this is my reason. First, that flatly against Saint Paul and all other Scripture, it gives justification to works. …

   Therefore I will not have him in my Bible numbered among the true chief books; but I do not mean by this to stop anyone placing him and raising him up as he pleases, for there are many good sayings in it besides.

   Of Revelation he wrote, in 1522:

   About this book of the Revelation of John, I leave everyone free to hold his own opinion, and will bind no one to my view or judgment. … More than one thing is lacking in this book for me, so that I hold it to be neither apostolic nor prophetic.

   In 1530 he replaced that preface with a longer one. He printed all 27 books, and German Luther Bibles keep his order to this day.

   His complete Bible came out in 1534. Between the Old and New Testaments stands a section with its own title page, which lists Judith, Wisdom, Tobit, Sirach, Baruch, the Maccabees and the parts of Esther and Daniel; the Prayer of Manasseh is printed with them.

   Apocrypha: that is, books which are not held equal to Holy Scripture, and yet are useful and good to read.

   He left out 1 and 2 Esdras (3 and 4 Esdras in the Latin Bible), as Trent would twelve years later. So Luther set these books apart, ranked below the others, and kept them in his Bible.

6. 1546

   The Council of Trent

   Catholic bishops met at Trent, in northern Italy, to answer the Reformation and to reform the Church. In its fourth session, on 8 April 1546, the Council listed the books of both Testaments, the longer list, “lest a doubt may arise in any one’s mind, which are the books that are received by this Synod”, and made the list binding with an anathema, a sentence cutting off from the Church anyone who rejected it.

   But if any one receive not, as sacred and canonical, the said books entire with all their parts, as they have been used to be read in the Catholic Church, and as they are contained in the old Latin vulgate edition; and knowingly and deliberately contemn the traditions aforesaid; let him be anathema.

   Trent’s list doesn’t include 1 and 2 Esdras (3 and 4 Esdras in Latin), the Prayer of Manasseh or Psalm 151: it counts “a hundred and fifty psalms”. The official Latin Bible of 1592 printed the first three at the end, and its preface gives the reason.

   Moreover, in this edition it seemed best to add nothing that is not canonical, nothing borrowed, nothing foreign; and that was the reason why the books titled the third and fourth of Esdras, which the holy Council of Trent did not number among the canonical books, and also the Prayer of King Manasseh … have been placed outside the series of canonical Scripture.

   Catholic scholars had not all agreed before the Council. Cardinal Cajetan, who had questioned Luther at Augsburg in 1518, followed Jerome in a commentary of 1532. According to the Anglican scholar B. F. Westcott (1864), some at Trent proposed ranking the books in two or three classes; the Council made one list.

   … the remaining books (Judith, Tobit, Maccabees 1, 2) are reckoned by St Jerome without the canonical books and placed among the Apocrypha together with Wisdom and Ecclesiasticus. … according to his opinion those books and any others there may be like them in the Canon of the Bible are not canonical in the sense of establishing points of faith; yet they can be called canonical for the edification of the faithful.

7. 1561 to 1646

   The Protestant confessions

   Reformed and Anglican churches set out their beliefs in confessions, and these say where the books stand. The Lutheran confessions name no list. The Belgic Confession, written for the Reformed churches of the Low Countries, names the books (with 3 and 4 Esdras and the Prayer of Manasseh) and says:

   All which the Church may read and take instruction from, so far as they agree with the canonical books; but they are far from having such power and efficacy as that we may from their testimony confirm any point of faith or of the Christian religion; much less to detract from the authority of the other sacred books.

   The Church of England’s Articles of Religion cite Jerome:

   And the other bookes, (as Hierome sayth) the Churche doth reade for example of lyfe and instruction of manners: but yet doth it not applie them to establishe any doctrene.

   The Westminster Confession, written for the churches of England and Scotland, goes further:

   The books commonly called Apocrypha, not being of divine inspiration, are no part of the Canon of the Scripture; and therefore are of no authority in the Church of God, nor to be any otherwise approved, or made use of, than other human writings.

8. 1611 to 1826

   English Bibles and the Bible Society

   The King James Version of 1611 printed these books, headed “Apocrypha”, between the Old and New Testaments, as earlier English Bibles had (see a copy of 1611). Copies without them soon appeared: Geneva Bibles printed in the Low Countries as early as 1599, and King James Bibles from 1619. The scholar Bruce Metzger thought these were the work of printers or binders meeting a demand for smaller, cheaper Bibles. Between the Civil War of 1642 and the return of the king in 1660, few Bibles printed in England had them.

   A bigger step came from the British and Foreign Bible Society, which printed Bibles in many languages and helped Bible societies abroad, some of whose Bibles included these books. After years of argument, its committee resolved:

   That the funds of the Society be applied to the printing and circulation of the Canonical Books of Scripture, to the exclusion of those Books and parts of Books, which are usually termed Apocryphal; …

   Its annual meeting in May 1826 adopted rules on it, beginning:

   That the fundamental law of the Society, which limits its operations to the circulation of the Holy Scriptures, be fully and distinctly recognised as excluding the circulation of the Apocrypha.

   Societies that circulated the Apocrypha could no longer receive its money. The Society’s president, Lord Teignmouth, had argued that the books could not be counted as Scripture until their inspiration was shown. Most English-language Protestant Bibles since have been printed without them, while some Anglican and Lutheran Bibles still print them apart.

9. 1672 and after

   The Orthodox churches

   The Eastern Orthodox churches have no single list binding on all of them. In 1672 a synod (a council of bishops) at Jerusalem answered a confession published under the name of Cyril Lucaris, a patriarch of Constantinople, which had called these books apocrypha. The synod received Wisdom, Judith, Tobit, Bel and the Dragon, Susanna, the Maccabees and Sirach. Its reason was that the Church, which “hath delivered to us as genuine the Sacred Gospels and the other Books of Scripture, hath undoubtedly delivered these also as parts of Scripture”.

   For we judge these also to be with the other genuine Books of Divine Scripture genuine parts of Scripture.

   The Russian catechism (a book of questions and answers on the faith) of Metropolitan Philaret of Moscow, approved by the Russian Church’s synod, follows the Hebrew count instead. Writing in 1877, the historian Philip Schaff counted both the Jerusalem synod’s decrees and Philaret’s catechism among the Orthodox Church’s confessions of public authority.

   Why is there no notice taken in this enumeration of the books of the Old Testament of the book of the Wisdom of the son of Sirach, and of certain others? Because they do not exist in the Hebrew.

   How are we to regard these last-named books? Athanasius the Great says that they have been appointed of the Fathers to be read by proselytes who are preparing for admission into the Church.

   Greek Orthodox Bibles today hold the Catholic books and 1 Esdras, 3 Maccabees, the Prayer of Manasseh and Psalm 151, with 4 Maccabees in an appendix.

10. The 300s to today

    The Ethiopian Bible

    In a minute: the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church, with its sister church in Eritrea, has the largest traditional Bible in Christianity, usually counted as 81 books. Besides most of the books in Catholic Bibles (not the Greek books of Maccabees), its Old Testament has two ancient Jewish books that survive whole only in Ge’ez, Ethiopia’s old church language: 1 Enoch and Jubilees. It also has books found in no other church’s Bible, such as the three books of Meqabyan (not the same as the Greek Maccabees) and 4 Baruch.

    Christianity came to Ethiopia through the kingdom of Aksum, whose king Ezana became a Christian in the 300s. The Bible was translated into Ge’ez from the Greek, as the church itself says, probably between the 300s and the 500s, and revised in the Middle Ages from Arabic and, later, Hebrew. Inscriptions of King Kaleb from about 525 already quote the Psalms, Exodus, Isaiah and Matthew in Ge’ez. The two Garima Gospel books, kept at a monastery in Tigray, have radiocarbon dates (from a test of the age of their parchment) between about AD 330 and 660, which makes them among the oldest illustrated Gospel books anywhere. A later tradition credits the translation to nine saints from the Roman world in the late 400s; historians are unsure, because the stories of their lives were written down centuries later.

    There is more than one way to reach 81. One count (R. W. Cowley, 1974) has 54 books in the Old Testament and the 27 of the New. Another, which the church gives on its own website, has 46 and 35: its New Testament adds books of church order, the Sinodos (counted as four books), the Book of the Covenant (two), Clement and the Didascalia. That list calls the Meqabyan “Maccabees”, and its 46 include Josippon, a medieval history of the Jews. The scholar Bruk Asale points out that the church has never formally closed its list, and printed Amharic Bibles differ.

    1 Enoch and Jubilees survive whole only in Ge’ez because Ethiopian copyists went on copying them as Scripture. The Dead Sea Scrolls hold pieces of Enoch in Aramaic and of Jubilees in Hebrew. The Scottish traveller James Bruce brought copies of Enoch to Europe in 1773, and the first English translation came out in 1821. Both can be read on this site in R. H. Charles’s translations: 1 Enoch and Jubilees.

    The Kebra Nagast, a medieval Ethiopian book about the Queen of Sheba and Solomon’s son, is treasured in Ethiopia but is not part of its Bible.

Common claims, checked

Things often said about the Bible’s books, beside what the documents above show.

• “Luther took seven books out of the Bible.”

  He set them apart. His Bible of 1534 prints them between the Testaments as “books which are not held equal to Holy Scripture, and yet are useful and good to read”. Protestant Bibles without them came later: a few from about 1600, many more in England in the 1640s and 1650s, and most of all after the Bible Society’s rule of 1826.

• “Luther took James out of the New Testament.”

  He moved Hebrews, James, Jude and Revelation to the end without numbers, and said plainly what he thought of them. But he printed all 27 books, and wrote that he would not stop anyone “placing him and raising him up as he pleases”.

• “The Catholic Church added these books at Trent.”

  They were already in the Latin Bibles the Western church had read for a thousand years, and on the lists of Carthage (397), Innocent I (405) and Florence (1442). In 1546 Trent made the list binding for Catholics, with an anathema: a sentence cutting off from the Church anyone who rejected it.

• “Before the Reformation, no one doubted them.”

  Melito, Athanasius, Cyril and Jerome kept the shorter Hebrew list, and Origen recorded it. Gregory the Great introduced 1 Maccabees as from books “though not Canonical” (what he meant is debated), Cardinal Cajetan followed Jerome in 1532, and at Trent itself some proposed ranking the books in classes.

• “A Council of Jamnia closed the Jewish Bible in AD 90.”

  That idea was put forward by the historian Heinrich Graetz in 1871, and most scholars no longer hold it. No decree about a list is recorded from Jamnia, and its recorded debates were about a few of the Writings, not the books in Greek.

• “Constantine chose the books at the Council of Nicaea.”

  None of the council’s decisions that survive is about which books belong. Constantine did order “fifty copies of the sacred Scriptures” for the churches of his new capital, but his letter doesn’t say what was in them. The one early link is Jerome’s remark that Nicaea “is considered to have counted” Judith among the Scriptures.

• “The councils of Hippo and Carthage settled the Bible for the whole Church.”

  They were councils of North African bishops. Their list became the West’s, but in the East the shorter lists of Athanasius and Cyril stayed in use, and the Orthodox churches have never adopted one list for all.

• “The King James Bible never had these books.”

  The first printing, in 1611, has them between the Testaments under the heading “Apocrypha”. Copies without them appeared from 1619, and between 1642 and 1660 few were printed with them.

• “Protestant Bibles left them out to save paper.”

  Cost may have played a part at first: the scholar Bruce Metzger thought printers or binders in the early 1600s left them out to meet a demand for smaller, cheaper Bibles. But the step that did most, the British and Foreign Bible Society’s rule of 1825–26, was argued over whether the books are Scripture, as the resolutions printed in its history show.

• “The Ethiopian Bible is the oldest Bible.”

  Its oldest surviving books, the two Garima Gospel books, date from about AD 330 to 660 and hold only the Gospels. Codex Sinaiticus, a Greek Bible from the 300s with the whole New Testament and much of the Old, is as old or older, and the Dead Sea Scrolls hold copies of Hebrew books centuries older still.

• “The Ethiopian Bible is the original Bible.”

  It was translated from Greek, as the church itself says, and revised later from Arabic and Hebrew.

• “The Ethiopian Bible has all the books the others left out.”

  It has no Greek books of Maccabees, and 1 Enoch and Jubilees were never in Catholic or Protestant Bibles. Nor does it have the Gospel of Thomas or the Gospel of Mary. Books sold as “the complete Ethiopian Bible in English” are not the church’s: no complete English translation authorized by the church exists.

Read them for yourself

Sources

Every quotation above is from the document itself, in a public-domain translation or our own, checked against the text linked here.

Modern studies mentioned

• J. P. Lewis, “What Do We Mean by Jabneh?”, Journal of Bible and Religion 32 (1964), on the Council of Jamnia.
• R. W. Cowley, “The Biblical Canon of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church Today”, Ostkirchliche Studien 23 (1974).
• Bruk A. Asale, in The Bible Translator 65 (2014) and 67 (2016), on the Ethiopian canon.
• Bruce M. Metzger, An Introduction to the Apocrypha (1957), and Andrew E. Hill, “The King James Bible Apocrypha: When and Why Lost?”, in The King James Version at 400 (2013), on English Bibles printed without them.