BTS - Perhaps I did not express my point properly. There was not a single list found that has the canon we use today until 330 years after Jesus death! Many early Christians quoted from some of these books, but not as scripture - just quotes. I see no evidence of a universally accepted NT list in history. Even tho Athanasius used the same list most do today he was not the "authority" on the subject. No Catholic Canon existed until the Coucil of Trent in 1545! As mentioned Luther (the inventor of Protestantism) did not accept Revelation or James as canonical. And up to today we still have conflict.
^ "Canon of the New Testament" . http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/03274a.htm .
Athanasius is also the first person to identify the same 27 books of the New Testament that are in use today. Up until then, various similar lists of works to be read in churches were in use. A milestone in the evolution of the canon of New Testament books is his Easter letter from Alexandria, written in 367, usually referred to as his 39th Festal Letter. Pope Damasus, the Bishop of Rome in 382, promulgated a list of books which contained a New Testament canon identical to that of Athanasius. [citation needed] A synod in Hippo in 393 repeated Athanasius' and Damasus' New Testament list (without the Epistle to the Hebrews), and a synod in Carthage in 397 repeated Athanasius' and Damasus' complete New Testament list.
Scholars have debated whether Athanasius' list in 367 was the basis for the later lists. Because Athanasius' canon is the closest canon of any of the Church Fathers to the canon used by Protestant churches today, many Protestants point to Athanasius as the father of the canon. They are identical except that Athanasius includes the Book of Baruch and the Letter of Jeremiah and places the Book of Esther among the "7 books not in the canon but to be read" along with the Wisdom of Solomon, Sirach (Ecclesiasticus), Judith, Tobit, the Didache, and the Shepherd of Hermas. [ 16 ]
[edit] Augustine and the North African canons
Augustine of Hippo declared without qualification that one is to "prefer those that are received by all Catholic Churches to those which some of them do not receive" (On Christian Doctrines 2.12). Of course, this whitewashes the fact that by "Catholic Churches" he means those whose opinion he accepts, since many Eastern Churches rejected some of the very books Augustine upheld as universally received. In the same passage, Augustine asserted that these dissenting churches should be outweighed by the opinions of "the more numerous and weightier churches."
Augustine effectively forced his opinion on the Church by commanding three synods on canonicity: the Synod of Hippo in 393, the Synod of Carthage in 397, and another in Carthage in 419 A.D. (M 237-8). Each of these reiterated the same Church law: "nothing shall be read in church under the name of the divine scriptures" except the Old Testament (including the Deuterocanonicals) and the 27 canonical books of the New Testament. Incidentally, these decrees also declared by fiat that Epistle to the Hebrews was written by Paul, for a time ending all debate on the subject.
The first council that accepted the present canon of the books of the New Testament may have been the Synod of Hippo Regius in North Africa (A.D. 393); the acts of this council, however, are lost. A brief summary of the acts was read at and accepted by the Councils of Carthage in 397 and 419. Revelation was added to the list in 419. [ 71 ] These councils were convened under the authority of St. Augustine, who regarded the canon as already closed. [ 72 ] [ 73 ] [ 74 ]
Note - Revelation added in 419 not in 393 or 397.
Here is the info found on Wiki (Most have reliable references - too much to put here) on different canons still in use today.
[edit] Peshitta
Main article: Peshitta
The late-5th or early-6th century Peshitta of the Syrian Orthodox Church [ 86 ] includes a 22-book NT, excluding II Peter, II John, III John, Jude, and Revelation. (The Lee Peshitta of 1823 follows the Protestant canon)
McDonald & Sanders, Appendix D-2, lists the following Syrian catalogue of St. Catherine's, c.400:
| “ | Gospels (4): Matt, Mark, Luke, John, Acts, Gal, Rom, Heb, Col, Eph, Phil, 1-2 Thess, 1-2 Tim, Titus, Phlm. | ” |
The SyriacPeshitta, used by all the various Syrian Churches, originally did not include 2 Peter, 2 John, 3 John, Jude and Revelation (and this canon of 22-books is the one cited by John Chrysostom (~347–407) and Theodoret (393–466) from the School of Antioch). It also includes Psalm 151 and Psalm 152–155 and 2 Baruch. Western Syrians have added the remaining 5 books to their NT canons in modern times (such as the Lee Peshitta of 1823). Today, the official lectionaries followed by the Malankara Syrian Orthodox Church, with headquarters at Kottayam (India), and the Chaldean Syrian Church, also known as the Church of the East (Nestorian), with headquarters at Trichur (India), still present lessons from only the 22-books of the original Peshitta. [ 87 ]
[edit] Armenian canon
The Armenian Bible introduces one addition: a third letter to the Corinthians, also found in the Acts of Paul, which became canonized in the Armenian Church, but is not part of the Armenian Bible today. Revelation, however, was not accepted into the Armenian Bible until c. 1200 A.D. when Archbishop Nerses arranged an Armenian Synod at Constantinople to introduce the text [ 88 ] . Still, there were unsuccessful attempts even as late as 1290 A.D. to include in the Armenian canon several apocryphal books: Advice of the Mother of God to the Apostles, the Books of Criapos, and the ever-popular Epistle of Barnabas.
The Armenian Apostolic church at times has included the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs in its Old Testament and the Third Epistle to the Corinthians, but does not always list it with the other 27 canonical New Testament books.
[edit] East African canons
The Coptic Bible (adopted by the Egyptian Church) includes the two Epistles of Clement, and the Ethiopic Bible includes books nowhere else found: the Sinodos (a collection of prayers and instructions supposedly written by Clement of Rome), the Octateuch (a book supposedly written by Peter to Clement of Rome), the Book of the Covenant (in two parts, the first details rules of church order, the second relates instructions from Jesus to the disciples given between the resurrection and the ascension), and the Didascalia (with more rules of church order, similar to the Apostolic Constitutions).
The New Testament of the Coptic Bible, adopted by the Egyptian Church, includes the two Epistles of Clement. [ 88 ] The canon of the Tewahedo Churches is somewhat looser than for other traditional Christian groups, and the order, naming, and chapter/verse division of some of the books is also slightly different. The Ethiopian "narrow" canon includes 81 books altogether: The 27 book New Testament; those Old Testament books found in the Septuagint and accepted by the Orthodox; as well as Enoch, Jubilees, 1 Esdras and 2 Esdras, and 3 books of Maccabees; however, the three Ethiopian books of Maccabees are entirely different in content from the four Books of Maccabees known elsewhere.
The "broader" Ethiopian New Testament canon includes four books of "Sinodos" (church practices), two "Books of Covenant", "Ethiopic Clement", and "Ethiopic Didascalia" (Apostolic Church-Ordinances). However, these books have never been printed or widely studied. This "broader" canon is also sometimes said to include, with the Old Testament, an eight part history of the Jews based on the writings of Flavius Josephus, and known as "Pseudo-Josephus" or "Joseph ben Gurion" (Yosef walda Koryon). [ 89 ] [ 90 ]
