he Bible as Christians know it today did not begin as one large volume—with Old and New Testaments. It came into being as part of a selection process called “canonization.” The Greek word for “canon” can mean many things, such as “measuring rod” or “ruler.” At first, the early church leaders used “canon” to mean a “standard,” and later a “list” or “catalog” of authoritative writings. There were many books circulating among the churches throughout the Roman world that were read and studied by the early church. It was important for the church leaders at that time to go through a process of deciding which books were holy and had authority for God's people. This process did not happen overnight. In some cases, it took hundreds of years from the time they were written to decide which of the many writings that were being read should be part of Holy Scripture, that is, the Bible.
The Hebrew Scriptures and the Old Testament
The books in the Old Testament section of The Learning Bible are translations of the Hebrew Scriptures still used by the Jewish people in their worship services today. These books were written by many different authors over a period of hundreds of years. The Introductions to the individual books of the Old Testament in The Learning Bible offer some suggestions about where and when these books may have been written, so this article will not try to deal with this issue.
It can be said that the Old Testament developed in stages and its books were collected in groups. Before the process of collecting books and putting them in some kind of order took place, individual manuscripts were hand-copied and passed among groups. The earliest literature of the Jewish people may date as far back as the time of Moses or earlier (about 1300 b.c.), while other literature found in the Old Testament (for instance Daniel) may have been written as late as the second century b.c. That would mean that the literature collected into the Old Testament was written over a period of 1000 years or more!
While the writing of Hebrew manuscripts was taking place, the process of collecting and editing was also going on. One important collection of books was called “The Law,” which included the first five books of the Bible. “The Law” is also called by its Hebrew name, Torah, and by the name Pentateuch, which is the Greek term for a five-volume book. Another collection was called “The Prophets.” In the Jewish Bible, this collection includes certain books that Christians would call “history books.” The last major group of books to be collected was simply called “The Writings.” They contain books of poetry and wise sayings, and books that Christians would consider prophetic or historical in nature. Because different religious traditions arrange these books differently, a chart has been provided for easy reference.
It is not known exactly how or when the books of the Old Testament were selected and approved for inclusion in the Hebrew Scriptures, but it is certain that the books of the Torah were accepted as authoritative almost from the time they were written. There is also some evidence that the list of authoritative books was not finalized until after a.d. 100. Only the books on this final list were considered to be Scripture by the Jewish people.
The chart on, shows the three main sections of the Hebrew Scriptures: The Law, The Prophets, and The Writings. If you compare this list to the chart on, you'll notice that all of these books are included in the Old Testaments of Christian Bibles, though they are grouped differently and placed in a slightly different order. The Hebrew word for Bible is Tanak (sometimes spelled Tanakh). This is an acronym, or a word made from the first letters of the Hebrew words for each of the three main sections: Torah, Nevi’im, and Kethuvim.
If you further examine the chart on, you'll notice that some Christian traditions include other books in their Old Testaments as well. These additional writings are known as “Apocryphal” or “Deuterocanonical” books. The term “apocrypha” comes from a Greek word meaning “hidden,” and today suggests books that have been “set aside” or given secondary status. The term “deuterocanonical,” a word that Catholics prefer to use when referring to many of these same books, means books that came into the canon at a later (secondary) date, in order to distinguish them from the Hebrew Scriptures discussed above. In the 1600s, some Protestant Christians began to use only the Jewish list of Old Testament books, while the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Christians continued to use some or all of the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical books as well. Some of these books are discussed in the following section on Greek versions of the Jewish Scriptures.
Greek Versions of the Jewish Scriptures
In the third century b.c. Jewish scholars in Alexandria, Egypt, translated the Hebrew Scriptures into Greek, since many Jewish people lived in Greek-speaking areas of the Mediterranean world, and spoke Greek on an everyday basis. This Greek version of the Jewish Scriptures is known as the Septuagint (commonly abbreviated LXX). For an explanation of this name, see the article called “How the Bible Came to Us,”.
Some of the Jewish scholars in Egypt did not agree about what books should be included in the official list of Scriptures, even though a canon was being agreed upon by another group of Jewish scholars in Palestine. For example, some of the Egyptian scholars would allow only documents written in Hebrew or Aramaic (a Semitic language similar to Hebrew). Other Greek-speaking Jews included documents originally written in Greek (some of them from as late as the first century a.d.). These Greek writings included:
Historical Writings: 1 Esdras (a Greek version of Ezra in the Hebrew Bible, with some additions); Judith; Tobit; 1-4 Maccabees; and
Poetic and prophetic writings, wisdom, and tales: Sirach (sometimes called Ecclesiasticus); Wisdom of Solomon; Baruch; Letter of Jeremiah; Susanna; Prayer of Azariah and the Song of the Three Young Men; and Bel and the Dragon.
Though most of these titles may not sound familiar to many Christians today, many of the early Christians seem to have accepted them as part of their Scriptures. Aside from these documents, there were also additions to the Greek translation of the Hebrew book of Esther that was made in the second and first centuries b.c. And, some of the tales listed above were added to the Greek translation of Daniel (see the notes in the chart on).
The Roman Catholic Bible still includes many of these books, along with the fuller versions of the books of Esther and Daniel. The Greek Orthodox Bible includes many of these books, plus a few others, such as the Prayer of Manasseh and an extra Psalm (151). Although most Protestant Bibles now follow the list called “Hebrew Scriptures” shown in the chart on, and exclude the “extra” books, some editions include them but place them between the Old and New Testaments or at the end of the Bible.
The New Testament
Jesus and his disciples spoke Aramaic and used the Hebrew version of the Jewish Scriptures, but the apostle Paul and many other early Christians spoke Greek and used the Greek version of the Jewish Scriptures (Septuagint). Of the many Old Testament passages quoted or referred to in the New Testament, most are taken from the Septuagint. Though a small number of Christians, by the third and fourth centuries, thought that the Jewish Scriptures should not be part of the Christian Bible, most believed, as did the writers of the New Testament, that the Jewish Scriptures were the Word of God. They considered these writings to be holy and authoritative, and to be suitable for instructing Christians about God and faith (see Mark 7.13; Rom 3.2; 2 Tim 3.16; Heb 1.1). After all, they would have argued, Jesus said that he did not come to do away with the Law and the Prophets, but to give them their full meaning (Matt 5.17-19).
The twenty-seven books that are included in the present New Testament were written by a number of different authors, the earliest ones being written as early as a.d. 50 and none being written any later than the early part of the second century. Exact dating is not possible, but certain books give clues about when they may have been written. The letters of Paul are probably the oldest writings included in the New Testament. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John (the Gospels) were probably written between a.d. 60, ten years before the temple was destroyed in Jerusalem, and a.d. 100. Most scholars agree that Mark was probably the first Gospel written, since Matthew and Luke seem to take many of their details and the order of events directly from Mark. Some of the other letters and Revelation were probably some of the last books to be written, since they seem to give a picture of the situations Christians faced at the end of the first century and in the early part of the second century a.d. See the introduction to each New Testament book for an explanation of when they might have been written.
The books included in the present New Testament were not the only letters or Gospels written by Christians during the first and second centuries. It took many years of debate between church leaders and scholars to finally settle on an accepted list (canon) of New Testament books. Various church leaders proposed different lists in the three hundred years that followed the writing of the New Testament books, but the list proposed in a.d. 367 by Athanasius, a bishop of Alexandria, is the list that nearly all Christian traditions accept today.
How did the church leaders decide which books should become part of the accepted list? There were probably three “tests” they used to make their decision. First of all, a book had to have some connection with one of the early apostles. This meant that either the apostle was judged to be the writer of the book, or the material was thought to capture the key teachings of that apostle. Second, the book or letter had to be in agreement with the Jewish Scriptures and other accepted New Testament writings. The third test had to do with usage. Was the book or letter accepted and being used by a majority of Christians? If so, the case for including it as part of the New Testament was stronger.
The Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Eastern Orthodox churches all generally consider the twenty-seven books of the New Testament to be “canonical” and usually list them in the same order in their Bibles. See the Contents page for the names of these books and the Introduction to the New Testament on for a description of how the New Testament is organized.