Bible canon

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The biblical canon is that series of books that have established (canonized) Judaism and Christianity as components of their Bible and thus made them the standard (canon) of their religious practice .

In Judaism, the Torah , the five books of Moses, first became the normative holy scripture (approx. 800–250 BC), to which other prophetic and wisdom scriptures were added. Around 100 AD it was finally determined which Hebrew scriptures belong to the three-part Tanakh . Since Judaism has no supreme teaching authority, Greek-translated versions of the Bible survived alongside the Tanakh.

The Old Church took over all the writings of the Tanakh and added them as the Old Testament (OT) to the New Testament (NT), which was finally canonized around 400. With this she confirmed the lasting validity of the Jewish Bible for the Christian faith. The Roman Catholic Church and Orthodox Churches also adopted other books from the Greek Septuagint in their OT. The Luther Bible limited the OT to those 39 books whose Hebrew texts are canonized in a different order in the Tanakh.

term

The Greek loan word κανών (canon) goes back to the Hebrew קָנֶה ( qaneh , cf. Ez 40.3  EU ) and originally referred to a wooden or bamboo tube that was used in the building trade as a measuring stick, ruler, straightedge or balance beam. In Hellenism it also designated an ethical standard, a guideline, rule or regulation for a knowledge, a judgment or behavior.

In this sense of an action-guiding norm, it appears four times in the NT ( 2 Cor 10.13.15.16  EU ; Gal 6.16  EU ). Scriptures by Christian theologians have been associating it with terms such as truth , faith and church (Latin: regula veritatis / fidei / ecclesiae ) since around 150 and refer to parts or the entirety of the religious and teaching tradition recognized in the church to delimit heresies .

The expression referred to both a content-related truth claim as the norm of this tradition and its external scope as a catalog or list of authoritative documents:

“The canon is the norm by which everything in the church is governed; canonical means: recognizing as part of this standard. "

- Adolf Jülicher : Introduction to the New Testament

Only since about 350 did Christian theologians apply the term canon to all of the holy scriptures recognized in the Church, i.e. to their Bible. Until then, the documents of faith recognized as normative in Judaism and Christianity were consistently called Scripture , Scriptures , Instructions (Hebrew Torah) and Law (Greek nómos).

Tanakh

The Jewish Bible, mainly written in Hebrew, was created as a continuous collection of oral traditions, which were then written down, incorporated into larger complexes, revised many times, passed on and further interpreted as the word of God and testimony to it. Particularly in the legal traditions that are regarded as God's revelation , the impetus lay both for a constant interpretation and revision for one's own time and for binding writing, verbatim transcription and final determination.

The Deuteronomy cited, adds and updates older Gesetzeskorpora she authorized as large Moserede and gave them thus for all Israelites canonical rank. A previous form of Deuteronomy legitimized Josias cult centralization (around 622 BC). The solemn reading of the Torah after the rebuilding of the temple (from 539 BC; Neh 8,1) presupposes its canonical validity for Judaism. It was completed at the latest with the beginning of its Greek translation (around 250 BC). Even for the Samaritans who parted from the Jerusalem temple cult , it remained the only valid Holy Scripture: from this came their Samaritan Pentateuch .

Around 200 BC The collection of the books of the prophets , which were subordinated to the Torah as the second main part of the Jewish Bible, was also completed. They are presumed to be known in the Dead Sea Scrolls (written between 200 BC and 40 AD) and are largely passed down and commented on in manuscripts.

Around 96 Flavius ​​Josephus named 22 books of today's Jewish Bible, whereby he assigned four of them - presumably the Psalms, Proverbs Solomon, Ecclesiastes (Kohelet) and Song of Songs - to the non-prophetic writings. At about the same time, the 4th book of Ezra (14: 18–48) named 24 scriptures inspired by Ezra and dictated by verbal inspiration .

The extent of the third part remained controversial in Judaism; at a meeting of its most important representatives in Jawne (around 100) it is said to have been determined. The Megillot (Song of Songs, Ruth, Lamentations, Preachers, Esther) as well as the long controversial book Daniel , Ezra, Nehemia and the two chronicle books were included in it, but not a number of Greek writings that found their way into the Septuagint: including Jesus Sirach and the Maccabees. According to the Mishnah (mJad 3,5), discussions of the rabbis about the affiliation of the preacher's book and the Song of Songs continued after 100.

In the Jewish diaspora , writings that were excluded from the canonization of the Tanach were often read out from the Septuagint. This was left to Christian appropriation from around 400 onwards. New translations of the Tanach into Greek by Aquila , Symmachus the Ebionite or Theodotion could not establish themselves in rabbinic Judaism .

Old testament

For Jesus and the early Christians , the Tanach, which had not yet been finally determined in terms of its scope, was the authoritative Holy Scripture, but it was already three-part. Even the apocryphal book Jesus Sirach (written around 190 BC), which the Catholic Church counts as part of the Old Testament , sets a three-part, from Torah (the five books of Moses), historical (Jos, Ri, Sam, Kön) and books of the prophets (Isa, Jer, Ez and the Book of the Twelve Prophets ). Around 117 BC The Greek prologue that originated in BC names an unspecified number of other poetic-wisdom " writings ". They related their own message to a three-part Tanach and legitimized it as its interpretation. Despite differences in content, for example on the role of the Torah in the Letter to the Galatians ( cf.Mt 5:17 ff.), The Jewish holy scriptures remained binding revelation testimony to YHWH , whose will Jesus Christ finally fulfilled and confirmed in his interpretation.

Diagram showing the development of the AT canon up to the 5th century (after Franz Stuhlhofer ). In the case of the individual church fathers, synods and codices, only the deviations from the Tanach (left column) and from the Catholic canon including the deuterocanonicals (right column) are given.

Marcion wanted to exclude the Jewish Bible from the Christian Bible around 150 and only recognize a reduced NT "purified" by Judaism. In contrast, the Church Fathers retained the Jewish holy scriptures as the valid first part of the Christian Bible canon. With the church fathers there are occasional references to the so-called "deuterocanonical" writings, which are contained in the Septuagint manuscripts without having been recognized by rabbis.

Melito von Sardis translated the Greek expression palaia diathēkē - “Old Covenant ” (2 Cor. 3:14) in Latin for the first time around 170 with vetus testamentum (“Old Testament”) and referred it to all the holy Jewish scriptures known to him. His list of these included all the writings of the Tanakh except the Book of Esther. According to Eusebius of Caesarea, he made this list after a specially undertaken research trip to Palestine. Even Origen knew the canon of the Tanakh, the designated Maccabees and the Book of Enoch as not belonging and not publicly used additional writings as apocryphal ( "hidden"). For Jerome , the Tanach 393 was the Holy Spirit- inspired hebraica veritas ("Hebrew truth").

The Synods of Bishops of Rome (382), Hippo (393) and Carthage (397, 419), however, also closed the books Judit , Tobit , Wisdom Solomos , 1. / 2. Maccabees , Jesus Sirach , Baruch with Jeremiah and Greek additions to Esther and Daniel in the OT canon. In doing so, they followed the congregations in the Mediterranean region outside Palestine, consisting of a majority of Gentile Christians , in whose services Greek Septuagint texts were read out.

Table from Tanach and AT

Tanakh

Synod of Javne (approx. 100)
24 books

Septuagint

Old Church (approx. 400)
54 books
 

AT Roman Catholic

Vulgate (Trient 1546)
46 books
 

AT orthodox

Synod of Jerusalem (1672) 

AT evangelical

Luther Bible (1534)
39 books

  italics: pseudepigraphs italic:  Deuterocanonical italic: anaginoskomena  
Torah Pentateuch  Five Books of Moses 

Bereshit ( בְּרֵאשִׂית)
Schemot (שְׁמוֹת)
Wajikra (וַיִּקְרָא)
Bemidable (בַּמִדְבַּר)
Devarim (דְּבָרִים)

Gen = Genesis
Ex = Exodus
Lev = Leviticus
Num = Numbers
Dtn = Deuteronomy

1st book of Moses
2nd book of Moses
3rd book of Moses
4th book of Moses
5th book of Moses

Nevi'im (Prophets) History books
Front prophets

Jos among others
Ri daughters
Rut

1. Book of the king (kingdom) e (1Sam)
2. Book of the king (kingdom) e (2Sam)
3. Book of the king (kingdom
) e (1King) 4. Book of the king (kingdom) e (2Kings)

1. Book Paralipomenon (1Chr)
2. Book Paralipomenon (2Chr)

1. Book of Esdras (3Esra)
2. Book of Esdras (Esra + Neh)

Ester (with additions)
Judit
Tobit

1. Book of the Maccabees
2. Book of the Maccabees
3. Book of the Maccabees
4. Book of the Maccabees

Jos among others
Ri daughters
Ruth

Sam uel
Sam uel

Kings owned
Kings owned

Chr onik
Chr onik

1 Esra (Esra)
2 Esra (Neh)

Tob it
Jdt = Judit
Est er (with additions)

Makk abäer
Makk abäer

1. Esdras (3Esra)
2. Esdras (Ezra)
Neh emia
Est (with additives)
Tob
Jdt

1 Mace
2 Mac
3 Mace

Esra
Neh
Est

Ketuvim (writings) Books of wisdom  Poetry / textbooks 
Book of Ezra  +  Nehemiah

Chronicle ( 1Chr  +  2Chr )

Psalms (with Ps 151 )
Odes (with Manasseh's prayer )
Proverbs (~ Solomos, Prov)
Ecclesiastes (Koh)
Song of Songs
Job (Job, Job)
Wisdom (~ Solomos)
Jesus Sirach (Ecclesiasticus)

Job
Ps
Spr
Koh
Hld
Weish
Sir

Job
Ps (with Ps 151 )
Spr
Koh
Hld
Weish
Sir

Job
Ps
Spr
Koh (Pred)
Hld

Little prophets Great prophets

Osee (Hos)
Amos
Michäas (Mi)
Joel
Abdias (Obd)
Jonas (Jona)
Nahum
Habakuk
Sophonias (Zef)
Aggäus (Hag)
Zacharias (Sach)
Malachias (Mal)

Isa aja
Jer emia
Klgl , lamentations

Ez echiel
Bar uch (with BrJer)
Dan iel

Jes
Jer
Klgl
Bar
BrJer = Letter from Jeremiah
Ez

Jes
Jer + Klgl
Ez
Dan

Little prophets

Hos = Hosea
Joel = Joël
Am = Amos
Obd = Obadja
Jonah = Jonah
Mi = Micha
Nah = Nahum
Hab = Habakuk
Zef = Zefanja
Hag = Haggai
Sach = Zechariah
Mal = Malachi

Great prophets

Isaias (Jes)
Jeremias (Jer)
Baruch
Lamentations (~ Jeremias)
Letter of Jeremiah
Ezekiel
Daniel (+ additions: chap.3b, Susanna in the bath , Bel and the dragon)

  Apocrypha (1592) attachment  


3 Ezra
4 Ezra
Ps alm 151

4 Makk
OrMan

New Testament

scope

The 27 scriptures of the NT, written in Greek, were recognized as a valid part of the Bible canon by almost all Christians of that time by the 39th Easter Letter of Athanasius (367) at the latest . In almost all Christian denominations they are still undisputed today; only their order varies somewhat.

The four Gospels , the Acts of the Apostles , the Epistles of Paul , the Pastoral Epistles and the 1st Epistle of John have always been undisputed . Partly doubted, but ultimately recognized by all Christian traditions, the following three books were:

The following five books have been recognized by almost all traditions:

Only in the Assyrian tradition, beginning with the Syrian peshitta , are the five books mentioned above not recognized.

Several writings were at times highly valued regionally, but ultimately not included in the New Testament:

Paul's letters

First the letters of Paul were collected; 2 Petr 3.15 f. EU already requires a collection which, according to some NT historians ( David Trobisch , Robinson), was already in circulation around 70. They were read out in the Christian congregations as the decisive gospel beyond the current occasion ( 1 Thess 5:27  EU ; Rom 16:16  EU ). The author Paulus von Tarsus wanted it to be passed on to churches that he had not founded himself ( Gal 1,2  EU ; 2 Cor 1,1  EU ); they were exchanged according to Col 4,16  EU , with a warning against forgeries ( 2 Thess 2,2  EU ; 2 Thess 3,17  EU ). With this, his opponents also recognized Paul's authority ( 2 Cor 10.10 f.  EU ). The extent and sequence of the collection of Paul’s letters remained inconsistent until around 200.

Second century

Since the late 2nd century, church fathers have been compiling lists, so-called catalogs of canonical books. Their main criterion for inclusion in the canon was the authorship by one of Jesus himself appointed apostles or authorized by an apostle writing. The Gospels of Matthew and John were regarded as apostolic, the Gospel of Mark as confirmed by Simon Peter , and the Gospel of Luke by Paul.

In addition to this criterion, there were two other important criteria: Orthodoxy (orthodoxy, i.e. conformity with the teaching of the churches) and being used in church services in the various regions. It is often assumed that these criteria were also used before 170, but this is not backed up by historical sources. Therefore, these approx. 100 years to approx. 170 were referred to as the “mysterious century” in relation to the formation of the NT canon.

“The later so-called New Testament writings were also in ecclesiastical use. They were read in church services, they served as a guide for the order of the congregations and were used as an aid in teaching catechumens. They were also used naturally in theological terms. "

- Bernhard Lohse : Epochs of the history of dogma

Around 150 there was a collection of the four Gospels that Tatian used for his Diatessaron . The Gospel of John was in use in Egypt around 125. Such writings of the NT (or written pre-forms of it?) Often cited by the church fathers were regarded as authority from an early age, similar to the writings of the OT. Here are some examples (whereby 1 Tim. And 2 Peter are genuine according to some conservative theologians, i.e. were written around AD 60):

  • In 2 Peter 3:15 it says:

“And respect the long-suffering of our Lord for salvation, as our beloved brother Paul wrote to you according to the wisdom given to him, as well as in all letters when he speaks of these things in them. In these letters there are some things difficult to understand which the ignorant and unsteady twist, as well as the rest of the scriptures, to their own ruin. "

In verse 16 the Pauline letters are equated with "the other scriptures" - with τη γραφή ( tê graphê , the scripture) in the NT the OT or a part of it is usually meant.

"Because the scriptures say: 'You should not put a muzzle on the ox to thresh ', and: 'Whoever works has a right to his wages.'"

The first quote is Dtn 24.5  EU , the second is not in the OT, but literally in Lk 10.7  EU .

"For the lonely now has many more sons than the married, says the Lord."

The sentence but one says:

“Another scripture says [Mt 9:13] 'For I came to call sinners, not the righteous'. He [God] really means that ... "

The oldest catalog of the NT, the Canon Muratori (approx. 170), also includes the Revelation of Peter (with reservations), but not the canonical letters 1 and 2 Peter, Hebrews, James and 3 John.

Irenaeus of Lyon compiled his canonical list of inspired writings around AD 185 , in which the Philemon, 2nd Peter, 2nd and 3rd John, Hebrew and Jude letters are missing, but also the Shepherd of Hermas is listed.

Third century

Origen discusses in detail about 230 in his commentaries all the works contained in the NT today, but in addition to four works not included in the NT (Barnabas Letter , Shepherd of Hermas, Didache , Gospel of the Hebrews) also six canonical letters (Hebrews, 2 Peter, 2. and 3. John, James, Judas) as controversial. In his homilies on Joshua Origen already presented a list of New Testament scriptures that correspond to the 27-scriptures NT.

The canonical nature of the Revelation of John was still controversial in the East at that time.

Fourth century

The manuscripts preserved from this period (e.g. Codex Sinaiticus , Codex Alexandrinus ) reflect this diversity of opinion in the works they contain, in that the former contains the 'Shepherd of Hermas' and the Letter of Barnabas, the latter the two letters of Clement .

Eusebius of Caesarea presented around 300 in his church history how the churches of the Roman Empire assessed New Testament writings. This is where the later 27-book canon begins by including those writings that Euseb describes as "contested" (as "Antilegomena"), but "which are respected by most"). This later decision - as it was then made by Athanasius - was therefore "inclusive". In his catechetical lectures in Jerusalem around the middle of the 4th century, Cyril of Jerusalem listed a canon that contained all the books of the New Testament except for the Revelation of John. In 367, Athanasius of Alexandria lists all the books of today's New Testament in his 39th Easter Letter, but in the Old Testament he deviates a little from the list that is customary today by including the Book of Baruch and the Letter of Jeremiah and omitting the Book of Esther. Gregory of Nazianzen lists in a poem all the books of today's New Testament except for the Revelation of John.

The third synod of Carthage , a local synod that spoke only for the area of ​​North Africa, recognized the canon in 397 (46 scriptures from the Old, 27 from the New Testament) and forbade reading other scriptures as divine scriptures in worship.

“At the same time, it is astonishing with what accuracy the church of that time incorporated the essential and most reliable scriptures into the canon. There is hardly any other script that one would like to see later included in the canon. "

- Bernhard Lohse : Epochs of the history of dogma

middle Ages

The idea, which was shaped in modern Protestantism , that the canon of the New Testament had been clearly established since the 4th century, cannot, however, be confirmed without restrictions for the medieval Bible. The pre-Reformation medieval Bible has a solid core and is characterized by porous edges so that, from a modern point of view, non-biblical writings such as the Proto- Gospel of James could for a long time be read at eye level with the canonical Gospels. The pseudepigraphic Laodicener letter , an apocryphal letter from Paul, had already been rejected by Jerome in late antiquity , but was still passed down for centuries as a canonical letter from Paul in some manuscripts of the Vulgate and was also contained in all 17 German translations of the New Testament before the Luther Bible. The emergence of a closed New Testament Bible canon is essentially a product of the 16th century, when Reformation canon criticism and the reform decisions of the Council of Trent that responded to it for the first time and initially only in the West drew sharp boundaries between canonical and non-canonical books. In 1531, the Zurich Bible, the first printed complete Bible edition, came onto the market. The resolutions of Reformed synods in the decades after Trent led to a de facto canonization of the Luther Bible in the Lutheran-influenced churches.

reformation

In Christianity, formal canonization did not take place until the 4th century . Ultimately, however, Christian canonization was a changing process. The basis at that time was the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Tanakh and some other scriptures. For the Catholic Church, however, the new Latin translation by Jerome , the Vulgate , developed much more importance. In the Latin west of the empire, people were increasingly unable to work with the Greek Septuagint.

That only changed with the Renaissance, when humanistic scholars like the Hebraist Johannes Reuchlin and the Graecist Erasmus von Rotterdam understood how to awaken a new interest in antiquity . With the reputation ad fontes historically - and soon also theologically - one should ask about the original sources. The first text editions in the original language were groundbreaking with the help of the newly invented printing technology . For the Hebrew Old Testament this was the edition by Jakob ben Chaim, published in Venice by Daniel Bomberg in 1524/1525 (“Bombergiana”). (See the edition of the Greek NT by Erasmus in 1516.)

In this respect, the reformers resorted to the Hebrew canon of the Tanakh, while the Catholic Church , albeit only after some disputes, at the Council of Trent adhered to the scope of the Latin Vulgate and the Orthodox Church to the Septuagint. Martin Luther nevertheless considered the scriptures conveyed in the Septuagint beyond the Hebrew inventory to be books that were not considered the same as the Holy Scriptures and yet were useful and easy to read; The Anglican Church sees it similarly . The more Calvinistic traditions within Protestantism, however, mostly reject these books completely.

“The Bible also contains other books: the 3rd and 4th books of Ezra, the second book Esther, Tobias, Judith, Susanna, Beel and the Maccabees, as well as the book of Baruch, the book of wisdom and the sayings of the wise ; Although these are all read in the Church and have their meaning and purpose, they are not, however, put on an equal footing with the books mentioned above [Isaiah, Jeremiah etc./notes]. Because one does not use these books to argue on issues of religion etc. "

- Heinrich Bullinger : Summa Christian Religion 1556

In this respect, there is now disagreement between Orthodox , Roman Catholic and Protestant churches regarding the scriptures not contained in the Tanakh, which, depending on their point of view, are called (Old Testament) Apocrypha or Deuterocanonical scriptures. In addition, the term “late writings of the Old Testament” has become established for Protestant-Catholic community projects.

In the course of the Reformation , the previously usual scope of the Old Testament canon, which was based on the Septuagint, was called into question. Martin Luther based his translation of the Old Testament on the Jewish, Hebrew canon, which - defined around 100 AD in its current scope - comprised fewer scriptures than those around 200 BC. Septuagint originated in BC (i.e. without the books Judith, Tobit, partly Daniel and Esther, Maccabees, Sirach, Wisdom and Baruch). In the course of the Counter-Reformation, the Catholic Church then committed itself to the extent of the Septuagint for the Old Testament in the Council of Trent . The Lutheran churches never laid down the scope of the canon for either the Old or the New Testament in an official confessional text, but in fact adhered to Luther's decision. The openness of the scope of the canon could also be justified theologically and programmatically. The Reformed churches have clearly defined the scope of the biblical canon in their confessional texts by means of canon lists. In the Eastern Church the scope of the canon of scriptures has never been clearly defined either.

See also

literature

Bible as a whole
  • Egbert Ballhorn, Georg Steins (Hrsg.): The Bible canon in the interpretation of the Bible: example exegeses and methodological reflections. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 2007, ISBN 3-17-019109-8 (347 pages).
  • Jean-Marie Auwers, Henk Jan De Jonge (eds.): The Biblical Canons (Bibliotheca Ephemeridum Theologicarum Lovaniensium). Leuven University Press, 2003, ISBN 90-429-1154-9 (LXXXVIII, 717, 8 pages).
  • Lee Martin McDonald, James A. Sanders (Eds.): The Canon Debate. Hendrickson, Peabody / Mass. 2002, ISBN 1-56563-517-5 (X, 662 pages).
  • Matthias Haudel: The Bible and the unity of the churches. An examination of the studies of "Faith and Church Constitution" (Church and Denomination, Volume 34), Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1993, 2nd edition 1995, 3rd edition 2012. ISBN 978-3-525-56538-4 .
  • Wolfhart Pannenberg , Theodor Schneider: Binding Testimony, Volume 1: Canon, Scripture, Tradition (Dialogue of the Churches, 7). Herder, Freiburg 1992, ISBN 3-451-22868-8 (399 pages).
  • Frederick Fyvie Bruce : The Canon of Scripture. InterVarsity, Downers Grove 1988, ISBN 0-8308-1258-X (349 pages).
  • Adolf M. Ritter: On the formation of canons in the old church. In: Charisma and Caritas. Essays on the Old Church. Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, Göttingen 1997, ISBN 3-525-58160-2 , p. 273 ff.
  • Karlmann Beyschlag: Outline of the history of dogma. Vol. 1: God and the world. 2nd Edition. Darmstadt 1988, pp. 172-185.
  • Franz Stuhlhofer : The use of the Bible from Jesus to Euseb. A statistical study of the canon history. SCM R. Brockhaus, Wuppertal 1988, ISBN 3-417-29335-9 .
Old testament
  • William J. Abraham: Canon and Criterion in Christian Theology: From the Fathers to Feminism. Oxford University Press, Oxford 2002, ISBN 0-19-925003-0 (508 pages).
  • Andreas Hahn: Canon Hebraeorum - Canon Ecclesiae: On the deutero-canonical question in the context of the justification of Old Testament script canonicality in more recent Roman Catholic dogmatics. LIT-Verlag, Münster u. a. 2010, ISBN 978-3-643-90013-5 (408 pages).
  • Lee Martin McDonald: The Formation of Christian Biblical Canon: Revised and Expanded Edition. Hendrickson, Peabody / Mass. 1995, ISBN 1-56563-052-1 (XXXVI, 340 pages).
  • HP Rüger: The extent of the Old Testament canon in the various church traditions. In: Siegfried Meurer (Ed.): The Apocryphal Question in the Ecumenical Horizon (Bible in Conversation 3) . 2nd Edition. German Biblical Society, Stuttgart 1993, ISBN 3-438-06222-4 (159 pages).
  • Michael Schmaus, Alois Grillmeier, Leo Scheffczyk, Alexander Sand: The Beginnings of a Christian Canon (I / 3a Part 1). Herder, Freiburg / Basel / Vienna 1974, ISBN 3-451-00725-8 (90 pages).
  • Hans von Campenhausen : The emergence of the Christian Bible (contributions to historical theology, 39). Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen 2003, ISBN 3-16-148227-1 (unchanged reprint of the 1st edition from 1968; VIII, 402 pages).
New Testament
  • Bruce Metzger : The New Testament Canon: Origin, Development, Meaning. Patmos-Verlag, Düsseldorf 1993, ISBN 3-491-71104-5 (303 pages).
  • Theodor Zahn: Outline of the history of the New Testament canon . 3. Edition. R.Brockhaus, Wuppertal 1985, ISBN 3-417-29235-2 (with index, otherwise reprint of the 2nd edition 1904; 110 pages).
  • Geoffrey Mark Hahneman: The Muratorian Fragment and the Development of the Canon (Oxford Theological Monographs). Clarendon Press, Oxford 1992, ISBN 0-19-826341-4 (XI, 237 pages).
  • David Trobisch: The First Edition of the New Testament (Novum Testamentum et orbis antiquus). Oxford University Press, Oxford / New York 2000, ISBN 0-19-511240-7 (VIII, 175 pages).
  • Michael J. Kruger: Canon Revisited: Establishing the Origins and Authority of the New Testament Books. Crossway, Wheaton 2012, ISBN 978-1433505003

Web links

Wiktionary: Canon  - explanations of meanings, word origins, synonyms, translations

Individual documents and notes

  1. Adolf Jülicher: Introduction to the New Testament. 7th edition. Tübingen 1931, p. 555.
  2. Wilhelm Schneemelcher : Bible III: The emergence of the canon of the New Testament and the Christian Bible. In: Theologische Realenzyklopädie, Volume 1. S. 25 ff.
  3. Hans Jürgen Becker: Bible, II. Old Testament. In: Religion Past and Present. (RGG), 4th edition, Tübingen 1998, p. 1410.
  4. ^ Franz Stuhlhofer: The ancient church canon history in the mirror of evangelical literature. In: Gerhard Maier (ed.): The canon of the Bible. Brunnen, Gießen 1990, pp. 165–197, the diagram on p. 166.
  5. Erich Zenger : Introduction to the Old Testament . 2nd Edition. Kohlhammer, Stuttgart 1996, p. 28.
  6. ^ Letter from Melito to Onesimus around 170 AD; Melito's list in Greek and English.
  7. See e.g. B. Bruce Metzger: The New Testament Canon. Ostfildern 2012, pp. 238 and 240.
  8. See Franz Graf-Stuhlhofer: The mysterious century in relation to the New Testament canon (approx. 70–170 AD) , in: Belief and Thinking Today, Issue 1 of 2020, pp. 38–44.
  9. Bernhard Lohse: Epochs of the history of dogma. 5th edition. Kreuz, Stuttgart / Berlin 1983, ISBN 3-7831-0702-4 , pp. 31-32.
  10. ↑ Marked as controversial: "which some of us do not let read in church"
  11. He mentions two recognized letters of John, where he had already quoted from 1 John. Did he mean with the two recognized 2nd John and 3rd John - after 1st John was discussed beforehand?
  12. Joachim Orth: The Muratorian fragment. The question of its dating . Aachen 2020, p. 201f.
  13. Bernhard Lohse: Epochs of the history of dogma. Stuttgart / Berlin 1983, p. 35.
  14. Eusebius of Caesarea, Historia Ecclesiastica III, 25 (among others)
  15. 39th Easter letter of Athanasius
  16. Bernhard Lohse: Epochs of the history of dogma. Stuttgart / Berlin 1983, p. 37.
  17. Helmut Zander : The Word of God has a very earthly story: How the Bible came into being (Review of: Konrad Schmid , Jens Schröter : The Origin of the Bible. From the First Texts to the Holy Scriptures. Munich 2019). In: NZZ , October 27, 2019, accessed on November 2, 2019.
  18. Among other things, the humanistically educated opponent of Luther, Thomas Cajetan , decidedly again resorted to Hieronymus ' criticism of the canons : cf. Ulrich Horst : The dispute over St. Writing between Cardinal Cajetan and Ambrosius Catharinus . In: Leo Scheffczyk u. a. (Ed.): Truth and Annunciation. Festschrift for Michael Schmaus : Volume 1, Paderborn 1967, pp. 551-577.
  19. Heinrich Bullinger: Christian life of faith. Summa Christian religion 1556 (= classic of the Reformation ). Limache, Basel 1995, ISBN 3-9520867-0-3 , p. 13.