I have tried to collect as many canon lists as possible. One crucial work in the last years is that of Edmon L. Gallagher and John D. Meade entitled The Biblical Canon Lists from Early Christianity: Texts and Analysis (Oxford, 2017). In the citations below it is mentioned as “Canon Lists”. I have tried to find as much on the web as possible, such as the translations of Schaff wherever possible. There are some citations which are not canon lists strictly but mention whether a particular collection of books was accepted or rejected.
The Spreadsheet
To process this information, I made a spreadsheet where I have tried to analyze what is said and color-coded it. A word about how the spreadsheet is set up.
- The first thing to be noticed is the type of a particular list. So there are, for example, list which come up from non-Christian Jewish authors, from manuscripts, individual authors, councils or documents (like a confession).
- Then we have the author, which is either the person, the name of the manuscript or the name of the document.
- Next up is the date of the list or if nothing specific is known about the list, the dates of its author.
- Region mainly specifies whether a canon is Western or Eastern.
- Claim to the Fathers/Authority is for those lists that mention that the list is received by a particular father or that “the Church” accepts or rejects some books.
- In Comments are usually summaries of the list or an evaluation.
The division of the books is as follows: first up are the 39 books of the OT and then all OT Apocrypha (not only the Apocrypha accepted by the Roman Catholic Church, but everything which may be considered to be in the time of the OT, and which is explicitly mentioned in a canon list). For the NT, we follow the same division.
The cells are color-coded, and the definition is found in the Legend sheet. There are also comments within some cells, often citations from the list itself as well as text within a cell.
The “Texts” sheet contains the text or texts on which the categorization was based. Clicking on the author in the “Lists” sheet will bring you to the texts and clicking on the author in the “Texts” sheet will bring you back to the author in the “Lists” sheet.
There is also a Compare sheet. To protect the spreadsheet from being messed with, I have decided to have the spreadsheet in view mode only. To use the Compare sheet you need edit rights. To accomplish this, you can add the spreadsheet to your Google account and use it from there.
The Canon Lists
This is a simple PDF that contains only the texts and as they are color-coded with the references and where you can find them. I have tried to use texts which are open-source. In some cases, I cite from Gallagher and Meade’s book.
Resources
These are the few helpful resources that I’ve used to compile this list.
- Edmon L. Gallagher and John D. Meade, The Biblical Canon Lists from Early Christianity: Texts and Analysis (Oxford, 2017)
- The Old Testament Canon and the Apocrypha: Part 3: From Jerome to the Reformation – Christian Resources (christiantruth.com)
- Ancient Canon Lists (bible-researcher.com)
- Canon of the Old Testament, II - International Standard Bible Encyclopedia
- The Canons Of The Old Testament And The New Testament Through The Ages (islamic-awareness.org)
- Early lists of the books of the New Testament (islamic-awareness.org)
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