66, 73 OR 81 BOOKS: WHO DECIDED WHAT BELONGS IN THE BIBLE? THE HISTORY OF BIBLE CANONISATION
Why does the Protestant Bible have 66 books, the Roman Catholic Bible 73, the Coptic Bible 73, and the Ethiopian Orthodox Bible 81?
What about Enoch, Tobit, Maccabees, or the Gospels of Thomas, Mary, Judas and Peter?
Did Constantine choose the books?
Did the Council of Nicaea remove some?
These questions deserve more than slogans. Here is the actual history.
WHAT IS A CANON?
The word canon comes from a Greek term for a rule or measuring standard. When Christians speak of the canon of Scripture, they mean the collection of writings recognised as carrying the unique authority of Scripture. Canonisation is the historical process by which the boundaries of that collection came to be recognised.
This is NOT the same as writing Scripture, translating it, or binding several books together physically.
From the Christian theological view, a council did not make a book inspired by voting for it. If Romans was inspired by God, it was inspired when Paul wrote it, not when a bishop later placed it on a list.
Canonisation is the recognition of writings already believed to be inspired by God and carry divine authority
As more writings circulated, churches needed to distinguish Scripture carrying binding authority, valuable writings useful for instruction, and writings considered spurious or false.
Without understanding those categories, people see an ancient book outside our Bible and immediately conclude it was removed. That needs to be demonstrated, not assumed.
BEFORE THE BIBLE LOOKED LIKE OUR BIBLE
If you entered a synagogue in the days of Jesus, you would not find one leather bound volume containing Genesis through Malachi.
Scripture existed mainly as scrolls, made from papyrus or animal skin.
You read a scroll by unrolling it. In Luke 4, Jesus is handed the scroll of Isaiah in the synagogue, not a complete Old Testament.
Different synagogues would possess different collections of biblical scrolls, because manuscripts were COPIED BY HAND, TOOK TIME, AND WERE EXPENSIVE.
The absence of a manuscript from a community did not mean rejection of that book. Possessing fewer scrolls did not necessarily mean accepting fewer books as Scripture.
Physical possession is not the same as canonical recognition.
Most ordinary people DID NOT OWN personal Scripture collections.
They encountered Scripture through PUBLIC READING, WORSHIP AND MEMORISATION.
THEN CAME THE CODEX
Eventually the codex appeared, closer to what we recognise as a book today, with pages bound along one side.
Early Christians adopted it enthusiastically.
But a codex could contain one book or several.
The codex is the physical format.
The canon is the recognised collection.
THE JEWISH SCRIPTURES
Christianity did not create the Old Testament.
Jesus and the apostles were Jewish and inherited Israel's Scriptures, organised as the Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings.
The later Jewish Tanakh contains 24 books: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, the Twelve Minor Prophets, Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel, Ezra and Nehemiah, and Chronicles.
The Protestant Old Testament has 39 books.
Same content, different division.
Samuel becomes 1 and 2 Samuel
Kings becomes 1 and 2 Kings
Chronicles becomes 1 and 2 Chronicles
Ezra and Nehemiah separate
The Twelve Minor Prophets become twelve books
By the late first century, the Jewish historian Josephus spoke of 22 sacred books, grouped differently again.
The numbers 22, 24 and 39 describe the same body of writings, counted differently.
What matters is which writings are counted, not how many volumes someone reports.
GREEK ENTERS THE PICTURE
Several centuries before Jesus, the conquests of Alexander the Great helped make Greek the common international language across large parts of the eastern Mediterranean world.
Millions of Jews lived outside Judea and spoke Greek.
From around the third century BC, the Torah was translated into Greek in Alexandria, and other books followed.
This tradition became known as the Septuagint, or LXX.
But this needs careful explanation.
We should not imagine that every synagogue possessed one standardised Greek Bible with an identical table of contents exactly like a modern printed Bible.
Other Jewish religious writings circulated alongside the books later found in the Hebrew canon, including Tobit, Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, Baruch, 1 and 2 Maccabees, and extra material in Esther and Daniel.
Later Greek Christian collections preserved several of these alongside the Hebrew biblical books.
Some of these books had originally been composed in Hebrew or Aramaic.
Others came to us through Greek.
This is one major reason why later Christians would disagree about precisely where the boundary of the Old Testament should be drawn.
THEN JESUS CAME
Jesus and His apostles inherited this Jewish scriptural world.
They did not walk around with our modern 66 book Bible.
The New Testament had not been written yet.
After the death, resurrection and ascension of Christ, apostolic writings gradually appeared.
Paul wrote actual letters to actual churches:
Romans to Rome, Corinthians to Corinth, Galatians to Galatia.
The Gospels and Acts were written.
These letters circulated by HAND COPYING
There was NO PRINTING PRESS.
A church in one city might have Matthew and several Pauline letters.
Another might possess Luke, Acts and a different combination of letters.
Another might eventually accumulate a much larger collection.
Again: Not physically possessing a particular book did not necessarily mean rejecting that book.
WHY A CANON WAS NEEDED
Writings multiplied
Some were genuinely apostolic
Some were produced by people closely connected with apostles
Some were valuable but written later
Some were written under the names of famous apostles even though those apostles almost certainly did not write them.
Some represented theological movements the wider church rejected
And some books were widely accepted in one part of Christianity but questioned in another.
Christians had to ask which writings carried the authority of Scripture.
HOW THE BIBLICAL CANON WAS RECOGNISED
There was no single agreed checklist for canonisation.
What scholars call the “criteria of canonicity” are better understood as recurring considerations, applied with different emphasis across churches and writers.
These included:
• Apostolicity: Was the writing genuinely connected with an apostle or the apostolic generation?
• Antiquity: Did it originate early enough to belong credibly to the formative period of Christianity?
• Catholicity or widespread reception: Was it received across different geographical regions and Christian communities rather than being confined mainly to one local church or particular movement?
• Orthodoxy or conformity to the rule of faith: Was its teaching consistent with the faith Christians believed they had received from Christ and the apostles?
• Liturgical and ecclesial usage: Was it regularly read, taught and treated as authoritative within the worship and life of the churches?
• Continuous historical reception: Could its recognition and use be traced through earlier generations of Christians, particularly those closer to the apostolic period?
These were not rigid boxes applied uniformly everywhere. They overlapped and developed through usage, reception, debate and discernment over time.
NOT EVERY BOOK OUTSIDE THE CANON WAS CONSIDERED EVIL
This distinction is perhaps one of the most important things to understand about the whole subject.
There were books regarded as Scripture.
There were books regarded as useful Christian reading.
And there were books regarded as spurious or heretical.
That middle category matters.
A book could be ancient
It could contain truth
It could be spiritually useful
It could be read by Christians
It might even sometimes be read publicly
And yet Christians might still decide that it SHOULD NOT CARRY THE SAME AUTHORITY as Isaiah, Matthew or Romans.
Keep this in mind. It answers most of the conspiracy claims that follow.
WHAT HAD ALREADY HAPPENED BY AD 180
Irenaeus of Lyons, writing around AD 180, explicitly describes the church receiving four Gospels:
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
That is roughly 145 years before the Council of Nicaea.
The popular story of Constantine choosing four Gospels from dozens of equally accepted options does not fit the evidence.
The four Gospel collection was already settled in major Christian communities long before Nicaea.
WHAT WAS STILL DEBATED IN THE EARLY FOURTH CENTURY
Eusebius of Caesarea gives us a useful snapshot.
He distinguishes writings widely accepted from those still disputed in some churches.
The ACCEPTED CORE INCLUDED: the four Gospels, Acts, Paul's letters, 1 Peter and 1 John.
DISPUTED IS SOME PLACES were: James, Jude, 2 Peter, 2 John and 3 John. Revelation had a complicated reception.
Eusebius also knew works such as the Shepherd of Hermas, the Didache and the Epistle of Barnabas, and several writings attributed to apostles that he did not place with the accepted books.
By this stage, most of the New Testament was already established.
The remaining debate concerned a smaller group of books.
WHAT THEN HAPPENED AT NICAEA IN AD 325?
This must be said plainly, because the myth will not die.
The Council of Nicaea DID NOT DECIDE WHICH BOOKS BELONG IN THE BIBLE.
Nicaea addressed the Arian controversy over the identity of Christ, along with the date of Easter and matters of church discipline.
The 20 surviving rules issued by the Council of Nicaea deal with church doctrine, discipline and administration. None contains a list of books declaring which writings should make up the Old or New Testament.
Constantine did not place Matthew, Thomas, Judas and Mary before bishops for a vote. That story has no historical foundation.
THEN COMES ATHANASIUS IN AD 367
Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, issued his 39th Festal Letter.
His New Testament lists exactly the same 27 books recognised across most major Christian traditions today, Matthew through Revelation.
His Old Testament counts 22 books, grouped differently from either today's Protestant or Catholic Old Testament.
He placed Baruch and the Letter of Jeremiah with Jeremiah, and did not include Esther in his canonical list.
He then names a separate category: books not in his canon but useful for instruction, including Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, Esther, Judith, Tobit, the Didache and the Shepherd of Hermas.
He did not call these Scripture.
He also did not dismiss them.
He distinguished canonical Scripture from writings useful for Christian instruction.
BY THE LATE FOURTH CENTURY, THE OLD TESTAMENT CANON WAS NOT YET UNIFORMLY SETTLED
Around AD 391, Jerome argued from what he called the Hebrew truth, favouring the Jewish canonical collection and distinguishing Wisdom, Sirach, Judith, Tobit and Maccabees from it, while still valuing them as useful reading.
Augustine, around AD 397, took a broader position, including Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach and Maccabees within his canon.
The councils at Hippo (AD 393) and Carthage (AD 397) reflected this broader African tradition. Carthage's New Testament list matches our familiar 27 books, while its Old Testament reflects the broader collection.
Two major Christian thinkers of the same era did not draw the Old Testament boundary in the same place, more than a thousand years before Martin Luther.
So two popular claims are both too simple:
that Catholics suddenly added books in the sixteenth century, and that Protestants suddenly removed books everyone had always accepted. History is more complicated than either slogan.
WHAT IS THE APOCRYPHA?
In discussions of Protestant Bible history, the Old Testament Apocrypha refers to ancient Jewish writings found in broader Greek and Latin Christian traditions but not in the Jewish Hebrew canon that Protestants follow: Tobit, Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, Baruch, 1 and 2 Maccabees, and extra material connected with Esther and Daniel.
Roman Catholics generally do not call these books Apocrypha in the same sense. They generally call most of them Deuterocanonical books and receive them as Scripture.
That term does not mean inferior Scripture in Catholic theology. It describes books whose canonical recognition had a more complicated history.
This is a separate discussion from noncanonical Christian writings such as the Gospel of Thomas or Gospel of Judas, which fall under a broader and different use of the word apocrypha.
HOW THE CATHOLIC BIBLE DEVELOPED
Today's Roman Catholic Bible contains 46 Old Testament books and 27 New Testament books, 73 in total.
Compared to the Protestant Old Testament, it additionally includes Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, 1 and 2 Maccabees, and extra sections in Esther and Daniel.
These books were not invented at Trent. They are ancient and had been used by Christians for centuries.
The Council of Florence listed the broader Catholic collection in 1442.
The Council of Trent in 1546 formally reaffirmed it during the Reformation controversy.
The argument is about canonical authority, not whether these writings existed. They unquestionably did.
HOW PROTESTANTS ARRIVED AT 66
The Reformers aligned the Old Testament with the Hebrew Jewish collection, giving 39 books by Protestant counting.
Martin Luther's 1534 German Bible placed the additional writings in a separate section rather than pretending they did not exist.
They were useful reading, not equal in authority to canonical Scripture.
Other Protestant traditions made similar distinctions.
THE ORIGINAL 1611 KING JAMES BIBLE INCLUDED THE APOCRYPHA
Here is something that often shocks people.
The original 1611 King James Bible included the Apocrypha, printed as a separate section between the Old and New Testaments.
Being printed in the same volume and being given the same canonical authority are not the same thing.
Over time, these books became less common in Protestant editions.
WHAT ABOUT THE EASTERN ORTHODOX, COPTIC AND ETHIOPIAN BIBLES?
- EASTERN ORTHODOX CHURCHES, including the Greek, Russian, Serbian, Romanian and other Orthodox traditions of Eastern Europe and the eastern Mediterranean, generally receive a broader Old Testament closely related to the Septuagint tradition.
It included books such as Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Maccabees, the Prayer of Manasseh, and sometimes further books, with the familiar 27 New Testament books remaining central.
- THE EGYPTIAN COPTIC ORTHODOX CHURCH of Alexandria presents 46 Old Testament books and 27 New Testament books, 73 in total, numerically comparable to the Catholic collection, with its own distinct ecclesiastical history.
Its New Testament is still the familiar 27 books.
It does not add the Gospel of Thomas, Mary, Judas or Philip to that list. Finding a document in Egypt does not make it part of the Coptic canon.
- THE ETHIOPIAN ORTHODOX TEWAHEDO CHURCH has a broader tradition again: 46 Old Testament books and 35 New Testament books, 81 in total.
Its Old Testament includes Enoch, Jubilees, Tobit, Judith, Maccabean writings, Sirach and others. Its New Testament contains the same familiar 27 books plus eight additional church order writings, including material known as Sirate Tsion, Tizaz, Gitsew, Abtilis, 1 and 2 Dominos, Clement and the Didascalia.
An 81 book Ethiopian Bible does not mean eight secret apostolic Gospels were hidden elsewhere.
More books does not mean more original.
Fewer books does not prove removal.
The real question in every case is what authority each tradition assigned to a given writing.
THE BOOK OF ENOCH
Enoch deserves particular attention.
I have read from it myself and continue to study writings outside the Protestant canon, because they help me understand the world surrounding Scripture.
1 Enoch is genuinely ancient, not a medieval invention.
Fragments were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Jude 14 and 15 attributes a prophecy to "Enoch, the seventh from Adam," language that closely matches 1 Enoch 1:9.
Jude clearly knew an Enochic tradition.
Does that make the whole Book of Enoch Scripture?
Not necessarily.
A biblical author can use material without canonising the entire work it comes from. Paul quotes nonbiblical writers too.
Enoch is influential and gives real insight into ancient Jewish thought on angels, judgement and evil.
The Ethiopian Orthodox Church receives it as Scripture.
Catholics, Protestants, mainstream Eastern Orthodox and Coptic Christians do not.
Ancient does not mean canonical
Quoted does not mean canonical
Useful does not mean canonical
But noncanonical does not mean worthless.
THE SO CALLED LOST GOSPELS
Other Gospels exist.
Christians should not be afraid of them.
I have read some myself, because I would rather examine the evidence than repeat what someone told me about it.
Dating is the KEY ISSUE!
Jesus was crucified around AD 30
Judas died around that time.
Peter died in Rome under Nero, around the mid to late AD 60s.
Thomas and Philip belonged to the same first century apostolic generation, as did Mary Magdalene, though their exact dates are less certain.
THE GOSPEL OF THOMAS: The Gospel of Thomas contains 114 sayings, not a narrative of Jesus' life, death and resurrection.
Its dating is debated.
Some scholars think individual sayings preserve earlier tradition, but most place its final form around AD 120 to 150, AFTER THE APOSTOLIC GENERATION, with evidence it drew on Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
That gap is why scholars generally do not attribute the surviving text to the apostle Thomas himself.
An early saying inside it may preserve authentic material, but that is different from proving apostolic authorship.
THE GOSPEL OF PETER is generally dated between AD 150 and 190, roughly a century after Peter's death around AD 64 to 68.
It departs significantly from the canonical resurrection accounts.
The dating alone does not make every line false, but it gives strong reason to doubt Peter wrote it.
THE GOSPEL OF MARY is generally dated to around AD 150 to 200, with some allowing an early third century date, at least a century after Mary Magdalene's lifetime.
The surviving text is incomplete, showing Mary receiving special teaching and later disagreeing with some male disciples.
Nothing in the manuscript evidence connects her directly to its authorship, which is why scholars do not regard her as the author.
THE GOSPEL OF JUDAS is generally dated to around AD 130 to 170, over a century after Judas Iscariot's death around AD 30.
Irenaeus already knew of it by AD 180, confirming it was circulating then, though the only surviving copy is a later Coptic translation in a third or fourth century codex.
The title is not proof of authorship, and this gap is why scholars do not regard Judas Iscariot as the author.
THE GOSPEL OF PHILIP is is generally dated to around AD 180 to 250, well over a century after Philip the Apostle's death in the first century.
Widely associated with Valentinian Christianity, it consists mainly of theological and sacramental reflection rather than a narrative of Jesus' life, and its language and ideas belong to that later Christian environment.
This gap is why scholars do not regard Philip the Apostle as its author.
THE INFANCY GOSPEL OF THOMAS, distinct from the Gospel of Thomas, tells miracle stories of Jesus as a child, roughly around AD 140 to 170.
Irenaeus knew one of its stories by AD 180, but the work still postdates the apostolic generation, which is why it is not attributed to the apostle Thomas.
Other writings,
Why does the Protestant Bible have 66 books, the Roman Catholic Bible 73, the Coptic Bible 73, and the Ethiopian Orthodox Bible 81?
What about Enoch, Tobit, Maccabees, or the Gospels of Thomas, Mary, Judas and Peter?
Did Constantine choose the books?
Did the Council of Nicaea remove some?
These questions deserve more than slogans. Here is the actual history.
WHAT IS A CANON?
The word canon comes from a Greek term for a rule or measuring standard. When Christians speak of the canon of Scripture, they mean the collection of writings recognised as carrying the unique authority of Scripture. Canonisation is the historical process by which the boundaries of that collection came to be recognised.
This is NOT the same as writing Scripture, translating it, or binding several books together physically.
From the Christian theological view, a council did not make a book inspired by voting for it. If Romans was inspired by God, it was inspired when Paul wrote it, not when a bishop later placed it on a list.
Canonisation is the recognition of writings already believed to be inspired by God and carry divine authority
As more writings circulated, churches needed to distinguish Scripture carrying binding authority, valuable writings useful for instruction, and writings considered spurious or false.
Without understanding those categories, people see an ancient book outside our Bible and immediately conclude it was removed. That needs to be demonstrated, not assumed.
BEFORE THE BIBLE LOOKED LIKE OUR BIBLE
If you entered a synagogue in the days of Jesus, you would not find one leather bound volume containing Genesis through Malachi.
Scripture existed mainly as scrolls, made from papyrus or animal skin.
You read a scroll by unrolling it. In Luke 4, Jesus is handed the scroll of Isaiah in the synagogue, not a complete Old Testament.
Different synagogues would possess different collections of biblical scrolls, because manuscripts were COPIED BY HAND, TOOK TIME, AND WERE EXPENSIVE.
The absence of a manuscript from a community did not mean rejection of that book. Possessing fewer scrolls did not necessarily mean accepting fewer books as Scripture.
Physical possession is not the same as canonical recognition.
Most ordinary people DID NOT OWN personal Scripture collections.
They encountered Scripture through PUBLIC READING, WORSHIP AND MEMORISATION.
THEN CAME THE CODEX
Eventually the codex appeared, closer to what we recognise as a book today, with pages bound along one side.
Early Christians adopted it enthusiastically.
But a codex could contain one book or several.
The codex is the physical format.
The canon is the recognised collection.
THE JEWISH SCRIPTURES
Christianity did not create the Old Testament.
Jesus and the apostles were Jewish and inherited Israel's Scriptures, organised as the Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings.
The later Jewish Tanakh contains 24 books: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, Joshua, Judges, Samuel, Kings, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, the Twelve Minor Prophets, Psalms, Proverbs, Job, Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Esther, Daniel, Ezra and Nehemiah, and Chronicles.
The Protestant Old Testament has 39 books.
Same content, different division.
Samuel becomes 1 and 2 Samuel
Kings becomes 1 and 2 Kings
Chronicles becomes 1 and 2 Chronicles
Ezra and Nehemiah separate
The Twelve Minor Prophets become twelve books
By the late first century, the Jewish historian Josephus spoke of 22 sacred books, grouped differently again.
The numbers 22, 24 and 39 describe the same body of writings, counted differently.
What matters is which writings are counted, not how many volumes someone reports.
GREEK ENTERS THE PICTURE
Several centuries before Jesus, the conquests of Alexander the Great helped make Greek the common international language across large parts of the eastern Mediterranean world.
Millions of Jews lived outside Judea and spoke Greek.
From around the third century BC, the Torah was translated into Greek in Alexandria, and other books followed.
This tradition became known as the Septuagint, or LXX.
But this needs careful explanation.
We should not imagine that every synagogue possessed one standardised Greek Bible with an identical table of contents exactly like a modern printed Bible.
Other Jewish religious writings circulated alongside the books later found in the Hebrew canon, including Tobit, Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, Baruch, 1 and 2 Maccabees, and extra material in Esther and Daniel.
Later Greek Christian collections preserved several of these alongside the Hebrew biblical books.
Some of these books had originally been composed in Hebrew or Aramaic.
Others came to us through Greek.
This is one major reason why later Christians would disagree about precisely where the boundary of the Old Testament should be drawn.
THEN JESUS CAME
Jesus and His apostles inherited this Jewish scriptural world.
They did not walk around with our modern 66 book Bible.
The New Testament had not been written yet.
After the death, resurrection and ascension of Christ, apostolic writings gradually appeared.
Paul wrote actual letters to actual churches:
Romans to Rome, Corinthians to Corinth, Galatians to Galatia.
The Gospels and Acts were written.
These letters circulated by HAND COPYING
There was NO PRINTING PRESS.
A church in one city might have Matthew and several Pauline letters.
Another might possess Luke, Acts and a different combination of letters.
Another might eventually accumulate a much larger collection.
Again: Not physically possessing a particular book did not necessarily mean rejecting that book.
WHY A CANON WAS NEEDED
Writings multiplied
Some were genuinely apostolic
Some were produced by people closely connected with apostles
Some were valuable but written later
Some were written under the names of famous apostles even though those apostles almost certainly did not write them.
Some represented theological movements the wider church rejected
And some books were widely accepted in one part of Christianity but questioned in another.
Christians had to ask which writings carried the authority of Scripture.
HOW THE BIBLICAL CANON WAS RECOGNISED
There was no single agreed checklist for canonisation.
What scholars call the “criteria of canonicity” are better understood as recurring considerations, applied with different emphasis across churches and writers.
These included:
• Apostolicity: Was the writing genuinely connected with an apostle or the apostolic generation?
• Antiquity: Did it originate early enough to belong credibly to the formative period of Christianity?
• Catholicity or widespread reception: Was it received across different geographical regions and Christian communities rather than being confined mainly to one local church or particular movement?
• Orthodoxy or conformity to the rule of faith: Was its teaching consistent with the faith Christians believed they had received from Christ and the apostles?
• Liturgical and ecclesial usage: Was it regularly read, taught and treated as authoritative within the worship and life of the churches?
• Continuous historical reception: Could its recognition and use be traced through earlier generations of Christians, particularly those closer to the apostolic period?
These were not rigid boxes applied uniformly everywhere. They overlapped and developed through usage, reception, debate and discernment over time.
NOT EVERY BOOK OUTSIDE THE CANON WAS CONSIDERED EVIL
This distinction is perhaps one of the most important things to understand about the whole subject.
There were books regarded as Scripture.
There were books regarded as useful Christian reading.
And there were books regarded as spurious or heretical.
That middle category matters.
A book could be ancient
It could contain truth
It could be spiritually useful
It could be read by Christians
It might even sometimes be read publicly
And yet Christians might still decide that it SHOULD NOT CARRY THE SAME AUTHORITY as Isaiah, Matthew or Romans.
Keep this in mind. It answers most of the conspiracy claims that follow.
WHAT HAD ALREADY HAPPENED BY AD 180
Irenaeus of Lyons, writing around AD 180, explicitly describes the church receiving four Gospels:
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
That is roughly 145 years before the Council of Nicaea.
The popular story of Constantine choosing four Gospels from dozens of equally accepted options does not fit the evidence.
The four Gospel collection was already settled in major Christian communities long before Nicaea.
WHAT WAS STILL DEBATED IN THE EARLY FOURTH CENTURY
Eusebius of Caesarea gives us a useful snapshot.
He distinguishes writings widely accepted from those still disputed in some churches.
The ACCEPTED CORE INCLUDED: the four Gospels, Acts, Paul's letters, 1 Peter and 1 John.
DISPUTED IS SOME PLACES were: James, Jude, 2 Peter, 2 John and 3 John. Revelation had a complicated reception.
Eusebius also knew works such as the Shepherd of Hermas, the Didache and the Epistle of Barnabas, and several writings attributed to apostles that he did not place with the accepted books.
By this stage, most of the New Testament was already established.
The remaining debate concerned a smaller group of books.
WHAT THEN HAPPENED AT NICAEA IN AD 325?
This must be said plainly, because the myth will not die.
The Council of Nicaea DID NOT DECIDE WHICH BOOKS BELONG IN THE BIBLE.
Nicaea addressed the Arian controversy over the identity of Christ, along with the date of Easter and matters of church discipline.
The 20 surviving rules issued by the Council of Nicaea deal with church doctrine, discipline and administration. None contains a list of books declaring which writings should make up the Old or New Testament.
Constantine did not place Matthew, Thomas, Judas and Mary before bishops for a vote. That story has no historical foundation.
THEN COMES ATHANASIUS IN AD 367
Athanasius, Bishop of Alexandria, issued his 39th Festal Letter.
His New Testament lists exactly the same 27 books recognised across most major Christian traditions today, Matthew through Revelation.
His Old Testament counts 22 books, grouped differently from either today's Protestant or Catholic Old Testament.
He placed Baruch and the Letter of Jeremiah with Jeremiah, and did not include Esther in his canonical list.
He then names a separate category: books not in his canon but useful for instruction, including Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, Esther, Judith, Tobit, the Didache and the Shepherd of Hermas.
He did not call these Scripture.
He also did not dismiss them.
He distinguished canonical Scripture from writings useful for Christian instruction.
BY THE LATE FOURTH CENTURY, THE OLD TESTAMENT CANON WAS NOT YET UNIFORMLY SETTLED
Around AD 391, Jerome argued from what he called the Hebrew truth, favouring the Jewish canonical collection and distinguishing Wisdom, Sirach, Judith, Tobit and Maccabees from it, while still valuing them as useful reading.
Augustine, around AD 397, took a broader position, including Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach and Maccabees within his canon.
The councils at Hippo (AD 393) and Carthage (AD 397) reflected this broader African tradition. Carthage's New Testament list matches our familiar 27 books, while its Old Testament reflects the broader collection.
Two major Christian thinkers of the same era did not draw the Old Testament boundary in the same place, more than a thousand years before Martin Luther.
So two popular claims are both too simple:
that Catholics suddenly added books in the sixteenth century, and that Protestants suddenly removed books everyone had always accepted. History is more complicated than either slogan.
WHAT IS THE APOCRYPHA?
In discussions of Protestant Bible history, the Old Testament Apocrypha refers to ancient Jewish writings found in broader Greek and Latin Christian traditions but not in the Jewish Hebrew canon that Protestants follow: Tobit, Judith, Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach, Baruch, 1 and 2 Maccabees, and extra material connected with Esther and Daniel.
Roman Catholics generally do not call these books Apocrypha in the same sense. They generally call most of them Deuterocanonical books and receive them as Scripture.
That term does not mean inferior Scripture in Catholic theology. It describes books whose canonical recognition had a more complicated history.
This is a separate discussion from noncanonical Christian writings such as the Gospel of Thomas or Gospel of Judas, which fall under a broader and different use of the word apocrypha.
HOW THE CATHOLIC BIBLE DEVELOPED
Today's Roman Catholic Bible contains 46 Old Testament books and 27 New Testament books, 73 in total.
Compared to the Protestant Old Testament, it additionally includes Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Baruch, 1 and 2 Maccabees, and extra sections in Esther and Daniel.
These books were not invented at Trent. They are ancient and had been used by Christians for centuries.
The Council of Florence listed the broader Catholic collection in 1442.
The Council of Trent in 1546 formally reaffirmed it during the Reformation controversy.
The argument is about canonical authority, not whether these writings existed. They unquestionably did.
HOW PROTESTANTS ARRIVED AT 66
The Reformers aligned the Old Testament with the Hebrew Jewish collection, giving 39 books by Protestant counting.
Martin Luther's 1534 German Bible placed the additional writings in a separate section rather than pretending they did not exist.
They were useful reading, not equal in authority to canonical Scripture.
Other Protestant traditions made similar distinctions.
THE ORIGINAL 1611 KING JAMES BIBLE INCLUDED THE APOCRYPHA
Here is something that often shocks people.
The original 1611 King James Bible included the Apocrypha, printed as a separate section between the Old and New Testaments.
Being printed in the same volume and being given the same canonical authority are not the same thing.
Over time, these books became less common in Protestant editions.
WHAT ABOUT THE EASTERN ORTHODOX, COPTIC AND ETHIOPIAN BIBLES?
- EASTERN ORTHODOX CHURCHES, including the Greek, Russian, Serbian, Romanian and other Orthodox traditions of Eastern Europe and the eastern Mediterranean, generally receive a broader Old Testament closely related to the Septuagint tradition.
It included books such as Tobit, Judith, Wisdom, Sirach, Maccabees, the Prayer of Manasseh, and sometimes further books, with the familiar 27 New Testament books remaining central.
- THE EGYPTIAN COPTIC ORTHODOX CHURCH of Alexandria presents 46 Old Testament books and 27 New Testament books, 73 in total, numerically comparable to the Catholic collection, with its own distinct ecclesiastical history.
Its New Testament is still the familiar 27 books.
It does not add the Gospel of Thomas, Mary, Judas or Philip to that list. Finding a document in Egypt does not make it part of the Coptic canon.
- THE ETHIOPIAN ORTHODOX TEWAHEDO CHURCH has a broader tradition again: 46 Old Testament books and 35 New Testament books, 81 in total.
Its Old Testament includes Enoch, Jubilees, Tobit, Judith, Maccabean writings, Sirach and others. Its New Testament contains the same familiar 27 books plus eight additional church order writings, including material known as Sirate Tsion, Tizaz, Gitsew, Abtilis, 1 and 2 Dominos, Clement and the Didascalia.
An 81 book Ethiopian Bible does not mean eight secret apostolic Gospels were hidden elsewhere.
More books does not mean more original.
Fewer books does not prove removal.
The real question in every case is what authority each tradition assigned to a given writing.
THE BOOK OF ENOCH
Enoch deserves particular attention.
I have read from it myself and continue to study writings outside the Protestant canon, because they help me understand the world surrounding Scripture.
1 Enoch is genuinely ancient, not a medieval invention.
Fragments were found among the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Jude 14 and 15 attributes a prophecy to "Enoch, the seventh from Adam," language that closely matches 1 Enoch 1:9.
Jude clearly knew an Enochic tradition.
Does that make the whole Book of Enoch Scripture?
Not necessarily.
A biblical author can use material without canonising the entire work it comes from. Paul quotes nonbiblical writers too.
Enoch is influential and gives real insight into ancient Jewish thought on angels, judgement and evil.
The Ethiopian Orthodox Church receives it as Scripture.
Catholics, Protestants, mainstream Eastern Orthodox and Coptic Christians do not.
Ancient does not mean canonical
Quoted does not mean canonical
Useful does not mean canonical
But noncanonical does not mean worthless.
THE SO CALLED LOST GOSPELS
Other Gospels exist.
Christians should not be afraid of them.
I have read some myself, because I would rather examine the evidence than repeat what someone told me about it.
Dating is the KEY ISSUE!
Jesus was crucified around AD 30
Judas died around that time.
Peter died in Rome under Nero, around the mid to late AD 60s.
Thomas and Philip belonged to the same first century apostolic generation, as did Mary Magdalene, though their exact dates are less certain.
THE GOSPEL OF THOMAS: The Gospel of Thomas contains 114 sayings, not a narrative of Jesus' life, death and resurrection.
Its dating is debated.
Some scholars think individual sayings preserve earlier tradition, but most place its final form around AD 120 to 150, AFTER THE APOSTOLIC GENERATION, with evidence it drew on Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
That gap is why scholars generally do not attribute the surviving text to the apostle Thomas himself.
An early saying inside it may preserve authentic material, but that is different from proving apostolic authorship.
THE GOSPEL OF PETER is generally dated between AD 150 and 190, roughly a century after Peter's death around AD 64 to 68.
It departs significantly from the canonical resurrection accounts.
The dating alone does not make every line false, but it gives strong reason to doubt Peter wrote it.
THE GOSPEL OF MARY is generally dated to around AD 150 to 200, with some allowing an early third century date, at least a century after Mary Magdalene's lifetime.
The surviving text is incomplete, showing Mary receiving special teaching and later disagreeing with some male disciples.
Nothing in the manuscript evidence connects her directly to its authorship, which is why scholars do not regard her as the author.
THE GOSPEL OF JUDAS is generally dated to around AD 130 to 170, over a century after Judas Iscariot's death around AD 30.
Irenaeus already knew of it by AD 180, confirming it was circulating then, though the only surviving copy is a later Coptic translation in a third or fourth century codex.
The title is not proof of authorship, and this gap is why scholars do not regard Judas Iscariot as the author.
THE GOSPEL OF PHILIP is is generally dated to around AD 180 to 250, well over a century after Philip the Apostle's death in the first century.
Widely associated with Valentinian Christianity, it consists mainly of theological and sacramental reflection rather than a narrative of Jesus' life, and its language and ideas belong to that later Christian environment.
This gap is why scholars do not regard Philip the Apostle as its author.
THE INFANCY GOSPEL OF THOMAS, distinct from the Gospel of Thomas, tells miracle stories of Jesus as a child, roughly around AD 140 to 170.
Irenaeus knew one of its stories by AD 180, but the work still postdates the apostolic generation, which is why it is not attributed to the apostle Thomas.
Other writings,