The decrees of the First Vatican Council of 1870 are in accord with this teaching. Protestant historian Philip Schaff states: "The council of Hippo in 393, and the third (according to another reckoning the sixth) council of Carthage in 397, under the influence of Augustine, who. The order of some books varies among canons. This decision of the transmarine church however, was subject to ratification; and the concurrence of the Roman see it received when Innocent I and Gelasius I (A.D. 414) repeated the same index of biblical books. The Ethiopian Tewahedo church accepts all of the deuterocanonical books of Catholicism and anagignoskomena of Eastern Orthodoxy except for the four Books of Maccabees. Earlier Spanish translations, such as the 13th-century Alfonsina Bible, translated from Jerome's Vulgate, had been copied by hand. Eastern Orthodoxy uses the Septuagint (translated in the 3rd century BCE) as the textual basis for the entire Old Testament in both protocanonical and deuteroncanonical booksto use both in the Greek for liturgical purposes, and as the basis for translations into the vernacular. For the number of books of the Hebrew Bible see: Crown, Alan D. (October 1991). Comparison Table His reign lasted from 312-337. Clontz (2008), "The Comprehensive New Testament", ranks the NRSV in eighth place in a comparison of twenty-one translations, at 81% correspondence to the Nestle-Aland 27th ed. [41] All twenty seven books of the common western New Testament are included in this British & Foreign Bible Society's 1905 Peshitta edition. It is important to note that the writings of Scripture were canonical at the moment they were written. Catholics, on the other hand, use the Greek Septuagint as the primary basis for the Old Testament. James might well have been the first New Testament book written, in about 46 A.D. The same Canon [rule] of Scripture is used by the Roman Catholic Church. [2] Evidence suggests that the process of canonization occurred between 200 BC and 200 AD, and a popular position is that the Torah was canonized c. 400 BC, the Prophets c. 200 BC, and the Writings c. 100 AD[3] perhaps at a hypothetical Council of Jamniahowever, this position is increasingly criticised by modern scholars. A 1575 quarto edition of the Bishop's Bible also does not contain them. The Epistle to the Laodiceans is present in some western non-Roman Catholic translations and traditions. The Decretum pro Jacobitis contains a complete list of the books received by the Catholic Church as inspired, but omits the terms "canon" and "canonical". The English word canon comes from the Greek kann, meaning "rule" or "measuring stick". How the Books of the Bible were Chosen. These are works recognized by the Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Oriental Orthodox Churches as being part of scripture (and thus deuterocanonical rather than apocryphal), but Protestants do not recognize them as divinely inspired. However, those books are included in certain Bibles of the modern Syriac traditions. [43] No inc. in Wycliffe and early Quaker Bibles. Two manuscripts exista longer Greek manuscript with Christian interpolations and a shorter Slavonic version. The Book of Nehemiah suggests that the priest-scribe Ezra brought the Torah back from Babylon to Jerusalem and the Second Temple (89) around the same time period. A surviving quarto edition of the Great Bible, produced some time after 1549, does not contain the Apocrypha although most copies of the Great Bible did. IVP Academic, 2010, Location 147886 (Kindle Edition). Some Protestants use Bibles which also include 14 additional . The religious scholar Bruce Metzger described Origen's efforts, saying "The process of canonization represented by Origen proceeded by way of selection, moving from many candidates for inclusion to fewer. The Ethiopian Bible includes the Books of Enoch, Esdras, Buruch and all 3 Books of Meqabyan (Maccabees), and a host of others that were excommunicated . However, there were some exceptions. canon; reformation; hebrews; protestant-bible; Share. [50] When bishops and Councils spoke on the matter of the Biblican canon, however, they were not defining something new, but instead "were ratifying what had already become the mind of the Church". Scripture was Scripture when the pen touched the parchment. Justin Martyr, in the early 2nd century, mentions the "memoirs of the Apostles", which Christians (Greek: ) called "gospels", and which were considered to be authoritatively equal to the Old Testament. 55% reported using the King James Version, followed by 19% for the New International Version, 7% for the New Revised Standard Version (printed in both Protestant and Catholic editions), 6% for the New American Bible (a Catholic Bible translation) and 5% for the Living Bible. The Syriac Orthodox Church and the Assyrian Church of the East both adhere to the Peshitta liturgical tradition, which historically excludes five books of the New Testament Antilegomena: 2 John, 3 John, 2 Peter, Jude, and Revelation. "The Abisha Scroll 3,000 Years Old?". The Bible has three major compositions. Number of books. RSV), albeit in special editions. No. However, many churches within Protestantismas it is presented herereject the Apocrypha, do not consider it useful, and do not include it in their Bibles. On this Wikipedia the language links are at the top of the page across from the article title. But that's not the real story. Some scrolls among the Dead Sea scrolls have been identified as proto-Samaritan Pentateuch text-type. Our Lord not only affirmed the Jewish canon of the Old Testament, He also promised to give additional revelation to His church through His authorized representativesnamely, the apostles. Brecht, Martin. [16], The people of the remnants of the Samaritans in modern-day Israel/Palestine retain their version of the Torah as fully and authoritatively canonical. They lived in a period of about two centuries ending c. 70 AD. The word canon is used to identify the collection of sacred books that comprise the Bible. 2. The Synod of Jerusalem (1672) established additional canons that are widely accepted throughout the Eastern Orthodox Church. In the Latin Vulgate and Douay-Rheims, chapter 51 of Ecclesiasticus appears separately as the "Prayer of Joshua, son of Sirach". Goff, Philip. This process was not without debate. While the narrower canon has indeed been published as one compilation, there may be no real, A translation of the Epistle to the Laodiceans can be accessed online at the, The Third Epistle to the Corinthians can be found as a section within the, Various translations of the Didache can be accessed online at, A translation of the Shepherd of Hermas can be accessed online at the. The Canon of the Old Testament was set by the time of Jesus. 66 Books of the Bible In many ancient manuscripts, a distinct collection known as the. Similarly, the New Testament canons of the Syriac, Armenian, Egyptian Coptic and Ethiopian Churches all have minor differences, yet five of these Churches are part of the same communion and hold the same theological beliefs. This question illuminates one of those painful intersections between theology and church history: the canonization of Scripture. Catholic theologians regard these documents as infallible statements of Catholic doctrine. The Talmud in Bava Batra 14b gives a different order for the books in Nevi'im and Ketuvim. Others, like Melito, omitted it from the canon altogether. For, since there are four-quarters of the earth in which we live, and four universal winds, while the church is scattered throughout all the world, and the 'pillar and ground' of the church is the gospel and the spirit of life, it is fitting that she should have four pillars breathing out immortality on every side, and vivifying men afresh[] Therefore the gospels are in accord with these things For the living creatures are quadriform and the gospel is quadriform[] These things being so, all who destroy the form of the gospel are vain, unlearned, and also audacious; those [I mean] who represent the aspects of the gospel as being either more in number than as aforesaid, or, on the other hand, fewer. The Belgic Confession[72] and the Westminster Confession named the 39 books in the Old Testament and, apart from the aforementioned New Testament books, expressly rejected the canonicity of any others. The growth and development of the Armenian Biblical canon is complex. By doing this, he established a particular way of looking at religious texts that persists in Christian thought today. Those codices contain almost a full version of the Septuagint; Vaticanus lacks only 13 Maccabees and Sinaiticus lacks 23 Maccabees, 1 Esdras, Baruch and Letter of Jeremiah. Just as the Geneva Bible (published between 1560 and 1576) and the so-called King James Bible (1611) reflected and shaped English speech, so Luther's Bible is credited with being a decisive influence upon an emerging, shared New High German. In one particular. With the potential exception of the Septuagint, the apostles did not leave a defined set of scriptures; instead the canon of both the Old Testament and the New Testament developed over time. "[29], In his Easter letter of 367, Patriarch Athanasius of Alexandria gave a list of exactly the same books that would become the New Testament27 bookproto-canon,[30] and used the phrase "being canonized" (kanonizomena) in regard to them. [1] Following the Protestant Reformation, Protestants Confessions have usually excluded the books which other Christian traditions consider to be deuterocanonical books from the biblical canon (the canon of the Roman Catholic, Eastern Orthodox, and Oriental Orthodox churches differs among themselves as well),[14] most early Protestant Bibles published the Apocrypha along with the Old Testament and New Testament. [31], In 331, Constantine I commissioned Eusebius to deliver fifty Bibles for the Church of Constantinople. Ethiopic Lamentations consists of eleven chapters, parts of which are considered to be non-canonical. The Septuagint divided the books of Samuel, Kings, Chronicles and Ezra-Nehemiah each into two, which makes eight instead of four. For example, the Trullan Synod of 691692, which Pope Sergius I (in office 687701) rejected[36] (see also Pentarchy), endorsed the following lists of canonical writings: the Apostolic Canons (c. 385), the Synod of Laodicea (c. 363), the Third Synod of Carthage (c. 397), and the 39th Festal Letter of Athanasius (367). The Third Epistle to the Corinthians always appears as a correspondence; it also includes a short letter from the Corinthians to Paul. The Short Answer. Athanasius[32] recorded Alexandrian scribes around 340 preparing Bibles for Constans. The canonization process of the Hebrew Bible is often associated with the Council of Jamnia (Hebrew: Yavneh), around the year 90 C.E. Evidence strongly suggests that a Greek manuscript of 4 Ezra once existed; this furthermore implies a Hebrew origin for the text. Esther's placement within the canon was questioned by Luther. In the Book of First Maccabees it says. James Dixon Douglas, Merrill Chapin Tenney (1997), Diccionario Bblico Mundo Hispano, Editorial Mundo Hispano, pg 145. It was there that the contents of the canon of the Hebrew Bible may have been discussed and formally accepted. So, Protestant Bibles then included all the . The Talmud has two components: the Mishnah (c. 200 AD), the first written compendium of Judaism's oral Law; and the Gemara (c. 500 AD), an elucidation of the Mishnah and related Tannaitic writings that often ventures onto other subjects and expounds broadly on the Tanakh. In the years leading up to the time of Jesus, for . Session resources are available as a complete curriculum or a la carte. According to some enumerations, including Ecclesiasticus, Judith, Tobit, 1 Esdras, 4 Ezra (not including chs. These five writings attributed to the Apostolic Fathers are not currently considered canonical in any Biblical tradition, though they are more highly regarded by some more than others. In the same passage, Augustine asserted that these dissenting churches should be outweighed by the opinions of "the more numerous and weightier churches", which would include Eastern Churches, the prestige of which Augustine stated moved him to include the Book of Hebrews among the canonical writings, though he had reservation about its authorship. Allegedly the Catholic Church added to the OT that Jesus used. The full New Testament was translated into Hungarian by Jnos Sylvester in 1541. [26] Similarly, in 178283 when the first English Bible was printed in America, it did not contain the Apocrypha and, more generally, English Bibles came increasingly to omit the Apocrypha.[10]. [25] Likewise by 200, the Muratorian fragment shows that there existed a set of Christian writings somewhat similar to what is now the New Testament, which included four gospels and argued against objections to them. [29][30] The precise form of the resolution was: That the funds of the Society be applied to the printing and circulation of the Canonical Books of Scripture, to the exclusion of those Books and parts of Books usually termed Apocryphal[31], Similarly, in 1827, the American Bible Society determined that no bibles issued from their depository should contain the Apocrypha. With this background, we can now address why the Protestant versions of the Bible have less books than the Catholic versions. [12] The Hussite Bible was translated into Hungarian by two Hussite priests, Tams Pcsi and Blint jlaki, who studied in Prague and were influenced by Jan Hus. Source: Canon 2, Council of Trullo. The Early Church used the Old Testament, namely the Septuagint (LXX)[20] among Greek speakers, with a canon perhaps as found in the Bryennios List or Melito's canon. The canonical Ethiopic version of Baruch has five chapters, but is shorter than the LXX text. For instance, the Epistle to the Laodiceans[note 3] was included in numerous Latin Vulgate manuscripts, in the eighteen German Bibles prior to Luther's translation, and also a number of early English Bibles, such as Gundulf's Bible and John Wycliffe's English translationeven as recently as 1728, William Whiston considered this epistle to be genuinely Pauline. Both I and II Maccabees suggest that Judas Maccabeus (c. 167 BC) likewise collected sacred books (3:4250, 2:1315, 15:69), indeed some scholars argue that the Hasmonean dynasty fixed the Jewish canon. In 367 AD, Athanasius the bishop of Alexandria named the 27 books that are currently accepted by Christians, as the authoritative canon of Scripture. 42k 11 11 gold badges 120 120 silver badges 293 293 bronze badges. The Hebrew Bible and the Protestant Bible have the same content in the Old Testament, but the organization is different, such as, for example, the Hebrew Bible has one book of Samuel while the Protestant Bible has two. The standard United Bible Societies 1905 edition of the New Testament of the Peshitta was based on editions prepared by Syriacists Philip E. Pusey (d.1880), George Gwilliam (d.1914) and John Gwyn. Catholics and Protestants have a different view on the nature of the church. There are numerous citations of Sirach within the Talmud, even though the book was not ultimately accepted into the Hebrew canon. Scholars nonetheless consult the Samaritan version when trying to determine the meaning of text of the original Pentateuch, as well as to trace the development of text-families. "Therefore St James' epistle is really an epistle of straw, compared to these others, for it has . Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 19851993. "[24], By the early 3rd century, Christian theologians like Origen of Alexandria may have been usingor at least were familiar withthe same 27 books found in modern New Testament editions, though there were still disputes over the canonicity of some of the writings (see also Antilegomena). Some Protestants use Bibles which also include 14 additional books in a . 1538 Great Bible, assembled by John Rogers, the first English Bible authorized for public use 1560 Geneva Biblethe work of William Whittingham, a Protestant English exile in Geneva 1568. These views on the infallibility of the Bible and its origin from God Himself have characterized the entire Christian Church of the ages up to the liberal movements of recent times, as is widely recognized. Other New Testament works that are generally considered apocryphal nonetheless appear in some Bibles and manuscripts. . This page was last edited on 21 February 2023, at 01:10. [26] Thus, while there was a good measure of debate in the Early Church over the New Testament canon, the major writings were accepted by almost all Christians by the middle of the 3rd century. ), No inc. in some mss as Baruch Chapter 6. Protestant Bibles have only 39 books in the Old Testament, however, while Catholic Bibles have 46. [49] A 2015 report by the California-based Barna Group found that 39% of American readers of the Bible preferred the King James Version, followed by 13% for the New International Version, 10% for the New King James Version and 8% for the English Standard Version. Note that "1", "2", or "3" as a leading numeral is normally pronounced in the United States as the ordinal number, thus "First Samuel" for "1 Samuel". The Prayer of Manasseh is included as part of the. Was not Abraham found faithful when tested, and it was reckoned to him as righteousness (First Maccabees 2:52). 532 pages, Paperback. [74] Luther himself did not accept the canonicity of the Apocrypha although he believed that its books were "Not Held Equal to the Scriptures, but Are Useful and Good to Read". The German-language Luther Bible of 1534 did include the Apocrypha. However, this was not just his personal opinion. [2] Some Protestants use Bibles which also include 14 additional books in a section known as the Apocrypha (though these are not considered canonical) bringing the total to 80 books. The Canon Defined. All of the major Christian traditions accept the books of the Hebrew protocanon in its entirety as divinely inspired and authoritative, in various ways and degrees. a "closed book", a prohibition against future scribal editing) or to the instruction received by Moses on Mount Sinai. 1. asked Dec 13, 2016 at 5:27. PROPHETS. The word "catholic" means "all-embracing," and the Catholic Church sees itself as the only . [32], Since the 19th century changes, many modern editions of the Bible and re-printings of the King James Version of the Bible that are used especially by non-Anglican Protestants omit the Apocrypha section. The synod requested the States-General of the Netherlands to commission it. "Canon" comes from "reed or . There is a Samaritan Book of Joshua; however, this is a popular chronicle written in Arabic and is not considered to be scripture. The canons of the Church of England and English Presbyterians were decided definitively by the Thirty-Nine Articles (1563) and the Westminster Confession of Faith (1647), respectively. 2531). "[45] According to Lee Martin McDonald, the Revelation was added to the list in 419. The Didache,[note 5] The Shepherd of Hermas,[note 6] and other writings attributed to the Apostolic Fathers, were once considered scriptural by various early Church fathers. When the Church fathers created the Christian Canon, they used the most popular version of the Hebrew Bible, which was the Septuagint, which was a translation into Greek. This manuscript included all 39 books of the Old Testament and the 27 books of the New Testament in the same language: Latin. [6] Sometimes the term "Protestant Bible" is simply used as a shorthand for a bible which contains only the 66 books of the Old and New Testaments. The English word canon comes from the Greek kann, meaning "rule" or "measuring stick".The use of the word "canon" to refer to a set of religious scriptures was first used by David Ruhnken, in the 18th century. In Roman Catholicism, additional books were added in 1546. (Tobit 14:11). [15] They did not expand their canon by adding any Samaritan compositions. The first proto-Protestant Bible translation was Wycliffe's Bible, that appeared in the late 14th century in the vernacular Middle English. [17] Other early Protestant Bibles such as the Matthew's Bible (1537), Great Bible (1539), Geneva Bible (1560), Bishop's Bible (1568), and the King James Version (1611) included the Old Testament, Apocrypha, and New Testament. However, it is not always clear as to how these writings are arranged or divided. Some Christian groups have additional or alternate canonical books which are considered holy scripture but not part of the Bible. In AD 367, when the official list as we know it today was recognized by the church, the church was not imposing something new upon Christian communities; rather, they were codifying the documents that contained the historical beliefs and practices of those communities. Rabbi Yochanan ben Zakkai managed to escape Jerusalem before its destruction and received permission to rebuild a Jewish base in Jamnia. First printed in 1611, this edition of the Bible was commissioned in 1604 by King James I after feeling political pressure from Puritans and Calvinists demanding church reform and calling for a. [23], A four-gospel canon (the Tetramorph) was asserted by Irenaeus in the following quote: "It is not possible that the gospels can be either more or fewer in number than they are. Moreover, the book of Proverbs is divided into two booksMessale (Prov. The word "canon" derives from the Hebrew term qaneh and the Greek term kanon, both of which refer to a measuring rod. [42] These councils were convened under the influence of Augustine of Hippo, who regarded the canon as already closed. Paraphrase of American Standard Version, 1901, with comparisons of other translations, including the King James Version, and some Greek texts. [15], In the English language, the incomplete Tyndale Bible published in 1525, 1534, and 1536, contained the entire New Testament. This list was finally approved by Pope Damasus I in 382 AD, and was formally approved by the Church Council of Rome in that same year. However, a degree of uncertainty continues to exist here, and it is certainly possible that the full textincluding the prologue and epilogueappears in Bibles and Biblical manuscripts used by some of these eastern traditions. Canonical Books of the Holy Scripture, The 1577 Lutheran Epitome of the Formula of Concord, "1. Answer The word "canon" comes from the rule of law that was used to determine if a book measured up to a standard. [9] Today, "English Bibles with the Apocrypha are becoming more popular again" and they may be printed as intertestamental books. "[4], The Souldiers Pocket Bible, of 1643, draws verses largely from the Geneva Bible but only from either the Old or New Testaments. The books that make up the Bible were written by various people over a period of more than 1,000 years, between 1200 B.C.E. Rabbinic Judaism (Hebrew: ) recognizes the twenty-four books of the Masoretic Text, commonly called the Tanakh (Hebrew: ") or Hebrew Bible. Published September 30, 2019. [73], The Lutheran Epitome of the Formula of Concord of 1577 declared that the prophetic and apostolic Scriptures comprised the Old and New Testaments alone. No other version was favoured by more than 3% of the survey respondents.[50]. The Catholic canon was set at the Council of Rome (382).[19]. For instance, in the Slavonic, Orthodox Tewahedo, Syriac, and Armenian traditions, the New Testament is ordered differently from what is considered to be the standard arrangement. "[79] Luther made a parallel statement in calling them: "not considered equal to the Holy Scriptures, butuseful and good to read. He wrote down the consensus of a larger group of religious authorities. We can say with some certainty that the first widespread edition of the Bible was assembled by St. Jerome around A.D. 400. These and many other works are classified as New Testament apocrypha by Pauline denominations. Protestant Bibles In the 1500s, Protestant leaders decided to organize the Old Testament material according to the official canon of Judaism rather than the Septuagint. All the Council of Trent did was reaffirm, in the face of the new Protestant attack on Scripture, what had been the historic Bible of the Churchthe standard edition of which was Jerome's own Vulgate, including the seven deuterocanonicals! [71] The Thirty-Nine Articles, issued by the Church of England in 1563, names the books of the Old Testament, but not the New Testament. [64], In response to Martin Luther's demands, the Council of Trent on 8 April 1546 approved the present Catholic Bible canon, which includes the deuterocanonical books, and the decision was confirmed by an anathema by vote (24 yea, 15 nay, 16 abstain). He had nothing to do with it. 6. Protestant Bibles in Russia and Ethiopia usually follow the local Orthodox order for the New Testament. The Protestant Bible was created during the Reformation, when Protestants broke away from the Catholic Church. Bruce, F.F. corrected). The Second Helvetic Confession (1562), affirms "both Testaments to be the true Word of God" and appealing to Augustine's De Civitate Dei, it rejected the canonicity of the Apocrypha. [54], Before the Protestant Reformation, the Council of Florence (14391443) took place. It includes and accepts only the scriptures that are strictly in Hebrew. Around 100 CE canonization of the Hebrew Bible was complete, with the Torah, the Prophets, and the Writings all clearly accepted as scripture by all forms of early Judaism. The Old and New Testament canons did not develop independently of each other and most primary sources for the canon specify both Old and New Testament books. Extra-canonical New Testament books appear in historical canon lists and recensions that are either distinct to this tradition, or where they do exist elsewhere, never achieved the same status. For example, it is speculated that this may have provided motivation for canon lists, and that Codex Vaticanus and Codex Sinaiticus are examples of these Bibles. Brecht, Martin. [5] The division between protocanonical and deuterocanonical books is not accepted by all Protestants who simply view books as being canonical or not and therefore classify books found in the Deuterocanon, along with other books, as part of the Apocrypha. [37], Most Bible translations into English conform to the Protestant canon and ordering while some offer multiple versions (Protestant, Catholic, Orthodox) with different canon and ordering. Did Constantine canonize the Bible? For mainstream Pauline Christianity (growing from proto-orthodox Christianity in pre-Nicene times) which books constituted the Christian biblical canons of both the Old and New Testament was generally established by the 5th century, despite some scholarly disagreements,[18] for the ancient undivided Church (the Catholic and Eastern Orthodox traditions, before the EastWest Schism). A Protestant Bible is a Christian Bible whose translation or revision was produced by Protestant Christians.Such Bibles comprise 39 books of the Old Testament (according to the Hebrew Bible canon, known especially to non-Protestant Christians as the protocanonical books) and 27 books of the New Testament, for a total of 66 books. Some of these writings have been cited as scripture by early Christians, but since the fifth century a widespread consensus has emerged limiting the New Testament to the 27 books of the modern canon. In fact, the ecumenical council of Florence in the mid-1400s reaffirmed their inclusion in the Old Testament canon. The Bear Bible was first published on 28 September 1569, in Basel, Switzerland. Other versions were used by fewer than 10%. Volume 3, p. 98 James L. Schaaf, trans. For the following three centuries, most English language Protestant Bibles, including the Authorized Version, continued with the practice of placing the Apocrypha in a separate section after the Old Testament. Marcionism rejects the Old Testament entirely; Marcion considered the Old Testament and New Testament gods to be different entities. Protocanonical ( protos, "first") is a conventional word denoting those sacred writings which have been always received by Christendom without dispute. 2. Pope. The reason for this is that the Protestant canon of the Old Testament has been influenced by the Greek translation of the Old Testament, the Septuagint (LXX) made about 250-160 B.C. The canon at Qumrn In the collection of manuscripts from the Judaean desertdiscovered from the 1940s onthere are no lists of canonical works and no codices (manuscript volumes), only individual scrolls. Paul Arblaster, Gergely Juhsz, Guido Latr (eds) Tyndale's Testament, Brepols 2002. Some Protestant Bibles include 3 Maccabees as part of the Apocrypha. No single canon, in fact, has ever been accepted as final by the whole church. . Ferguson, Everett. They are as follows: The Acts of Paul and Thecla and the Third Epistle to the Corinthians are portions of the greater. Deuterocanonical is a phrase initially coined in 1566 from the transformed Jew and Catholic theologian Sixtus of Siena to explain scriptural texts of the Old Testament whose canonicity was set for Catholics from the Council of Trent, but that was omitted from early canons, particularly in the East. [35], The Eastern Churches had, in general, a weaker feeling than those in the West for the necessity of making sharp delineations with regard to the canon. [43], A 2014 study into the Bible in American Life found that of those survey respondents who read the Bible, there was an overwhelming favouring of Protestant translations. Nonetheless, their early authorship and inclusion in ancient Biblical codices, as well as their acceptance to varying degrees by various early authorities, requires them to be treated as foundational literature for Christianity as a whole. Canonical Books of the Holy Scripture, "The Epitome of the Formula of Concord - Book of Concord", "The Biblical Canon of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church Today", United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, "Are 1 and 2 Esdras non-canonical books?