Development of the New Testament canon Development of the New Testament canon The canon of the New Testament is the set of books Christians regard as divinely inspired and constituting the New Testament of the Christian Bible. For most, it is an agreed-upon list of twenty-seven books that includes the Canonical Gospels, Acts, letters of the Apostles, and Revelation. The books of the canon of the New Testament were written before 120 AD. For the Orthodox, the recognition of these writings as authoritative was formalized in the Second Council of Trullan of 692. The Catholic Church made dogmatic definition upon its Biblical canon in 382 at
The Books of the Bible and medieval Church; they became an issue only with later editors and publishers." The order of the biblical books still differs between some ecclesiastical traditions today. Some earlier editions of the Bible also presented the books in non-traditional orders: "The Modern Readers' Bible"; "The Bible Designed to Be Read as Living Literature"; "The Twentieth Century New Testament"; and "The Original New Testament". "The Books of the Bible", again according to its Preface, seeks to "order the books in such a way that their literary types, the historical circumstances in which they were composed and the theological traditions out of which